Michelle Evans, Independent Women’s Network (IWN) Austin Chapter Leader, intended to use the popular platform Eventbrite to track attendance at her upcoming event “Let Women Speak Austin,” a rally at the Texas Capitol focused on the need to protect women’s privacy in “places such as bathrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, and dormitories.”
The event was planned “to give women the opportunity to share their opinions and lived experiences, and to advocate for women’s rights and sex-based protections.” As a company that claims to celebrate and empower women, and co-founded by a female CEO, one would assume that Eventbrite would happily provide a platform to organize an event like this.
However, Evans was shocked to receive an email from Eventbrite Trust & Safety a few weeks before the event date letting her know that they would be banning promotion of her event on the platform:
“We have determined that your event is not permitted on the Eventbrite platform as it violates our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, specifically our policy on Hateful, Dangerous, or Violent Content and Events. As a result, your event has been unpublished. Please be aware that severe or repeated violations of our guidelines may result in the suspension or termination of your Eventbrite account.”
Rather than allow an event designed to empower women and free speech utilize the platform, Eventbrite chose to discriminate and silence them.
In response, Evans told IWN that: “Eventbrite’s team of Trust and Safety experts politely communicated to me that they were capitulating to the trans ideologues, the loud minority who are perpetually offended by women speaking out against their intrusion into our sports and private spaces. A simple demand — Let Women Speak — has been intentionally misrepresented by Eventbrite as hate speech. The idea of adult human females gathering in the public square to openly discuss sex-based rights has been deemed by the ticketing platform to be a danger to society and worthy of cancellation.”
And, in a letter published in partnership with IWN, she also said “Hear this, Eventbrite: women will not be silenced. The event will go on as scheduled and the crowd of women ready to give a public record of their dissent grows with every retweet about the deplatforming.”
By issuing this ban, Eventbrite has taken the cowardly, sexist path of silencing, insulting, and deplatforming women. Evans and IWN are still hosting the event and remain steadfastly focused on ensuring women’s voices are heard.
