Someone using a Congressional IP address tried to alter the Orange is the New Black Wikipedia page to reflect dumb, transphobic statements about Laverne Cox.
For those who don’t know, some fed-up geniuses figured out a way to detect when people from Congressional IP addresses (and other government and international addresses) make edits to Wikipedia. Using @congressedits, they tweet out anytime someone from such an address tries to make a change to a page. Via the AV Club:
[It] ooks like it’s finally found something newsworthy, if unsurprising: Somebody in the House Of Representatives is transphobic. Shortly after 10 p.m. last night, somebody from within the House Of Representatives changed the Wikipedia entry for Laverne Cox, a transgender actress who plays transgender inmate Sophia Burset on Orange Is The New Black. The entry originally said that an article in The Advocate “touted thatOrange Is The New Black contains the first ever women-in-prison narrative to be played by a real transgender woman.” But the anonymous elected representative (or someone from their staff) changed the line to the hateful “a real man pretending to be a woman.” The elected official (or their staff member) also added a link to a National Review article published last month that claimed Cox is “not a real woman.” The IP address was banned from making edits for one month.
Here is the page before the edit:
And here is what it looked like after the edit.
“A real man pretending to be a woman.” That’s disgusting, transphobic and just plain wrong. So this is what some of the people working in our government really spend their time doing.
According to Business Insider, the transphobic changes are the result of one user or group of users from inside the House, who has repeatedly tried to make similar gross changes to Wikipedia pages about transgender related issues. The user has now been banned for one month for making the edits.
Image via AP Images.