# How much transphobia is permissible before banning
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [March 12, 2025, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457 "2025-03-12T08:16:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/1 "2025-03-12T08:16:13Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Republicans' war on transgender people: Omnibus thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-war-on-transgender-people-omnibus-thread/965609/1845):
> [@Republicans' war on transgender people: Omnibus thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-war-on-transgender-people-omnibus-thread/965609/1845):
>
> [Moderating] I’m temporarily closing this thread while we work out how to handle the moderation of a particular poster. I will reopen it after we’ve settled on a consensus. [/Moderating]
Although it’s actually an _earlier_ warning in that thread that I want to discuss:
> [@Republicans' war on transgender people: Omnibus thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-war-on-transgender-people-omnibus-thread/965609/1735):
>
> [Moderating] This is your third formal warning, in the Pit, no less, for misgendering trans people. We’ll be having a talk among the mod loop if you offer anything to the board worth keeping you around despite this. [/Moderating]
If three warnings for misgendering isn’t resulting in a banning, why do we have a rule against misgendering in the first place. Once, I can see. twice, possibly. That third strike, though…
This goes for other things like racist slurs or misogyny, but this is the current most active example.
My take is that the mods take too lenient a stance on things like this. Whether this is in pursuit of having diverse voices, to preserve our dwindling numbers, or a desire to not appear biased, I don’t know, but in all those cases, I think it’s counterproductive and is the kind of thing that actually loses _valuable_ posters (several trans ones come to mind, for example).
But three warnings for misgendering (without a change in posting behaviour afterwards in that same thread) and there are seemingly _still_ mods in the mod loop who need convincing? Those are mods who need to rethink their role, IMO.
I know mods are discussing this, just wanted to add a civilian’s opinion.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/2 "2025-03-12T08:57:27Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> If three warnings for misgendering isn’t resulting in a banning, why do we have a rule against misgendering in the first place. Once, I can see. twice, possibly. That third strike, though…
Concur; if you’re going to bother stating a rule, it’s not much of a rule if it just results in continual finger-wagging with no escalation for repetition.
I know there’s probably some natural latency in the moderation process though - so maybe the appropriate resulting actions are still to shake out.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/3 "2025-03-12T08:57:35Z")
Moved and seconded.
Edit: or thirded, I guess.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/4 "2025-03-12T09:46:01Z")
For clarification - since we’re in the ATMB: Is the violation that the poster said someone was male, or would they have been equally modded against for saying the person has a male _body_? They said the first, but I think this is an important distinction.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/5 "2025-03-12T10:12:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Although it’s actually an _earlier_ warning in that thread that I want to discuss:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > [Moderating] This is your third formal warning, in the Pit, no less, for misgendering trans people. We’ll be having a talk among the mod loop if you offer anything to the board worth keeping you around despite this. [/Moderating]
This is against the rules? Seriously? Board rules _oblige_ us to conflate sex and gender?
I thought misgendering meant using the wrong pronouns.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/6 "2025-03-12T10:16:01Z")
Ultimately, IMO, the rules mean “Don’t be a jerk.” If a specific individual says they’re (e.g.) male, they are. End of conversation. Neither of us care what they looked like at birth or acted like as a child.
Picking at their details with an invidious intent to create hostility and othering is jerky. Jerky is bannable. All forms of trans-denial and trans-baiting and trans-picking-at are, by local definition, jerky.
IMO, YMMV, IANA Mod.
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### Author:  [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/7 "2025-03-12T10:16:48Z")
The fun begins when you realise the board is based in a country where the official government stance on this subject would get them banned on this board.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/8 "2025-03-12T10:19:23Z")
True. For about 2 months now. But a lot of us are working to reverse course back to normal. It might take a long time, but this current situation is an aberration no matter how much certain people are enjoying their morning cup of Schadenfreude.
I recall boasts of a Thousand Year Reich. You don’t hear much from those folks there any more.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/9 "2025-03-12T10:26:25Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Ultimately, IMO, the rules mean “Don’t be a jerk.” If a specific individual says they’re (e.g.) male, they are. End of conversation. Neither of us care what they looked like at birth or acted like as a child.
I agree it would be very jerkish to bring it up randomly. But when it comes to sports, it’s kind of the crux of the whole issue. It’s like trying to have a religious debate with a rule that you aren’t allowed to disagree with anyone’s religious beliefs.
Why allow debate on this subject at all if the majority view is considered so offensive as to be inexpressible?
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/10 "2025-03-12T10:42:50Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> You don’t hear much from those folks there any more.
Sadly we do. They’ve just got a new catchphrase.
But back on topic, this is the key point here:
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Ultimately, IMO, the rules mean “Don’t be a jerk.” If a specific individual says they’re (e.g.) male, they are. End of conversation. Neither of us care what they looked like at birth or acted like as a child.
>
> Picking at their details with an invidious intent to create hostility and othering is jerky. Jerky is bannable. All forms of trans-denial and trans-baiting and trans-picking-at are, by local definition, jerky.
“Jerky” isn’t clearly defined by design, but some things clearly fall within its scope.
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> I agree it would be very jerkish to bring it up randomly. But when it comes to sports, it’s kind of the crux of the whole issue.
It really isn’t. It’s an entirely manufactured controversy ginned up specifically to justify a pogrom against trans people. Why should this board facilitate open and blatant bigotry and persecution? It seems to me that falls well within “jerk” territory.
> [@](#):
>
> Why allow debate on this subject at all if the majority view is considered so offensive as to be inexpressible?
1. Because it’s not actually the “majority view”, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP felt the need to spend more than $200m on anti-trans propaganda. If everyone already held those views, they wouldn’t have needed to.
2. “The majority” can still hold morally repugnant views. At the point interracial marriage was finally made legal, less than half the country supported it. That didn’t make the arguments against interracial marriage any more valid.
3. One can debate sensitive subjects here without being openly insulting, and we have done many times in the past. It just takes more care.
4. This is not an academic issue for some. You cannot “debate” someone’s right to exist and to have and exercise basic human rights without being disingenuous.
5. Further to point 4), allowing such “debate” serves to further hurt those affected by the issue and to drive them from the board, which is against the board’s ethos.
On the whole, the board rules as currently applied are entirely sensible.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/11 "2025-03-12T11:05:53Z")
> [@Gyrate](#):
>
> It really isn’t. It’s an entirely manufactured controversy ginned up specifically to justify a pogrom against trans people. Why should this board facilitate open and blatant bigotry and persecution? It seems to me that falls well within “jerk” territory.
Don’t be absurd. It’s a reaction against Dems pushing extreme policies that even their own voters don’t support. It’s a good issue for Republicans to highlight because it makes Democrats seem out of touch, and they have inexplicably refused to moderate on it.
Opposition to trans women in women’s sports is not just the majority view, it’s the majority view among Democratic voters. And the left’s strategy of trying to bully people into agreement is going so well that those numbers are _increasing_.
Ultimately, if you want to be a debate forum, people are going to have to hear opinions they find objectionable. Especially in the Pit, for Christsake! You can require politeness, but you can’t ban expressing one side’s beliefs _at all_. The alternatives are family dinner ‘no politics or religion’ rules, or full on echo chamber where everyone simply agrees with each other and no debate happens - something we’re already dangerously close to.
The board already lost valuable posters over this and has a dwindling membership. Wouldn’t it be better to ban debating the issue at all, as happened with several others, rather than losing more otherwise good posters?
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/12 "2025-03-12T11:14:59Z")
“I don’t think trans women should play women’s sports because they were born biologically male and that gives them an unfair advantage” is allowed by the rules.
“Trans women are men and men shouldn’t play women’s sports” is not allowed by the rules.
Do you see the difference?
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/13 "2025-03-12T11:15:03Z")
> [@Gyrate](#):
>
> Because it’s not actually the “majority view”, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP felt the need to spend more than $200m on anti-trans propaganda. If everyone already held those views, they wouldn’t have needed to.
Is it possible the idea was the other way around? That is, if the GOP figured that people already held those views, could they then spend money on an effort to make people associate _the GOP_ with that view while painting their _opponents_ as having the opposite view?
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/14 "2025-03-12T11:17:04Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> “I don’t think trans women should play women’s sports because they were born biologically male and that gives them an unfair advantage” is allowed by the rules.
>
> “Trans women are men and men shouldn’t play women’s sports” is not allowed by the rules.
Thank you for this excellent, pithy summary — for real.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/15 "2025-03-12T11:22:46Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> “I don’t think trans women should play women’s sports because they were born biologically male and that gives them an unfair advantage” is allowed by the rules.
Did @Aspidistra not get a warning for saying something very similar to this? Is this against the rules or not?
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/16 "2025-03-12T11:30:53Z")
No, Aspidistra got warned for saying that everyone around trans women knows they’re really male. That’s very different than “they’re born biologically male”.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/17 "2025-03-12T11:36:46Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> The board already lost valuable posters over this
Agreed. I just think we differ on which posters, and which side they were on.
The one you’re thinking of - no value lost there.
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/18 "2025-03-12T11:39:35Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Don’t be absurd. It’s a reaction against Dems pushing extreme policies that even their own voters don’t support.
It isn’t. At all.
It is exactly as I described it, with plenty of evidence of deliberate anti-trans propaganda (initially conflated with drag queens) produced by such folks as Christopher Rufo (who once suggested that drag queens should be referred to as “trans strippers”) for the express purpose of stirring up hatred against a vulnerable minority. This is of course a popular tactic amongst fascists, including the Nazis who also made trans people an early target of their smear campaigns. And it is the GOP pushing “extreme policies” designed to hurt trans people (and many others).
The Board are right not to cater to such persecution.
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Opposition to trans women in women’s sports is not just the majority view, it’s the majority view among Democratic voters. And the left’s strategy of trying to bully people into agreement is going so well that those numbers are _increasing_.
As opposed to the right who are literally trying to bully trans people _out of existence_. See points 4 and 5 of my previous post as to why this doesn’t work on this board.
Also: why is it “hearing opinions you find objectionable” when one side does it and “bullying” when the other side does it?
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> You can require politeness, but you can’t ban expressing one side’s beliefs _at all_.
Sure we can. Or would you like the return of the pro-pedophilia posters? The “race realists” endlessly claiming that black people are inherently inferior? The MRAs railing about how terrible women are? Are we an “echo chamber” for no longer tolerating such “debates”? And if those “beliefs” advocate and incite violence, directly or indirectly, must we tolerate them?
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> The board already lost valuable posters over this and has a dwindling membership. Wouldn’t it be better to ban debating the issue at all, as happened with several others, rather than losing more otherwise good posters?
Yes, we’ve lost many good posters tired of arguing with transphobes relentlessly misgendering them, portraying them as threats, and calling them “mentally disturbed” or “perverts grooming children”. Which is why the board no longer tolerates that sort of thing.
Again to my previous point 4: **THIS IS NOT AN ACADEMIC DEBATE FOR SOME**. Trans people are now literally facing arrest and worse just for stating the truth of what they are. We should not pretend this rhetoric doesn’t have dire consequences for many.
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> Is it possible the idea was the other way around? That is, if the GOP figured that people already held those views, could they then spend money on an effort to make people associate _the GOP_ with that view while painting their _opponents_ as having the opposite view?
The GOP know that stoking up hatred is an effective policy (see “Willie Horton” as another example). As I’ve already noted, they are not following the crowd on this, but driving it. The efforts to drum up fear and hatred against trans people has been a deliberate campaign going on for several years, and echoes many of the previous attacks on gay people 20 years ago. That they have been more successful this time is in part because they learned the lessons of last time as to what works and what doesn’t. It does not make their efforts any more legitimate or moral.
And it doesn’t justify continuing that messaging on this Board.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/19 "2025-03-12T11:56:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> No, Aspidistra got warned for saying that everyone around trans women knows they’re really male. That’s very different than “they’re born biologically male”.
Which bit is different? I’m genuinely unclear on what the rules are here. And I don’t want to ask more specifically in case I break them myself.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2025, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-transphobia-is-permissible-before-banning/1015457/20 "2025-03-12T11:58:04Z")
“Trans women are male” is misgendering. Just like “trans women are men”.
“Trans women were born biologically male” is not.
Is this seriously difficult for you?
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