Only the ones who obviously don’t argue in good faith or appear to be taking cues from Russian propaganda. 
You’ve already said it was a “gotcha,” which implies that it was framed in a manner to get a rise out of people. So you’ve already identified it as a form of trolling yourself.
At the risk of a hijack, I’ll note that said transgender shooter claimed to have been bullied. I’ll hazard a guess that bullying is a much larger statistical factor in shootings than trans issues are.
Is “sealioning” your own verb–because why not–or am I slow on Netspeak?
I like it a lot, and propose it as (yet another) in-group word: "trolling on SD.”
6 years old.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sealion
(Internet, slang) To intrude on a conversation with disingenuous questions in an attempt to engage in unwanted debate as a form of harassment.
Well I’ll be dipped. Thanks road and Colibri.
So if a sealion constantly says “I’m just trying to understand your position,” does a sealioness constantly say “I’m just trying to understand why your position is wrong” ?
I’m just trying to be woke, here.
By way of analogy, one might ask the intriguing question, “why do only men play in the NHL?” A rational poster might make the following comments. The NHL actually has no rules against women players, and at one point in 1992 one woman was actually an NHL player briefly for the Tampa Bay Lighning, playing goalie in just one exhibition game in 1992 and another in 1993.
But pro hockey at that level is a fast tough aggressive game dominated by large muscular men, and rules that allow aggression such as bodychecking against an opponent in possession of the puck. Bodychecking is a play that essentially involves getting up to speed and then slamming your body into the opponent, with the intention of knocking him off his feet and onto the ice or into the boards, sometimes with considerable force, sometimes with injuries. I believe this sort of play doesn’t even exist in women’s hockey. For any relatively diminutive player, being hit in this way by a heavy player would be like getting hit by a Mack truck. Men’s hockey is also dominated by other forms of violent legal checking and of course the occasional fighting. There are other practical reasons, but in a nutshell, that’s why the NHL is in practice pretty much limited to men. Women have banded together into their own capable teams, and have done Canada proud in the Olympics, the Canadian women’s national ice hockey team bringing home medals from all six of the last Olympic winter games: four gold and two silver medals.
Now that’s more or less what a reasonable person would say, though some might disagree or add some innocent digression. Now if someone out of the blue asked the following:
“How do you define male?
Are you implying that men and women are different?”
Seeing that in this context, I would assume that the person was just drunk and threadshitting, or, given the poster’s history, might consider it trolling on a pet topic like transphobia, and report it as such. But innocent this ain’t, and deserving of a warning it is.
I don’t disagree that the post was trolling. I was responding to the poster who said that the explanation was an admission of trolling. The explanation itself seemed pretty reasonable. If what was claimed in the explanation was what happened (which I disagree that it did) they there is no way that is trolling.
So what about this thread, posts #4 and #13 https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=888864
It seems to me that this is very similar to what the OP here did. If he is modded, those should be modded.
Short version: We have a thread talking about probability where someone says it is a 50/50 chance that two men could have a baby. People threadshit to make a point about transgender men. Do I understand that to be forbidden like what the OP did? I mean, its obvious the thread was talking about two biological men and two posters had to interject with a political point in GQ.
No such assumption is warranted. The OP only asks about a quote. Making sense of said quote is part of the question, and bringing up trans men is one way to make sense of it.
Heck, I would argue that the guy (if he exists) very likely was considering trans men, as he assumed that men giving birth was possible. Sure, he doesn’t understand probability and got that wrong. But the fact he think’s it’s possible at all for men to have babies means he must believe people who have the parts necessary for childbirth can be men.
People who accept men can have uteri usually also accept that trans men are men. People who do not accept this tend to believe in a rigid gender binary.
Naah. Nice try, though.
It is clear from the thread that nobody was talking about transgender men. Much like how the prior topic about men being mass shooters was not referring to transgender men. There would be no question regarding if men could bear children if one assumes that a pre-surgery biological female was the topic of conversation.
The introduction in both topics of transgender status was either acceptable or not. I fail to see the difference between the two.
One was an attempted gotcha and landed like a turd in the thread and the other was an interesting exploration of the question. It’s interesting and new information to me that about 1 transman has a child per week. So, while it’s still nowhere near 50/50 chance that a man would have a child, and it’s a zero chance that a cismale would have a child (well, in 2020 anyway), there is a small chance that the next baby you come across could have genetic parents that are both men.
I don’t disagree, but I think we should take a step back before we make simply bad posts against the rules. The probability thread wasn’t even about that. It was in GQ and the example used was that someone had said the chances of a man having a baby was 50/50 because it was either possible or not. The OP wanted to explore where such an absurdity of logic came from. The example could have been that a unicorn walks through my front door (50/50, either the unicorn does or does not).
Inserting transgender discussions in that thread was equally hijacky in my opinion, even though it was done in a less trollish way that the OP here.
I’m just saying that, respectfully, it is the subconscious bias showing through. Transgender rights are accepted as gospel here. So therefore if you point out that “men” can have babies: transgender men, then you are doing the world a public service. If you mention it, especially in not a very good way, in a “why are men mass shooters thread” then that is perceived as a negative that needs to be modded. We all have these subconscious biases and it is not wrong to point them out.
You say this like it’s a bad thing.
Hijacking a thread with an interesting discussion is not a warnable offense, unless it was done maliciously. That hijack can be modded, and the discussion moved to a new thread.
Hijacking a thread with a trollish attempt to score points against posters who don’t agree with your point of view, is a warnable offense. The difference is that this person is being a jerk, and the other person isn’t.
And that view is influenced by your biases. I don’t think it is an “interesting discussion” in a thread about a bad probability assessment which uses the example of “a man having a baby” when the example could have been unicorns, to shit all over that thread with the transgender aside. I could view that as “scoring points” against a poster who didn’t “properly” respect transgender status and the poster was therefore “being a jerk” by saying it in a thread which had nothing at all to do with transgender status.
That’s the accusation of liberal bias on this board. Not that anyone/the mods are being purposefully biased, but it is easy to see/think/say that your opponents are being jerkish trolls while your side is merely beginning an “interesting discussion.”
Those posters aren’t setting up a gotcha against other posters on this board, and they aren’t trying to start an argument with anyone on the board. It’s nothing more than a side discussion, no more of a hijack than the lottery discussion in the same thread.
You and I both know that Aji wasn’t trying to discuss anything in good faith.