Long post incoming, but I know someone will read it.
For starters, I would give most the benefit of the doubt that it is not an inherent dislike, hatred or wanting to deny your identity. The vast majority of forum-goers, offline, probably have next to no real-life experience with trans people. I don't. I have friends that are under the LGBT banner, but not trans. In high school sex education for me was weak, but not terrible. Some topics around LGBT were covered, but trans? Nothing at all. Like, literally, nothing. I've had some experience with trans from the media growing up, but most of that is always face value or very limited in scope. An ignorance issue is most certainly at the front of reasonable/decent people who may fumble on terminology, or the correct way to call something or refer to conditions, or make some sort of transgression they can and will learn from. Most people are starting to understand gender dysphoria a little better, but there is the ignorance of simply stating that means everyone has gender dysphoria when that might not necessarily be the case, as that is a clinically diagnosed condition, not something you just assign to people.
Putting genuine ignorance aside, on a forum, you do also face the complexity of 30,000 plus people, all together, everyone pretty much not knowing anyone else properly, and on a forum, grouping occurs. People who like each other, group together, and they understandably take note of other people they maybe don't like so much. Just how friends form in real life, and people in real life judge other people. Take the average person, you probably have a close social circle in the tens, maybe reaching a hundred if you are still counting all those school FB friends you don't even know or see anymore. Then narrow that down to possibly a handful of very close friends who know/trust you inside out, know your humour, know your personality, know when to give you the benefit of the doubt, know you're human and can fuck up, but also really know the "bones" in your body are decent and you are a good person. Etc, etc. This is still observable on a forum, grouping is very real, and heck, it even happens in the moderation ranks. Something that actually got out of control a bit on GAF where some of the community ended up feeling that it was the mods vs the users. Which isn't great for a forum.
On a forum, I refer to as the mods as having to do the job of an adult day care centre. Adults get together, in the thousands, and chaos ensues because no one really knows anyone, everyone is making assumptions, screwing up often means I'm going to assume this person doesn't have the capability to learn or was just having a bad day, but they are literally a piece of shit, my enemy, and aggression/defensiveness often reigns supreme. Forums are fun, I've been on forums for ages, it's great to learn shit you don't know much about in your limited daily life, it's easy to find lots of people who play games your real life friends might not, and yes, in terms of trans people, you can actually speak to people that are in that small a minority you may have never spoken to face to face. There is a lot of good from forums, and while I understand bad people exist, as well as trolls, the number one things mods AND users need to try and do is make complex behavioural assumptions and decisions on people they don't really know and that they've never met. It's frequent to see groups on a forum all pointing fingers and saying we don't like this person, they've done wrong, punish them, etc, but sometimes a cool head needs to evaluate everything before responding. The forum users might be right to do that classicly referred to phrase "dogpiling", but even still, the role of the daycare centre runners is to try and evaluate that person and punish accordingly.
Are some punishments necessary? Of course. Just like the saying goes, what you do in the world, even when it comes to speech, can have consequences. I made a bad mistake in overreacting to a remark about Dark Souls being transphobic. I'm a massive Dark Souls fanboy, a discussion around something else was heated, emotions were running high like they do during passionate debates, and when I heard an objective claim that the Dark Souls series is transphobic I ridiculed that claim by subjectively stating I think that isn't true. It ended up being a partial call out topic, which was locked and I have now been what was referred to as junior'd on GAF (I can't create topics anymore ~ Much to the delight of some probably >_> lol). An administration decision made because it was decided I had to be punished for stepping out of line within the rules of this forum. The main difference between GAF and here is you can actually speak to the people who hand out punishment, whereas on GAF you were either shit scared to, incase that ended up in personal mod retaliation, or you just couldn't because the PM system when banned didn't work. There was no warning system either, just flat out bans. While it was often stated perm'ing juniors was progressive, at times it did get to the point where the most obnoxious shit ended up with a public celebration of someone being permanently banned. Something like port-begging, annoying as fuck, and maybe deserving of a timeout, but a permanent ban for a stupid post saying "Sony port Bloodborne to the PC!"? Nah, there did come a point where you have to objectively look at decisions to permanently kick the thing that actually runs your forum, the people. Without people, you don't have a forum. You have a glorified Facebook hangout chat. Balancing the people who can stay from those you don't want around is mission impossible, but when it is attempted it has to be attempted in... drum roll please, good faith. A favourite term of this forum :P
I made a stupid mistake, which trans people could rightfully say upset them, and I got punished. I'm a psychologist in training and in terms of politics, vote for a left/socialist party and since day 1 of voting in my life have never voted Tory/right. Does this necessarily matter? Does it mean I'm perfect? Does it mean everything I do is right? No, that would be the height of arrogance and selfishness for me to think any of that in an absolute sense. But rightly or wrongly, being part of a forum sometimes has you almost have to air your "credentials" because of the nature of thousands of eyes all primed to make 100% definitive assumptions and decisions on your character. Because people don't really know you, they make judgements based on the avatar/the text. I've already had claims I'm alt-right, or *wink wink* I must be far right if not alt-right. Those suggestions are patently ridiculous, but, I do concede, it's a forum and in amongst 30,000+ people everyone's tolerances are different and the things people feel passionate about are different. We're all different. If someone appears not to take something as seriously as you do, or thinks differently, it's human nature to get defensive and possibly go on the offensive. The only thing I can say is it's always better to talk/ask first, accuse later. You can be wrong with your accusations, even if you think you are 100% in the right in that moment. Remember the concepts of ignorance and remember people trying to express themselves through text, on a forum, is a minefield for picking up things wrong and people muddling themselves up not doing a good job of expressing themselves. Also remember that on some of the big philosophical questions of life, like religion, it will be a battlefield of arguments. Even people who are as left-leaning as they come, speak correctly in public, never purposefully try to hate or abuse, will still make objective and subjective arguments around the concept of "tolerating the intolerant". Where are your lines drawn on opinions around religious practices or ideas, or even just ideas in general? We sometimes come to similar conclusions, but we don't always get there in the same way, and that is okay. If you can argue your feelings in a respectful way, opinions that aren't the same as yours are okay in a society with 7 billion people. You can choose to only surround yourself in real life with people who think 1:1 with you, and that is quite normal to do, but if a forum wants to have 30,000+ people, that is not going to be possible unless you literally ban every single person that you don't deem as being in your group. Then you will have that glorified facebook friends group, with maybe 20~30 people in it. You can certainly do that if you want if you own the forum, but my understanding from the mission statement of Resetera is it wants to try and grow into a large forum, where there is debate, not just be an exclusive friends club.
I'll finish on the note of comedy, because it is becoming an "issue" on the forum. It always has been to be fair, comedy has caused arguments since before any of us were born. An argument here you routinely see is "why won't you talk about trans issues when I ask you to?" I have to be honest here, I think some posters don't because they are at this point, slightly fearful of very quick moderation. This is not calling out moderation, it's my subjective opinion on a few occasions bans have come very quickly where SOME benefit of the doubt might have been better applied, first, then a ban if a double-down. So in return, you probably have posters who know they aren't transphobic who will just say "I enjoyed this comedy show" and refuse to respond to or even debate posters who quote them going "Tell me what you thought about the trans joke?". It's not a simple conversation to have when it comes to comedy, it CAN be multi-faceted. The art of comedy is often subjective, and context and intent can allow offensive things to be joked about, without it meaning the comedian and all of the audience are now instantly hateful of trans people, let alone hateful of any other offensive content of the comedy show. I've always said comedians are not above criticism, and if you try to handle a so-called taboo subject, and largely subjectively get told you failed terribly at it, you should listen to the criticism that comes your way. I think for some who would say I think that joke didn't work and the comedian needs to rethink, but I'm not sure they are totally transphobic, as in they hate and actively want to discriminate against trans people is 100%, will worry that will be an instant ban and a message saying THEY have now been transphobic themselves. Whereas, what they originally really did, is try to make a judgement call on if they think the comedian is transphobic. So in effect, you attempting to make a judgement call if the comedian is straight up transphobic, ends up getting you accused of being transphobic.
Basically, I think comedy has to be allowed to be spoken about up to a level where if you actually want posters on a forum to try and express themselves and maybe be corrected and challenged if they are wrong, you can't just want the moderation of the forum to ban everyone on the spot. All that does is ironically not have your needs met for people to talk to you. The thing you claim you want, more people to speak. They will just not respond to you, which then has you assume they aren't responding because they are transphobic or support transphobia. So if they respond in an incorrect way, they are transphobic (this could be true), and if they don't respond, they are transphobic (this verges more on mind-reading). Some people who watch offensive comedy and laugh will be transphobic to their core, but not everyone is, and it's important to strive to try and get those sorts of accusations handed out as objectively, and correctly, as possible.
