For what it’s worth, I came across Gender Critical a couple of months back, as a confused neutral trying to understand what everybody was talking about. My impression was of a community uniting around a common anger at new trans-rights encroaching on hard-fought womens’ rights. I didn’t see much hate, and indeed many posters took pains to call out their support for trans-rights in principle. I think the anger was real though, and maybe was mistaken for hate by whoever decided to ban them.

Yep, that's pretty much what their community says on the tin. If that was what they actually were in practice I don't think it would have even been an issue. Sure, the trans community would have probably still disliked them, but like it's not like trans people are some big cultural powerhouse. There have been old-school well-respected academics that held similar opinions since the dawn of second-wave feminism. And don't get me wrong, there has always been plenty of infighting among feminists along this line -- many impassioned conferences, books, articles written about it. And it's from these people that GC takes their heritage and has used it for years to "legitimize" their hate. It's what allowed them to survive online as long as they did because they knew how to fly just under the radar.

Then, like a lot of subreddits, GC got bigger and the new influx of people weren't uhh... so subtle and more and more of the content became insulting, shaming, and "cringe" directed at specific trans people.

> anger at new trans-rights encroaching on hard-fought womens’ rights

How is this a thing though?

I won't deny that confusion and fear are very real feelings people have when confronted with something that challenges their existing beliefs, regardless of what those are. We have a right to express those feelings; doing so is an important part of grappling with them and growing our understanding of the world.

However, there's a segment of those that seemingly become consumed and blinded by those feelings, then join communities whose express purpose is to stoke them further ("no, we ARE right, those who espouse the challenging ideas are WRONG and they are OUT TO GET US"), and often aren't entirely sincere with their statements that they're really not against the challenging ideas, that they just have ~* concerns *~

Giving them the furthest benefit of the doubt, they're at least confining themselves to communities that largely share their viewpoint, consist of people that don't aren't those bringing the issue to light (how many trans people do you see welcomed and able to express their side in "gender critical" communities? not many? could it be because those communities exist expressly to exclude (from all society, not simply the community itself) and deride them? gee, idunno, hard to say), and are at least populated with some people that are wholly insincere with their "just raising concerns here!" rhetoric and are aiming more to further radicalize whatever subsection of the community is more on the fence.

We would be remiss to also ignore that there's fairly clear historical, if recent evidence that allowing these sorts of communities to persist mostly serves as a means to drive people away from any acceptance of the challenging ideas and further cements them in their existing beliefs. /pol/ isn't exactly as a poster child for such communities about-facing and saying "ah, we were wrong, turns out racism IS bad". There may be outliers, but on the whole, these places are poison, and I commend the services in question for finally taking a "you know, perhaps we /should/ have some level of moderation say and tell these communities 'sorry, but you're not really a fit for the broader community we want to have here'" stance. Are there problems with the specifics of the implementation, and is the process imperfect? Sure, most things are, and it cuts both ways--but strangely, I find fewer people coming out of the woodwork in these sorts of discussions to complain about, say, deplatforming of LGBTQ content on Twitter or Youtube because advertisers are leery about their brands sitting in front of content about gender issues that differs from the norm. That happens too, but doesn't seem to trigger the same "ah! the death of free speech has arrived!" outcry that seems to pop up from the other side--those communities do still complain, but marginalization and bigotry are things they're more accustomed to and live with daily; some are sadly resigned to it.

Where do you draw the line? Scott Adams put up a photo of his wedding on Twitter yesterday and people made mean comments about his sexual preference and choice to marry a woman 30 years younger than him. Should twitter classify that as ageism?

> You don't understand hate speech.

This is "no true Scotsman" in its full glory, but I'll bite. Even if we agree that "Gender Critical" was hateful, in no way would the sub be "hate speech" as it would need to (by your own definition) target specific people with the intent to hurt them (which was explicitly against the sub's rules).

I really don't think you get the kind of content that got GC in trouble. The subreddit followed the "name and shame" formula (that's way too common on Reddit) of posting "cringe" pictures/articles/screengrabs of trans men and women and then then insulting, shaming, misgendering, and otherwise making fun of them.

GC wasn't some Socratic circle discussing the intricate nuances of sex and gender and happened to hold the "wrong" opinion. It was a group of bullies who had it out for trans men and women.

> It was a group of bullies who had it out for trans men and women.

I can concede this point without really hurting my argument. Bullies are no fun, and they're mean, and they're hurtful and (usually) wrong. We must still cross the Rubicon, however, until we get to (even your own definition) of "hate speech."

I modded a humble mid-sized subreddit, which was not an LGBT sub, but one where LGBT people occasionally asked LGBT-specific questions. My view of the situation initially was that conservative-minded peolle didn't really hate trans people and they were mostly frustrated by being forced to swallow an idea and being censored if they so much as asked an innocent question and that this is what was making them so upset. So I took a soft line.

It was a mistake out of touch with reality. The first thing I found is yes a fair amount of users really did just dislike transgender people. Second, a pattern I consistently saw was trans people making earnest honest sincere posts about real questions and EVERY thread somebody derailed the thread and made it into some culture wars BS. Upon getting their posts removed for derailing threads and starting shit they would proceed to start abusing the mods. Whereas the LGBT users would get upset over the former being tolerated yet were consistently polite, respectful, and their main way of protest was leaving the sub.

As time went on I realised that a lot of sentiment about "SJW bullies" was projection and that many anti-trans users were pathological in their harassment. That people don't really see how bad the problem is because the worst harassment gets removed and hidden from the regular userbase. The LGBT users were a minority largely trying to politely persuade the mods to make the sub better for people they cared about. Whereas the anti-trans users were entitled, attention-seeking, and self-victimizising. Sure there were some users with conservative views which were not like that. These people could be reasoned with if you simply explained the need for anti-harassment rules. Whereas taking a soft line ALWAYS meant people doing nothing wrong getting harassed for the benefit of mostly bad faith users.

Similar experience. I am a reddit mod for a quite large community, and the ugly truth is that a lot of bad-faith arguments are being used to provide cover for simple bullying.

This a reality that is deeply uncomfortable for people who share political views with the bullies, but it is the reality on the ground.

Believe me. I have to live with the fact that I tolerated this behavior and enabled a ton of harassment for way too long when I had the ability to stop it. Making a post like this in hackernews I guess is my way of trying to make things right.

So many people told me I had it wrong and I didn't listen.

Looking at the positives here though: it's a sign of progress and maturity that you recognize you made mistakes that unintentionally aided bullies, and that you're trying to help others not make those same mistakes. So few people are willing to admit things like this.

It's Popper's classic Paradox of Tolerance: to maintain a tolerant society, we have to be intolerant of intolerance.

That's not exclusive to any particular politics, it's just selection effects. The bullies who agree with you politically are off terrorizing somebody else who doesn't.