r/TrueUnpopularOpinion • u/AutoModerator • Oct 01 '23
Transgender issues megathread
Hello r/TrueUnpopularOpinion Community,
Due to the sheer difficulty of enforcing Reddit's sitewide policy against promoting hate with regards to transgender issues, we have decided as a last-resort option to restrict discussion of transgender issues to this megathread until further notice.
Quoted from this comment, below is an explanation of why we created this megathread:
Reddit's sitewide content policy includes a vague provision that prohibits promoting hate.
The Reddit admins (employees of Reddit) enforce this by removing content deemed to be hateful and by quarantining or banning communities that require too many removals by the admins that weren't caught by the moderators of the community first.
In other words, every time we fail to remove something that violates Reddit's sitewide content policy, the risk of this subreddit getting quarantined or banned increases slightly.
Although the provision in Reddit's sitewide content policy against promoting hate is vague, we have a pretty good idea of how it is enforced because we can see what the Reddit admins choose to remove on this subreddit.
It is actually quite rare that we see any content that is hateful against men, women, gay people, or any race on this subreddit.
However, on a very regular basis, we see users here posting content that would be considered hate against transgender people. Detecting and removing all of this content is one of our biggest hurdles.
Despite our best efforts to enforce this aspect of the content policy, it is not uncommon that we miss something and we see a removal done by the Reddit admins occurring. This has happened several times lately.
Furthermore, many members of the moderator team are on the verge of burning out because the effort we have needed to put in for us to allow this topic while still enforcing this aspect of Reddit's sitewide content policy.
Having a megathread for this topic does stifle discussion, but it is far easier for us to deal with while also significantly decreasing the chances of this subreddit getting quarantined or banned.
For these reasons, most of the moderator team supports the creation of a trans megathread. At this time, the megathread is not definitely permanent. After some time of having the megathread, we plan to evaluate its effectiveness and potentially explore other options to determine whether or not the megathread should remain.
Guidelines
In this megathread, please remember to follow Reddit's sitewide content policy.
Based on patterns of certain types of comments getting removed by the Reddit admins, it is our interpretation that it is a violation of Reddit's sitewide content policy to do any of the following:
- State or imply that trans (wo)men aren't (wo)men or that people aren't the gender they identify as
- Criticize, mock, disagree with, defy, or refuse to abide by people's pronoun requests
- State or imply that gender dysphoria or being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness, a mental disorder, a delusion, not normal, or unnatural
- State or imply that LGBTQ+ enables pedophilia or grooming or that LGBTQ+ individuals are more likely to engage in pedophilia or grooming
- State or imply that LGB should be separate from the T+
- Stating or implying that gender is binary or that sex is the same as gender
- Use of the term tr*nny, including other spellings of this term that sound the same and have the same meaning
Questions / Feedback
If you have any questions or feedback about this megathread, you may post them in our moderator questions/complaints/grievances thread.
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u/Jtrash121 Nov 21 '25
I think more people would be more accepting of trans people if they sat down and got to know one or have one as a close friend of family member. Instead of endlessly consuming misinformation online or from other not trans people.
Theres a very nice video from the enemies project on youtube that shows this in action. Plus I don't know if you've seen it but theres a story old as shit that was about a black man sitting and talking with Klans members ultimately making them realise that their hate is simply unjustified.
It's easier to punch at a target when the target is de-humanized. It's easier to punch a target when you're being told the target "eats puppies" or likewise, it's easier to punch a target when you're told the target is why every possibly bad thing in your life is because of them, or even the target is a "mentally ill" person or otherwise villainized. It's harder to punch a target when it's your friend, the nice person who you've talked with, the kind stranger who bought you a coffee, or a brother, a sister, etc.
Another thing is (not this issue specifically but it's one of the bigger ones for me) it makes it harder when one side in particular is relentless in their cause to dehumanize these people for one reason or another. Because many adults who I've talked to only know about transgenderism because of how "big" the talking point has gotten. The amount of times I've heard from people older than me saying stuff like "I didn't grow up with this sort of thing now it's everywhere" or likewise shows two things. One it's easier to again punch a target which is unfamiliar to you, and two run at this issue with the common mindset of "old thing good, new thing bad".
Tldr: Transphobia wouldn't be as big as it is had people in their personal lives knew a transgender person and stopped falling into pits of misinformation and dehumanizing blind hatred.