Why am I not surprised one bit that YOU have THIS take? 

AS an aside, it's worth noting to MANY of you responding to this concerning JKR's transphobia (or perceived lack thereof) that She's a writer. A very successful and arguably very intelligent one. IT's her JOB to be able to word things in a way that don't sound like the transphobia it clearly is.

There's no debate that she feels this way, you just have to read between the lines because she's not coming straight out and saying it's about trans people.

Just like how it was 'about ethics in game journalism' or 'keeping the races pure' or 'making America/Germany great again' any other sanitized version of bigotry meant to make shitty, obviously evil things sound borderline rational. I can't believe we still have to explain this to so many of you.

**Edit**

Furthermore, as I read more and more down this thread it's clear people don't know how to take historical context into consideration. Taking arguments and isolating them or displaying them in ways meant to discredit them or otherwise misrepresent the actual reality of the situation surrounding and informing it. This is a pretty common issue among any online debate or forum and frankly it's just so damn sad to see be so effective. 

So many of these arguments only work if you ignore the context surrounding the people (groups and individuals) affected by them. Or the patterns we see leading up to and as a response to them. I don't want to pinpoint or cherry-pick arguments because I really don't have any desire whatsoever to actively debate people who have repeatedly and aggressively shown they're not interested in considering more depth or nuance to their arguments. I don't have any interest in trying to back-and-forth with anyone who's proudly and loudly spouting nonsense with no self-awareness of how absurd their stance is or how little it holds up to scrutiny. Time and time again I see a handful of users spouting the same wrong arguments any time any cultural shift happens, or anything even remotely progressive or scientific is proposed, and the same counter-arguments completely decimate their stance yet they don't change. they never change. It doesn't matter if I was the smartest damn person on the forum (I'm not, from my experience that crown would go to Torillian or Pemalite) and I spent 100,000 words expertly debunking every bad faith argument, every dismissive take, and every anti-woke stance with a 100-page bibliography of citations it's not gonna change anyone's mind. 

That said, I actually do agree with the mods on this one. Something I don't often do. They're doing the right thing by basically shutting down any of these subtly bigoted arguments before they start. And those arguing against this decision, I've got some bad news for you: you're on the wrong side of history and you know it. you're being loud and aggressive combatting progressive values because you know this is the way the world is shifting as we come to have more compassion and understanding. The more we know, the better we understand, and the more empathy we have the more we'll go towards the 'woke' reality of the future and your beliefs are no longer accepted or embraced or celebrated and to you that feels like oppression. IT's not. You'll never admit it. Of course you won't, you never do. But that's the only possible explanation I've come to accept. 

Not like anyone cares, but I'm on the trans spectrum myself (nonbinary/fluid), and my MTF trans sister just bought me the game for my birthday. The love we both have for the HP series and the joy we'll both get out of playing the game is more good to us and our friends than the increase in bad JKR is capable of doing with the 5 dollars of our money we gave her. Us buying the game had no affect on her attitude, views, desire to spout her nonsense, or ability to push her agenda but did give us both dozens of hours of enjoyment. 

My personal take: Play what you want, or don't. If you wanna play it, then do it. If you don't wanna play it because you don't want to support JKR, I respect that decision too and I appreciate it as a member of that particular group. But, like, don't punish others for wanting to play the game and don't be one of those 'well I'll just buy two copies to piss off the trannies' types, either. Play it or don't, but don't turn it into a political thing. If we did that with every game we bought and every thing we consumed, we'd not have a lot of options left since it's virtually impossible to exist without supporting something or someone you don't agree with. 

You certainly missed parts of the point. Here's one.

People don't eat like this unless they're rarely playing a game like bobbing for apples, which they choose to play.

Does the fact that humans prefer some food separation make us worse than cows and pigs?

I would assume bodily autonomy would include not having to stick my hands, face, and germs in the mash right beside yours.

Imagine accusing people who create or enjoy a type of entertainment as they see fit, as being hateful towards others for doing so.

Like many others have said in here. What do people have to do with food? About as much as people and video games.

Either there's no reason to be upset and target the HP game, or my points are just as legitimate.

Well, that was a disappointingly one-sided post. You could have easily said that disrespect and flaming on either side would not be tolerated but that clearly was not the slant of the message.

If the intention is to create an echo chamber then congratulations, you're on the right track.

Why do so many people default to acting like it's 'biased' or 'an echo chamber' or otherwise some sort of 'woke' agenda or 'socialism' any time culture has widely agreed on something being considered unethical? 

Like, being bigoted and hiding behind fancy words and sneaky arguments deliberately manufactured to soften the blow and mask the bigotry in the statements is pretty easy to identify and counter if you're paying attention. All the mods here have done is said 'we're not falling for your shit, if you say or do things known to be dog whistles for transphobes, we're going to treat it as the hate speech it is and ban you accordingly'. 

I consider myself a fairly intelligent individual, and I've got to say that it's not necessarily easy to agree about her alleged transphobia. It took me a good while to read why she's considered transphobic despite seeing individual pieces along the years, and even then, it seems to boil down to what you define as transphobic or a woman. I suspect with more reading, more people could come to the same conclusion as you and a lot of others, but it takes a good bit of time and effort unless you happen to already understand certain words in a certain way. Judging by her reasoning, I suspect if we treated transphobia as a spectrum, she'd be closer to the transphobia end than the other end, but to me it seems like she still has a fair distance to the transphobic end. Anyway, my point: not at all universally obvious she's transphobic (and that's not to say she isn't, just that it's not obvious or necessarily even easy to see).

Due to the tone policing and general complaints on the style rather than substance of the OP, I stripped the OP down to mostly just a basic set of rules, that way everyone is absolutely clear on the matter and we can focus on said rules. The original OP will be kept at the bottom of this reply for posterity.

But make no mistake. I stand by what I said. There's a good reason why it was felt necessary to establish some ground rules. We have always had clear-cut rules regarding bigotry. However, the commentary I mentioned made it clear that those rules were being overlooked. Because of the intense controversy over this game specifically and because of questionable posts made about it in the days after release, we debated on how to handle the subject (something we probably should have done well before release) and decided an OP specifically addressing this game was needed.

It is a simple matter of fact of the matter that J.K. Rowling is a transphobe. There is no way to weasel around that. She has on many, many occasions been overt about it. The people she surrounds herself with in the so-called "gender critical" movement are just as bad, sometimes even worse, as detailed by this video. This wasn't some one-off thing or "Oh, I didn't mean to like that tweet. It was an accident, I swear!" There was no "oops." Transphobia is an integral part of her worldview. If you need examples, there's this post on Reddit, as well as this list of stuff I cribbed from elsewhere:

It is also a simple fact of the matter that the boycott of Hogwart's Legacy stems from objections over Rowling's transphobia. Dismissal of or insults towards the concerns of those boycotting the game is dismissal of or insults to concerns over transphobia. There's no other way to interpret comments that are in the vein of "LOL! Get owned, snowflakes!" or "People boycotting this game are psychopaths." It is not "psychopathic" or "oversensitive" to object to the things Rowling has said about trans people.

This is a very personal issue for me. I have a trans relative. Does that make me biased? Yeah. I'm biased in favor of basic human rights and the idea that we shouldn't treat people like shit over things they can't help. This isn't just some abstract debate over the rights of people we'll never meet. This is literally real life and death stuff. Society is inundated with non-stop propaganda from TERFs, right-wing "news" media, and entire political parties who have ramped up aggressively vile rhetoric about trans people. They, and queer people in general, have been absolutely demonized, accused, without a shred of evidence, of being perverts, predators, pedophiles, or otherwise some existential threat to society. Between the incessant fearmongering that "They're coming for your wives, daughters, and children!", and the constant attempts to create and enforce laws that make life hell for trans people. And the fruits of that labor of hate perpetrated by transphobes has resulted in trans people being abused, ostracized, and even murdered. Trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be victims of violence. Hate crimes against trans people are on the rise. It's the same bullshit that was leveled at gay people not so long ago. Homophobia and a culture that normalized mistreatment of gays is what got Matthew Shepard, among countless others, murdered in cold blood. Now trans people are the folk devil du jour in reactionary circles. And it's all because some people absolutely refuse to exist in the same society with not just trans people, but the larger LGBTQ+ community. Reactionaries of all stripes want the clock rolled back to where it was before Stonewall, queer people being forced back into the closet at (maybe not entirely metaphorical) gunpoint, if not worse. All based on age-old prejudices that have no real justification for existing. People with irrational hatred and fear of "the other" can always find some post-hoc rationale to attempt to justify and legitimize said hatred and fear.

So, that's where I stand on the issue.

The rules are what they are. Bigotry has always been a bannable offense here. Don't think you can be slick or sly and think some oblique comments mocking the boycott without being overtly, explicitly bigoted or dismissive of concerns over bigotry will allow you to avoid potential moderation. If you can't be bothered to adhere to those rules, then stay out of discussions where you might feel the impulse to make comments that could be subject to moderation. We already have enough on our table with other stuff. It's bad enough we're constantly having to deal with users who engage in verbal fisticuffs over expensive electronic toys or sci-fi movie franchises. We don't want bigoted comments to deal with on top of that.

Any further commentary regarding trans rights and/or how they pertain to this game, gaming in general, or other media is currently an off-limits subject pending further review by the mod staff. Do not move discussion of the subject to the Politics board.

We will probably leave this sticky up for the next several days in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, then it will be locked. The rules will still apply after that.

ORIGINAL OP:

Where did I say anything about about a "woke agenda" or "socialism"?  I mean, what the hell are you talking about?  Socialism?  What?  Don't use my post to make a point about something I didn't even talk about.

What the mod in question said was, essentially, "we'll use the rules to protect people who agree with our position," by clearly excluding anyone else.  Fuck that.  That is the path to establishing an echo chamber, whether you like it or not.  

This mentality is why I decided to step back from this website in the first place.  This place has always been about exclusion rather than inclusion and favoring one side over another.

So now we have a mod post paragraphs about his views on trans rights and immediately then ban any other comments on trans rights. Just wonderful.

What an incredible well managed thread this has been.

If you wanted to ban it temporarily while mods reviewed rules then you shouldn't immediately take the opportunity to give your own views before doing so.

So, you're talking about context first, then completely ignore the context of people that actually critcized this mod note initially. I feel everyone can boycott the game if they want. But the context you are ignoring that made me speak out in this thread is that people got harrassed, attacked, doxxed and death threats simply for playing the game. That is the context in which I spoke out, as I felt the initial OP was worded that I feared you could get modded for speaking about these incidents. Thankfully this was cleared up, but the confusion was done.

Ignoring the context you are quick to judge ("wrong side of history"). In my experience the ones that feel morals are easy and are quick to judge others, often act questionably themselves. Be cautious to avoid this slippery slope, feeling in your moral superiority you can do attacks on others. Morality is a complex topic often with very complicated answers.

And to be clear: I think everyone should be able to express their inner self, even through surgery or medical adaptations if needed. And as it is often harmful if they don't do it and instead suppress their inner self I also feel the public should pay for it. Not that in the case of transgender that is even a substantial sum, compared with other stuff the public pays for (looking at military spending).