You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. A few missing pieces: - The moderator in question is a professional writer and preferred to avoid using any pronou

You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. A few missing pieces: - The moderator in question is a professional writer and preferred to avoid using any pronouns at all. She emailed SE to ask if that was acceptable, or if the new policy was mandating that she go out of her way to use pronouns. SE did not respond to her emails at all, then several weeks later they revoked her moderator status on a Friday night without even telling her — she figured it out when logged into the site and saw that her moderator tools were gone. - Stack Exchange then went to the press and called her a transophobe and a bigot. They did post several “apologies,” but they weren’t apologies at all — they simply restated the (false) accusations and said they weren’t going to do anything to fix it. (See https://web.archive.org/web/20191005000615/https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology https://web.archive.org/web/20191005000615/https://meta.stac...) - SE didn’t retract any of the accusations until the moderator got a lawyer and prepared to sue for defamation (SE’s accusations were the top Google result for her name for months) - Then when all of the outrage started to die down, part 2 began when SE fired two long-time community managers who were just about the only staff members left that the community still trusted: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/342039/258777 https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/342039/258777