As I understand it, it's supposed to be making fun of people who identify as something non-human. Wu just decided to interpret it as a transgender slur.

Some folks oppose binary pronouns, he/she as somethingphobic (trans? queer?). They also oppose 'it' cos... objectifying. Hence they want to be referred to by unusual pronouns.
Apparently this trend has been picked up by other some folks that don't necessarily identify as a non traditional gender, but even as a non human, be it flurries or whatever. Hence the joke, about being a toaster, etc...

I dug up the tweet itself. From what I can tell, there was absolutely no discussion about transsexuals surrounding the comment. It was thrown in with a few other offhand jokes that were just about trying to give someone "anger motivation" to help with their metal album.

Also, there's a difference between saying "that joke might have been in slightly poor taste" and saying "you are obviously transphobic, let's spend the next few hours screaming at you on Twitter."

He offered to personally apologize to any transexual hat was offended by the Tweet. As far as I'm concerned, that should be the end of it.

Otherkin are people who... well, think that they are, for all intents and purposes, not entirely human. It's something I don't really pretend to understand, so Google is probably going to be a better help there. tl;dr: some people think of themselves as not human, and prefer to not be referred to as such.

The problem is that the joke could just as easily be interpreted to be referring to transgender people. Transgender people are people who identify as being, for lack of a better phrase, trapped in a body of the wrong gender. As such, they try to take steps to correct the error by methods such as hormone treatments, crossdressing (which is its own thing, but that's a whole other can of worms), and in some cases surgery. They also prefer to be referred to as a member of the gender they identify as (i.e. a transgender person born male who identifies as female would prefer to be referred to as a female). Thing is that society tends to kind of be dicks about trans people by way of violence (google 'trans panic' if you want to depress yourself), 'conversion therapy' similar to what gay people undergo to try and 'cure' them. The thing in particular that the tweet seems at first glance to refer to is how some people intentionally refuse to refer to a trans person as a member of the gender they identify as, which trans people get upset about since it comes across as trying to insist that they are making it up and shouldn't be encouraged or something like that; on a scale of disrespect and insult, it's up there with trying to tell a gay person that they are in fact straight.
Agreed; still, it was in rather poor taste, to say the least; I'm not trans myself, but I know a good number of trans people, and they get that kind of shit way too often for me to find anything referring to it funny. Glad to hear he apologized, if nothing else, for all it's worth. Kind of odd that hasn't been the end of it, unless he stuck his foot in the mouth with the apology or something; you have a link on you, perchance?

I don't, no , and it's far back enough that it's a pain to try and sort through and find it again. But the apology was pretty straight forward. "I'm sorry if any transsexuals were offended and if you contact me I will apologize personally." or something like that.

Even if he HAD "botched" the apology, telling a joke that some people might find offensive doesn't mean someone deserves to be labeled a bigot and attacked as such. I don't think any of us can say that we haven't said something thoughtless at some point that someone ended up being offended by, even if we didn't mean it.

I couldn't be arsed to go back that far either; I tried, but I gave up after a while.

To be clear, when I say 'botched', I'm not talking about merely not being nice enough and failing to make everyone happy; some people will still stay mad no matter what. I'm talking about Seth MacFarlane levels of stupidity where the 'apology' shows that not only does the person in question not understand why people are getting angry, but that the person in question is staggeringly ignorant at best and a horrible person at worst.

EDIT: accidentally wiped out my old post here instead of replying; is fixed now.

Fair enough.

This is just absurd, TB should not have to apologise for anything. This shit is killing society from the inside.

But it does raise a good point: if we are willing to act like men can be women and vice-versa, why stop there? Why shouldn't people identify as toasters, wolves and elves? It can't be as bad a pregnant "men", i.e. women who are stuffed with artificial hormones carrying out children. That sounds perfectly healthy for the baby, doesn't it? At least people who insist on being toasters won't reproduce.

The real problem are the people who are try to find things to take offense at and then Tweeting to their buddies to form a mob. I've never liked the "politically correct" police. The reality is if they do not like someone, they will find a way to make a villain out of them. If an innocent or honest concept can be called sarcasm and used to attack someone.

Brianna and company have been combing over every comment TB has made ever since he very briefly commented about the situation involving Zoe Quinn. These are the sick obsessed individuals...I guess they believe no one else is entitled to say anything that "they" decide is offensive.

Well, I think there's a difference between someone who just says they're a toaster, for instance, and someone who has had many expensive medical procedures done to change their gender :P
I still can't get over how utterly moronic the outrage surrounding his initial response was. He basically responded with the most neutral, reasonable position possible, and got slammed for it, because... why? I still don't know.

It looks to me like there those are that are out to hurt him all they can no matter what he does like the "weaponized charity" bit that happened around New year's.

they made tweets at him about his cancer?!? yeah wow really only gg is brutal right?

on that note, didn't i hear something about his tests showing the chemo treatment is working well?

To tell the truth, I really don't know how well he's doing but Cancer is not something I would wish even on those numbskulls.

... I toast therefore I am? To shoehorn my way into the conversation ...

but anyway ...

<span class="bold">SARGON DOES IT AGAIN!</span>

Sargon of Akkad tells all!!

Exposes shocking NYU anit-gamergate hitpiece!!!

Last news is that tests show that he's cancer-free for now, although it won't be certain for awhile and he still has more treatment to go through.