Reddit Bans r/GenderCritical in the June 2020 Purge
June 2020
Reddit banned r/GenderCritical, its largest gender-critical feminist community (~64,000 members), on June 29, 2020 under a new rule against hate based on identity, characterizing the sub as anti-transgender.
What happened
r/GenderCritical was the largest and most active gender-critical ('TERF') community on Reddit, with roughly 64,000 to 65,000 members at removal, describing itself as 'reddit's most active feminist community' for women-centered radical feminists. It was banned on June 29, 2020 as part of Reddit's single coordinated content-policy overhaul that rewrote the site's rules and removed about 2,000 subreddits the same day.
Reddit's new Rule 1 prohibited communities that 'promote hate based on identity or vulnerability,' and the subreddit was characterized by Reddit and LGBTQ press as anti-transgender — hosting content denying that trans women are women and opposing trans-inclusive language and facility access. It was named among the most active banned communities alongside r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse.
Coverage diverged sharply: mainstream and LGBTQ outlets framed the removal as a crackdown on transphobic hate, while gender-critical defenders argued enforcement was inconsistent because 'sex' was not an enumerated protected category and because the male-counterpart sub r/GenderCriticalGuys was not removed in the same wave. Displaced users subsequently founded and populated the off-platform site Ovarit.
Impact
Marked Reddit's most consequential action against organized gender-critical communities, accelerating their migration to dedicated off-platform sites and fueling lasting disputes over whether the enforcement was consistent.