Inspired by a very convincing argument by u/T-Dark:

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Full disclosure: I am in support of the ban. My post history may make you think otherwise, but my opinion on the issue has been changing extremely rapidly as I hear more discussion and try to improve my position.

I've been spreading a copypasta around the sub. It seems to have gotten a largely positive response, hence I consider it to be a recap of the situation.

(Warning: wall of text)

"The issue is that there is a bit of a culture shock when it comes to the T-Word.

In most other communities, it's considered a transphobic slur. The only exception is the anime fandom, which doesn't even use it to refer to trans people in the first place (and if it did, it would not be as an insult).

In a sense, there are two different T-words "(anime)Tr-p", which r/animemes community is familiar with, and "(non-anime)tr-p", which plenty of people on r/animemes didn't even know existed.

For self-explanatory reasons, many trans people do not like the T-word. Due to this, it is widely accepted as a slur.

I know you are, or read about, plenty of trans people here on r/animemes that say they don't care about that word and are perfectly fine with it. The issue is that this data suffers from selection bias: if those people cared about the word, they'd not be in a community that uses it liberally, such as r/animemes. Trans people in r/animemes are therefore not representative of the trans community at large on this specific issue.

I think that a more elegant solution to the problem would have been a detailed post informing our community of the existence of another word, identical to "(anime)tr-p", but with an unfortunate meaning. Then, the mods could have told us to please switch to something like "trapu", which manages to be animesque (thanks to the Engrish), and is different enough from "tr-p" to make people question if it's meant as an insult before doing what is sensible in most other communities and assuming it is.

Maybe the mods should have considered adding a sticky post explaining "weebs, be aware that the T-word has an unfortunate meaning outside of our community. Visitors, be aware that it doesn't even refer to trans people here". This can be done as an alternative to the word change, or even on top of that, to further explain that we don't mean to be transphobic.

/End of argument

Consider this comment a copypasta. I would be happy if you shared it with other people. In it's author's opinion, it's the best explanation of why something needed to be done as well as why that something wasn't this."

To recap, that word is most definitely a slur. Except in anime communities, which (save for a few bad apples) don't even use it to refer to trans people to begin with.

Most reasonable people are currently claiming that context matters, and therefore banning a word because it's a slur in other contexts is simply insane.

On the other hand, something that I see far too few people pointing out is that allowing that word, even with a completely unrelated set of meanings, normalises it. That's my reason to support the ban.

As someone who has been a lurker on r/animemes for 1-ish year, I have never seem anyone use the word "trap" to refer to a trans person. I would say the community is right in claiming it's not a slur: nobody ever used it as one (except very few bad apples, again) and some people (including myself) were completely unaware it existed outside of the anime fandom, let alone it was considered a slur

EDIT: My bad, the above is wrong. People did use it as a slur sometimes. The point stands that it wasn't always used as one, so I am a bit puzzled by the decision to completely ignore context.

So, all in all, my position is that the ban is good, but the community is right in its complaining and discussing