This is the other side of the argument for me (which, to be honest, I haven't really settled on - I haven't really arrived at a conclusion). In the end Newcastle are a private company and they're allowed to select who they want to allow onto their property.
However, as much as what she's said is genuinely a bit deranged and the sign of someone so consumed by hatred - and social media - that she's sort of lost sight of reality, I do think she's been scapegoated and the feeling of being spied on is an unpleasant one. It's not really her being banned that people are concerned about, it's the way she's been banned.
If she was at a game and shouted "the Nazis were right" or "trans women are men" at a trans person in the crowd then there would be grounds for Newcastle and the police to get involved. But social media, as much as it's a public forum, has kind of hoodwinked us to believe that our profiles are places where we can express ourselves freely. That's not the case, obviously, but it can be easy to see why someone would fall for the ostensible security that social media profiles provide.
I think the worry, for all sides of the political spectrum, is that if there are rules to abide by in this case, it's worth keeping a careful watch on who gets to decide whether the rules have been broken or not. It's a transphobe today, it could be anybody else tomorrow. Newcastle's owners have a very, very bad record when it comes to matters pertaining to free speech.
As others have said, it's a bit of a slippery slope to ban somebody for hate speech from an environment where it's not really relevant. Premier League football stadiums should be a place to discuss Premier League football and until a player comes out as trans then it's not really relevant. Plus, there are people out there who have been convicted of hate speech in everyday life who are still able to come to games.
Like I've said already, I've not really settled on what the right conclusion is with this, but you can see why some people are a bit concerned.
However, I do think the concern people are expressing comes - at least in part - from their perception of transphobia, which is that it's either less serious than homophobia, ableism, racism, etc. or that it doesn't exist at all. And that trans people are getting a bit uppity and should therefore know their place and pipe down. It's exactly how mainstream society behaved towards "f*ggots" in the 80s or "P*kis" in the 70s or, taking it all the way back, "n*ggers" at any stage in Western (and bits of Eastern) human history before the 1960s.
We will eventually look back at this period of the culture war as a depressing one. But just like everyone who voted through Section 28, or agreed with
Tory propaganda posters like this one (from 1987) or
election drives like this one (from 1964), they'll pretend they never felt such a way once transphobia is acknowledged as a wrong. That doesn't make Newcastle's decision the right one but it's part of a much larger conversation society is having with itself.
I also think it's worth mentioning that Linzi Smith's comments have come to light in a week when two teenagers have been sentenced to a combined 42 years in prison for murdering a transgender teenager and, more specifically, wanting to "see if it screamed like a boy or a girl". Transphobia has been acknowledged as a motive during the sentencing and it's depressing to see Linzi Smith get more support and outrage in her favour (from some people on this forum) than a young girl who was viciously stabbed to death just for the crime of existing.
www.premierleague.com