There’s another free-speech argument in favor of Twitter’s policy. Consider what the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro wrote about the propensity to label President Trump “racist” in a January editorial for National Review:

Is this framework useful? Perhaps Trump is a racist. Perhaps not. Either way, we can have a productive conversation about whether particular Trump statements or actions are racist. But we can’t have a productive conversation that starts from the premise that Trump is a racist overall, and that every action he takes and every statement he makes is therefore covered with the patina of racism. That conversation is about insults, not truth.

Mr. Shapiro, who is himself a critic of trans individuals and policies that support us, makes an excellent argument for finding a productive framework for useful conversation. Just as we can’t actually address the merits of any particular policy proposed by Mr. Trump if our focus is solely on the man himself, we can’t address the merits of policies that affect trans people if debate starts from the premise that trans people are and will always be whatever happens to be stamped on our original birth certificates. And as Mr. Shapiro notes, while there may or may not be truth to the statement that Mr. Trump is a racist, any discussion had through that lens will be “about insults, not truth.”

If we want more and better speech on this topic, even among trans critics, Twitter’s policy gives us the framework we need to reset our thinking. To date, we’ve put semantics over substance.

Take the discussion following The Times’s Oct. 21 report that the Trump administration was contemplating changes to federal policy that would effectively have trans people “defined out of existence.” The response from trans people and our allies was that “we won’t be erased”; the response from social conservatives tended to be that the administration was making the right call.

In both cases, the focus was almost universally on whether or not trans women are actually women and trans men are actually men. Rather than having a robust discussion about what practical effects a change to the Department of Health and Human Services definition of sex and gender might have — for instance, it could give rise to even more rampant discrimination than trans people already face, an uptick in gender-specific exclusions from insurance policies and more — we found ourselves mired in the same stalemate.

Sadly, this is what passes for “debate” on trans issues: less a look at what any proposed policy would actually accomplish and much more of a focus on trans people as a concept.