An IP address used by staff at the US House of Representatives has been banned from editing Wikipedia for 30 days. It's the second such punishment for would-be anonymous House Internet users in less than a month.

The first ban was imposed for 10 days after a series of "disruptive" edits, including a change to the entry about the website Mediaite to describe it as a "sexist transphobic news and opinion blog."

Now the same IP address has been condemned by editors for making several controversial edits on articles related to transgender issues. Last night, a Wikipedia administrator imposed a month-long ban, with some editors asking for harsher measures.

"If there were some way to permanently block the vandal abusing Congressional IP 143.231.249.138, I would fully support it," wrote a Wikipedia editor with the username JohnValeron. "Failing that, at minimum another temporary block is fully justified by his latest antics, which are totally beyond the pale."

"Would someone please just permaban this transphobic vandal IP already?" wrote another editor, late yesterday. The comment linked to four examples of objectionable edits.

Two hours later, the one-month ban was imposed. It was reported earlier today by The Hill.

Transgender controversy

One of the edits was to an article about the TV show Orange is the New Black. The article on the show noted actress Laverne Cox as the first ever "real transgender woman" to play in a women-in-prison narrative. Someone using the Congressional IP address changed the description of Cox, describing her as a "real man pretending to be a woman."

In an article about transphobia, the same Congressional IP address added a sentence reading: "Vice magazine cofounder Gavin McInnes desribes [sic] transphobia as a perfectly natural response to someone pretending to be something that they are not," referencing an article by McInnes.

The addition was deleted three minutes later. The Congressional user defended the edit on the talk page, saying that the article was "too pro-trans" and needed to be more neutral. "I don't see how disagreeing with the concept that transphobia is a negative thing is considered 'hate speech,'" wrote the Congressional user. "The whole concept of 'transphobia' is being promoted to trivialize the experiences of real women (or 'womyn-born-womyn' as some people call us)."

Other Wikipedia editors said the changes were hate speech, noting that the IP address already had an "untrustworthy" record. The "vandal" likely wasn't a woman at all, but a "puerile male intern/staffer desperate to become the House's very own Jester," wrote editor JohnValeron.

The House is assigned a large range of IP addresses, so it's not clear how many of the several thousand House staffers are assigned this particular address. However, discussions on the talk page suggest it applies to many of them.

"The personal vendetta that you seem to have against Congressional staffers editing Wikipedia seems to be clouding your judgment," wrote a different Congressional user, objecting to the ban.

Acrimony between transgender persons and some self-described radical feminists isn't often in the news, but the issue did get a moment of attention from the mainstream media this month. On Aug. 4, the New Yorker ran a long article about the bad blood between the two groups, entitled "What is a Woman?"