Being transferred against your wish can very often be felt as punishment, as it can affect your career prospects, and any change forced on you in response to being victimized tends to feel like punishment.

If I was being transferred due to a transgression someone else did, I'd consider suing or leaving the company as a matter of principle. The outcome of a policy that involves transferring someone rather than dealing with abuse is you over time get left with those who are fine with maintaining an abusive workplace.

If someone is trying to force you to use a slur, they're being abusive. A pronoun is not a slur.

But again, being able to even have that discussion about what is and is not acceptable is a political discussion. That Basecamp has now banned.

I for one would never consider applying to Basecamp after this because they've made it clear employees can not safely discuss issues that may affect them at work.

Intent matters. If my feelings are based on an inaccurate assessment of the intent then my feelings aren’t in line with reality and I can choose to adjust my feelings in light of more accurate facts.

Intent may affect legal culpability, but people are not robots, and are free to consider something punishment whatever the intent. If the effect of reporting abusive behaviour is to be forced into a change you consider punishment, then it is punishment to you, whatever the intent was. And some jurisdictions it would put the company at legal risk even irrespective of intent because e.g. employment tribunals can often take a dim view of actions taken against a victim without their consent even if the intent was all good.

More importantly, I'd consider a place that cared so little about victims of abusive behaviours a horrible place to work that'd be worth leaving regardless. I'd start thinking about leaving such a please even if I just observed it happen to others, because it says something about the lack of fundamental respect for employees.