I'm late to jump on this thread, and this is only my 8th post overall, so my voice here is not terribly loud, but I have to speak up on my experience with Pathfinder as an LGBTQ+ affirming setting.
I (re)discovered TTRPGs in 2014 at 36 years old. I had recently moved back to NYC after a few years away and needed to find new friends. I thought to myself, "how can I meet nerdy people who are my kind of nerds? Hm, maybe I'll see if I can find people to play D&D with, I haven't touched dice since 8th grade." I posted on the Wizards boards that I was a noob and looking for a game and impureascetic contacted me. We formed a little group and met up where he took a few noobs through the Paizo Beginner Box adventure. I was g!%$!~n hooked.
Learning about Pathfinder lore was a beautiful thing for me. I was so excited to see that she/her pronouns were commonly used in class descriptions, that masculinity was not the default assumption. Furthermore, as a queer person, I was f!$#ing stoked to see that there were iconic characters and deities who were not cishet. Paizo was challenging the perception of TTRPG players as neckbeards and, as a woman who considers herself on the right side of history and progress, I got excited by this.
At the time, though, I was using male pronouns for myself...because I was used to pretending I was a man. Two years after starting my Pathfinder obsession, my gender collapsed. All the indications and inclinations I had ignored and suppressed over 30 years came out at once and I knew I was a trans woman.
My journey since then has been bumpy, but I felt confident that playing Pathfinder – one of the strongest things in my life, one of my most enjoyable activities, one of my main creative pursuits – was not going to stop. I felt supported and seen by Paizo because of the world created by James Jacobs et al. I saw that they had trans people contributing to the lore and knew that Paizo was Doing Good Work.
The exposition of the transphobic behavior by Paizo leadership hurt me. It really did. I thought I mattered to them as a human in an oppressed class (and not just a source of income). This corporate b&%%#!&@ statement by Jeff hurts me more than literally saying nothing. Either take responsibility for your actions and beliefs and immediately *do something* to change them and show that you are an inclusive company, or get out.
Jeff Alvarez, if you haven't done anything legitimately positive by Monday, I want to see you step down. Our game does not need you anymore.
[note: I am only speaking to the evidence of transphobic behavior because that is my lived experience. As a white person, all I can say about the racism shown towards POC is that it's a f@ing disgrace that people at Paizo thought that their bigotry and hate was acceptable in our society.]