Your "harmless" joke is an attack on the political ideology of people you want to pay for your product. And you do not insult your customers, period. If only 10 percent of people were offended by this joke and only 10 percent of that group actually refuse to buy the game because of it, that's still thousands of people that won't purchase your game anymore. And for what?
Thing is. Transpeople hardly matter numbers wise. If CDPR sells 0 copies to transpeople it won't affect their bottom line.
OTH if you insult your conservative male audience you will #gowokegobroke. Most of these "SJW titles" like Andromeda, Wolfenstein 2 and in (the future) BFV underperformed, while Kingdom Come deliverance sold pretty well (despite getting blacklisted by Waypoint).
What if I told you that the liberal gaming media (Polygon, Kotaku, Waypoint) and social media power users hold no power whatsoever?
Moreover, they are completely detached from their actual customer base and shove stories down everyone's throat that nobody gives a fuck about.
The good news: The gaming industry seems to have learned (the hard way) that this SJW bullshit needs to be kept out of games. I was really happy to see that CDPR gave a half assed apology and the jokes in the DOOM trailer where also fun.
That said, transpeople have a tough deal and I don't envy them. Nobody should bully or harm them and I would protect them if necessary.
BUT 99% will never see a woman who used to be a man as a women. Plus the concept of people changing genders will always be inherently funny to the 99% "cis gender" majority. Therefore the CDPR twitter joke was nothing but good, sensible marketing.
What the people on ERA don't get, is that all this kicking and screaming will do the exact opposite. They are trying to create a universe where everybody plays along and keeps up with the lates issues (What is a joke, what isn't) that only affect 0.0005% of the world population.
Out here in the real world genders are defined by biology and that will never change. Ever.