I modded a humble mid-sized subreddit, which was not an LGBT sub, but one where LGBT people occasionally asked LGBT-specific questions. My view of the situatio

I modded a humble mid-sized subreddit, which was not an LGBT sub, but one where LGBT people occasionally asked LGBT-specific questions. My view of the situation initially was that conservative-minded peolle didn't really hate trans people and they were mostly frustrated by being forced to swallow an idea and being censored if they so much as asked an innocent question and that this is what was making them so upset. So I took a soft line. It was a mistake out of touch with reality. The first thing I found is yes a fair amount of users really did just dislike transgender people. Second, a pattern I consistently saw was trans people making earnest honest sincere posts about real questions and EVERY thread somebody derailed the thread and made it into some culture wars BS. Upon getting their posts removed for derailing threads and starting shit they would proceed to start abusing the mods. Whereas the LGBT users would get upset over the former being tolerated yet were consistently polite, respectful, and their main way of protest was leaving the sub. As time went on I realised that a lot of sentiment about "SJW bullies" was projection and that many anti-trans users were pathological in their harassment. That people don't really see how bad the problem is because the worst harassment gets removed and hidden from the regular userbase. The LGBT users were a minority largely trying to politely persuade the mods to make the sub better for people they cared about. Whereas the anti-trans users were entitled, attention-seeking, and self-victimizising. Sure there were some users with conservative views which were not like that. These people could be reasoned with if you simply explained the need for anti-harassment rules. Whereas taking a soft line ALWAYS meant people doing nothing wrong getting harassed for the benefit of mostly bad faith users.