Content warning: This article contains numerous examples of bigoted rhetoric. Users on Reddit’s “r/conspiracy” forum have repeatedly and openly posted anti-LGBTQ content for years without pushback, despite the platform’s rules prohibiting “hate based on identity or vulnerability” and anti-LGBTQ “groomer” rhetoric. Reddit has a history of taking action against other subreddits that have violated those rules. A Media Matters review of r/conspiracy since May 2020 found a widespread pattern of anti-LGBTQ hate, which includes accusing the LGBTQ community of grooming, having “mental illness,” and associating with pedophilia.
Ostensibly it was for people critical of gender as a social construct, i.e. essentially not real (not rooted in material reality). That used to be the progressive feminist position, until what feels like remarkably recently. I’m not sure I totally agree, but I can sympathise with that - you can definitely simplify the current model into biological sex and behaviour, without losing anything. The perceived importance, or essential nature of that behaviour, seems to be the thing that has shifted.
That’s a lot of big words to hide hate.