My mistake was engaging on this topic / trans related discourse in a popular reddit sub like this one. It's a lose lose situation with the vast majority being either transphobic people or cis people who are performing to try to out "woke" each other.

First, I was not attacking the author or condoning the harassment that took place. There's a lot of space in between doing that and embracing her work - moral cancelling does exist.

There was nothing wrong with people being critical of her work or the ambiguous authorship especially in the context of the rise of transphobia surrounding its release. Where it became problematic, was when people (likely of whom many were bad actors looking to stir the pot or inflict harm to trans people) decided to try to dox her, attack her character, etc.

As for the topic of discussion, her story and the events surrounding it's release are pertinent to the article, as is discourse over trans representation. If an article was published talking about J.K. Rowling suffering from the harassment she faced/faces post her revealing herself as a terf, people would still bring up the events that led to that harassment because the context matters.

Also sorry, but cis people (of whom make up the majority in this thread) don't have the life experience to know how to discuss the nuance here. Cis people can't even comprehend the damage that incidents like this cause. And to be completely honest neither can most in the closet trans people either. Her story led to a spike in transphobic behavior experienced by me and many other trans people I know in real life (much like other things in media featuring transphobia tend to incite). And yes in retrospect it was unintentional, but you'll excuse me if I dont apologise for thinking it was a deliberate transphobic piece.

We don't live in a rationale world when it comes to the negative effects articles, books, etc. have on trans people. E.g. A paper gets published showing that srs/bottom surgery helps alleviate gender dysphoria substantially and transphobes manage to misread it and use it as a weapon, including as rationale for enacting policy. Or a public trans person says something and word clippings are taken in such a way to advocate for transphobia. Etc. My point being is that trans people have a history of events exactly like what was described being used to bludgeon us either metaphorically ot literally.

The paradox of tolerance traces all the way back to the greeks even if its modern is mostly used to engage in discourse relevant to the rise of fascism. It is simply the concept that too much tolerance leads to the intolerant taking advantage of the tolerant. You might disagree where I've stipulated the threshold value should be in terms of my tolerance over anti-trans rhetoric and/or dog whistles but that doesn't change it being applied correctly.