election season produced some takes that are reminding me a lot of this situation, wherein something completely innocuous/outright good (being openly indignant about systemic oppression, displaying a user’s preferred pronouns) is smeared by liberals who are trying to associate said good things with bad people, thus drawing a connection that anyone who supports these good things is actually a bad person

they got it with bernie because he yelled, and abusive men also yell, therefore anyone supporting bernie is supporting abuse. the angle taken here is that hexbear users have pronoun tags, and hexbear users are bad, therefore you should be suspicious of anyone who has pronoun tags. they’re just dipping into casual transphobia as a very limp attempt at an own