I had a very strong impression many of the complaints came from concern trolling cis people and they weren't very convincing in hiding their transphobia.

as a cis guy who was there, I agree. I remember being against mandatory pronoun selections just from my own perspective (I'd rather people just hit me with the they/them or implied neutral he/him or random she/her or whatever else they feel like than feel the need to check what I set it to) but I have come to understand the other perspectives. And, when I was against it, it was in the mildest "this isn't really a big deal" kind of way, I remember scrolling through the thread(s?) and just being like "what the fuck is wrong with these losers" lmao, the struggle session really baffled me at the time. it's a pronoun box, it isn't the end of the world

In hindsight, I understand that we had a pretty big core userbase of reactionary internet troll / bully types who liked dunking on liberals way more than they were interested in any kind of solidarity with their comrades. they understood enough about communism to know why the end goal is correct, but didn't really care about how a communist movement could or should be built. surface-level communists, i guess

and to conclude this ramble with some kind of point: I think that this struggle session and a couple others were necessary for the identity of the site and for its long-term health. it's good that a bunch of dumb nerds went full over a lil fuckin ui element and got banned and we built a pretty strong community of people who were, for one reason or another, in agreement about the fact that those guys sucked and it's good they're gone