This is a very even handed article and gets to heart of the question very quickly and to the heart of the problem with identity politics. The tendency to begin a process of echo-chamber group think invariably leads to 'us vs them' mentality in which the group is consistently oppressed. Examples and counter examples fly back and forth between a group of people who share one consistent trait - in this case, being trans.
Suddenly empowered by an online closed bubble community, offence is duly weaponised and turned on the world. There are plenty of offensive people out there... transphobic douchbags per square mile is quite high I'm sure, but there are also just a lot of people blundering around going about their day to day life who don't think about these things or know very much at all. I'd count myself among them.
When offence is taken and the battle for moral supremacy is won over something small, the war is eventually lost. Your experience here wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't hate-filled and seen against the full backdrop of LGBTQ+ history counts as positively progressive. You could've taken offence, you could've gone off like a bomb and taken your custom elsewhere, but you didn't.
Identity politics doesn't work, online groupthink doesn't work, making people terrified of transgressing a set of consistently changing arbitrarily decided rules from a community without a common ideology doesn't work. When people are berated they don't let it go very easily. In short, the fight feels good in the trenches of the echo chamber when everyone swaps war stories, but the real world is a lot more complicated.
And that's because what does work is winning people over, one person at a time. Your tactic of gradually integrating your lived experience into the world of an individual who knows nothing of your life is absolutely the way to win hearts and minds.
For the record I don't consider spaces to be woke or unwoke... they're just spaces, and it's what you do in them that counts. What you chose to do in this space at this time was sacrifice your immediate hapiness to make the world slightly better. For that reason your story made me happy and quietly hopeful for the future of all of us as individuals.
