I don't think you said anything particularly horrible.
Quoth Gwern:
yeah, one is a monstrous abortion pretending to be its opposite and deluding the eye thanks to the latest scientific techniques, and the other is a weird fruit
How is that anything other than premeditated and malicious, deliberate bigotry? Gwern's said he knows he has issues with trans people, so the idea that he just didn't get the connotations here or how it would sound to someone who doesn't share his feelings doesn't apply. And he said it in a public venue without even bothering to feel his audience out, again, apparently in the knowledge that he has specific issues with the group in question, which means he was pretty confident that it was safe to do (and judging by the degree to which he's managed to shift focus onto starling's publishing of IRC logs and otherwise dodge the actual issue, he seems to have been right).
If that's not horrible (in an everyday, pedestrian sort of way -- the kind of horrible that doesn't even vaguely imply par with $MindkillingHistoricalFigure but does imply the person shouldn't exactly be surprised that other people think they're a bit of a shithead), then what is?
Well, I am a weird fruit.
There's something... dissonant... about putting gwern on trial and deliberating on whether he's guilty of second-degree shitheadedness. It doesn't sound like the right question to ask; gwern has explained how the inside of his head works, and I've given advice for not acting like a dick taking his explanations into account. I don't see the point of determining which mean names he should be called, even for the purpose of social punishment.
I'm confused by the ethics of inner prejudice. I would certainly prefer gwern not to need to ...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.