Real talk from a very trans-supportive communist: is this universal?
I find it to be at least extremely common, both in English-speaking spaces online and in German-speaking trans communities online and IRL (i’m German). Ultimately it’s a matter of preference, there will be trans people who disagree, but there definitely are a lot of us who take offense. Same goes for terms like guy and especially for bro / bruh etc., or for German terms like Typ or Alter (in this context roughly comparable to guy or dude) which are generally at least masc-leaning. I’d definitely take offense to all of these, but sure, there are exceptions.
Still, these are exceptions, and more importantly, what we see here is a perfect example of how not to deal with such a situation: When somebody calls you out on misgendering, the only sensible response is to edit the post in question and to apologize. If you do that, it’s normally no big deal, everybody moves on with their day. And it takes a few seconds to edit a post and a few more to reply “sorry, i’ve edited this” while it can quickly take hours to start an argument over this. Yet i see over and over again that liberals in particular are incapable of showing that amount of basic human decency. Instead, they have to assert their privilege to define what we’re allowed to find offensive, talk down to us and act as if they’re the one ones who’ve been hurt because we’ve called their feeling of superiority and infallibility into doubt by saying they’ve made a mistake. That’s where it gets transphobic even if the misgendering was unintentional, that’s where it gets patronizing as well.