I've been kind of watching this from the sidelines. Requiring separate admin and general use accounts is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't absolutely solve the problem of "someone who possesses greater power expressing themselves in confrontational ways." Once you're wearing an "admin hat," you can't ever really take it off, and you have to know that your actions are always going to be under greater scrutiny, regardless of the user account in question.

However.

I'm a big proponent of "we call people what they want to be called," but this is the very first time I have ever heard that using generic pronouns is somehow consciously offensive. I get that if Party A has made undeniably clear what pronouns they use, and Party B insists on using generic pronouns, yeah, that could be an action consciously intended to offend or put down - but I also think that it's not necessarily and always that way. Context matters, and the context in this particular incident suggests (to me, at least) that transphobia has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Language is an ever changing thing, although it may change more slowly than desired. When you're talking about extremely foundational bits of language - like pronouns - it takes a huge amount of effort (especially for older people, of which I am one) to get your brain to change gears and use the words and thoughts that you want to. I know this from personal experience. When I am talking to or about a person in my own family, who I have known since his birth 18+ years ago, it is extremely difficult to adjust to a "new paradigm," even when "new" means "several years in the making." I suspect that I will always have to make conscious efforts to think and speak in ways that I want to, and that I won't always get it right. Just because I don't always get it right doesn't make me a transphobe.

Forklift that situation over to text on a screen with someone who is essentially anonymous to me, with whom I may never have interacted with before, it's highly likely that I'm going to get it wrong even if I try. Then, if I use the generic pronoun "they" in order to avoid misgendering someone, and I get smacked down for that? That's just plain unreasonable, and I have no interest interacting with anyone who would throw shade for that reason.

For blahaj to threaten defederating with an entire instance over just that is completely unreasonable. Maybe that threat was taken based on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the facts. Maybe there are facts that I don't know. What I do know is that just because someone uses strong language to disagree with someone else doesn't mean there's any bigotry at play.