As many people on this Sub will attest, my knowledge of American politics is imperfect, but I don't personally see why anyone cares about Caitlyn Jenner running for governor of California. California is (with perhaps the exception of Portland) the Mecca of Woke, and since Jenner is standing for the Republicans, his chances of being elected seem very slim in this political climate. If Jenner had stood for the Democrats he'd be a sure hit because fIrsT WomAn GovErnOr. Arthnold's Civics 101 Question du jour: What does the governor do? How are they related to the state legislature?

Anyway, as to your question about what underpins this nonsense I'm sure there's certainly a great deal of complicated psychology going on involving in-groups and out-groups and 'Us versus Them'-style thinking et cetera, but I think it's mainly about control, particularly control of the narrative and control of who gets to say what.

Impelling someone to use certain pronouns is controlling the way that person speaks. No right-thinking (a dangerous concept but work with me here) person would support compelled speech and the ridiculous notion that people disregard the evidence of their senses in favour of some Woke catechism.

As someone on Ovarit (I think?) pointed out, these shaming tactics only work on people who already kind of respect the idea being put forth because they're afraid of having their 'good person' card taken away from them, since they're already neck-deep in the ideology and that's what their notion of being a 'good person' involves now. People like Ben Shapiro or Sarah Palin are never shamed for not having pronouns in their Twitter bios because people like Ben Shapiro or Sarah Palin would just laugh in the faces of these people and that would be the end of it.

It's something of a cliché now to compare Trans™ to a cult or a cluster B personality disorder brought to life but this is one of the areas in which that comparison can be particularly apposite. You cannot question the party line on anything and blind obedience must be maintained or the house of cards will come tumbling down. Black-and-white thinking is similarly par for the course: you're either with us, in which case you have to jump on the Vengabus of trans and toot the horn as loud as you can; or you're against us, in which case you're a suppressive person who must be destroyed.