Up until recently I thought most people didn't really know what was happening so didn't care beyond a vague desire to be kind

The movement itself has pretty much relied on that. Most people are going to be uninformed on the topic, so their view of things will be of the old school transsexual. Some poor gay man or woman, who had such harsh internalised homophobia that they'd rather live as a facsimile of a woman or man respectively (though I have my doubts even that group was ever as innocent as portrayed). Who wouldn't be kind to them? They already have it hard enough. But that isn't the reality anymore, far from it.