To get on the wrong side of transgender activists is often to endure their unsparing criticism.

After a Democratic congressman defended parents who expressed concern about transgender athletes competing against their young daughters, a local party official and ally compared him to a Nazi “cooperator” and a group called Neighbors Against Hate organized a protest outside his office.

When J.K. Rowling said that denying any relationship between sex and biology was “deeply misogynistic and regressive,” a prominent LGBTQ+ group accused her of betraying “real feminism.” A few critics posted videos of themselves burning her books.

When the Biden administration convened a call with LGBTQ+ allies last year to discuss new limits on the participation of transgender student athletes, one activist fumed on the call that the administration would be complicit in “genocide” of transgender youth, according to two people with knowledge of the incident.

Now some activists say it’s time to rethink and recalibrate confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more all-or-nothing voices in their coalition.

“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Transgender Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”

They cite tactics, especially on social media, that became routine for devoted backers of the movement: attempts to police language, such as excising the words “male” and “female” from discussions of pregnancy and abortion; decrying the misidentification of a transgender person as violence; insisting everyone declare the pronouns they use.

Some LGBTQ+ activists have put pressure on liberal candidates for office to take positions that align with theirs — which can backfire. Republicans pummeled Vice President Kamala Harris in ads this year over the answers she gave on a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that has been active in the transgender cause. The questionnaire asked Harris to commit to ensuring that transgender people in federal custody, “including those in prison and immigration detention,” could receive gender-transition surgery.

Heng-Lehtinen, 38, who grew up in a prominent Republican family in Florida and came out to them as transgender after college, said that as painful as President-elect Donald Trump’s win may be for transgender people, their movement should see the benefit in treating skeptics less like enemies and more like future allies.

“No one wants to feel stupid or condescended to,” Heng-Lehtinen said.

This soul-searching comes as Democrats are engaging in a broader discussion of how their efforts to advance social and racial justice in recent years may have appeared to be too judgmental and helped contribute to the perception that their party had lost its understanding of the problems Americans want politicians to prioritize.

Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars on ads that accused Democrats of “wokeness” and capitalized on the unfamiliarity most Americans have with transgender people’s lives, using hyperbole and distortions that often created false impressions of schoolhouse indoctrination and locker rooms full of predators.

LGBTQ+ activists are confronting a political landscape that has grown more hostile. More than two dozen states now limit access to transition medical treatment. Last week, House Republicans vowed to bar transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol, a not-so-subtle affront to incoming Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, who this month became the first transgender person elected to Congress.

McBride — who has insisted that she is a voice for all her constituents, “not a spokesperson for a movement” — said she would follow House rules even if she disagreed with them.

It is that kind of targeting from conservatives — which transgender people say is deeply personal and far too common — that makes many activists wary of relying on a gentler, more traditional political approach. Some of them saw avoidance in McBride’s matter-of-fact response and accused her of capitulating to the right.

If they seem impatient, activists say, it is because they are. “What we’re facing is fundamental unfairness — and that is not coming from people who are interested in compromise and open debate,” said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist with the ACLU who works on transgender advocacy. “These are people who are threatened by trans people’s very existence. And, more importantly, they’re trying to scapegoat us.”

Some Democrats say the national conversation over transgender rights can sound intolerant.

“Here we are calling Republicans weird, and we’re the party that makes people put pronouns in their email signature,” said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who ignited protests at his office after he expressed concern that transgender athletes could have an unfair advantage or hurt other athletes.

Even so, he said, Democrats — and most Americans, for that matter — still want to protect transgender people from discrimination.

“Having reasonable restrictions for safety and competitive fairness in sports seems like, well, it’s very empirically a majority opinion,” Moulton said. “But should we take civil rights away from trans people so they can just get fired for being who they are? No.”

Transgender rights were not top of mind for most voters on Election Day. According to Gallup, voters who were asked how important each of 22 national issues were in their voting decisions ranked transgender rights lowest.

The public does not appear to be growing more empathetic to the transgender cause. Fewer Americans today than two years ago say they support some of the rights that LGBTQ+ activists have pushed for, like allowing children to undergo gender transition treatment, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. And multiple polls have found that a considerable majority of Americans believe advocacy for transgender rights has gone “too far.”

This trend pains longtime LGBTQ+ activists, many of whom worked on the decadeslong campaign to win widespread acceptance for gay and lesbian people.

In interviews, some activists stressed that it was important to see the big picture: The LGBTQ+ movement is working through a difficult pivot, trying to apply lessons from the same-sex marriage campaign to the newer fight for transgender equality.

Advocates said their research had found that the most effective messaging takes into account that most Americans do not know a lot about life as a transgender person and reinforces the basic idea that transgender people want what everyone else wants: fairness, respect and love.