What part of off-limits is hard to understand?
the replies haven't been as viscerally nasty
The problem is that, for someone who is not affected by the subject in hand (in this case, being trans), the comments in question might seem tame, a person who has to deal with that life and the issues that arise from it day by day, a seemingly harmless comment may deeply hurt them. And I know of a few people that were hurt by such posts and I know that more than once I was the cause of such pain.
What I want to say I guess is: if the mods say off-limits, it's off-limits for a reason. Stick to it.