Hexbear is one of those instances that has a bad reputation. One of which is for being anti trans and yet the data says something different, unless they all hate themselves. In my experience of their users though, they're a decent bunch, polite and insightful. Though admittedly, I'm not in many of the main communities on Lemmy, so tend to miss most things.
Hexbear has a bad reputation for many reasons, but I've never heard anyone claim that they're anti trans. They are known for being incredibly protective of their trans members.
Hexbear’s biggest detractors often call them anti-queer. Mostly because of an idea that western imperialists are at least nice to queer people and that anti-imperialist governments, including historically communist ones, have been staunchly anti-queer across the board. Of course, the truth is more complicated on both sides. Either way, western influence on the world has been a disaster for queer people everywhere.
I feel like most of the hexbear users I've run into live up to their negative reputation. Maybe the communities I see just bring out the worst users from that server for some reason.
I think it's about the communities I interact with them in. I'm really not a fan of the mainstream communities and so inadvertently but luckily, avoid trolls for the most part.