If the 20th century was characterised by a gradual relaxation, at least in the West, of those socially demanded standards of dress, attitude and behaviour, it's perhaps unsurprisingly that, eventually, the needle would begin to swing the other way. People will, of course, find ways to justify these new standards on the grounds of impartial ethics and rationalism in the same way people in the past justified them on divine action and the gospels.
Such cults of cultural hygiene can be relatively harmless, except to the social standing of those who choose not to participate. However, in the event that true believers gain real power, they can be extremely dangerous to those same persons. History does not instill much confidence that this is something humanity has grown beyond.
The US is a highly religious society, as it always had been ever since the Mayflower landing. The current religions don't mention "God" much, though, they talk more about "justice", "liberty", "equality", etc.
The US has effectively limited its party system to the minimum possible size of two parties, without any chance for a third (to say nothing of fourth or fifth) party to emerge as serious player.
The US is populated by us humans, who are very easy to trigger into an irrational "us vs them" rivalry which tolerates no nuance.
What could go wrong? Well, it went, and keeps going.
Any given view has always had tons of people who would vitriolically disagree with it, when exposed to it. Social media has exposed us to all kinds of vectors of rhetorical violence. Just like if you hook your home up with the IoT and your fridge now has to worry about security, you now need to think about your social security when interacting on the social internet. It's one of the costs of technological progress.
On the topic of more serious threats: every sufficiently public figure gets death threats, left, right, and center. Imagine one out of a thousand people are deranged nuts. You might not even encounter them, or they you, in 1950. But nowadays countless public figures can easily reach a million people: that's a thousand nuts you've got to deal with. Hopefully you don't ever come across the thousandth nuttiest nut, and you have my deepest sympathies if you do.
On the other hand, if the author is complaining about people simply criticizing her (for apparently thinking there are two biological genders?), she needs to learn to suck it up and argue for her viewpoint, relinquish her viewpoint, or take it in stride. Criticism is not "totalitarianism."
We obviously need better representation. But how? What system could we adopt that would allow the most comprehensive range of political opinion to be represented?