The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights

In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade.

You make a good point about hn people not being representative though.

The shift on trans rights isn't simply a shift to the left though - it's more like the mainstream/"liberal" view on trans rights has shifted and the left-wing progressive activists have been dragged along behind it, whilst insisting all the way that they were a vital spearhead of trans rights and that not agreeing uncritically with them about everything and censoring dissenting views is an attack on trans people's existence.

For example, one of the last things the UK's more left-wing party did when they were in power was add a special exemption to anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. (As in, this was literally the stated goal.) Pretty much the entire mainstream progressive activism community covered for them and the lobbying group who campaigned for this, demanding that everyone shut up about how the law got there, until 2019 when the same group started lobbying the Conservatives for similar purposes. Similarly, only half a decade or so ago the folks currently trying to cancel J K Rowling and insisting everyone support beating up random elderly lesbians for holding transphobic views were just as confident in their insistence trans women were misogynist bigots for just speaking out about what TERFs were actually doing because supposedly feminist women couldn't have any affect on the real world and so the only reason to blame them for anything was hatred of women. Even the term TERF itself was apparently only coined in 2008, though the ideas it describe go back decades before then.

This becomes even more true the further you go back, to the point that maybe a couple of decades ago, probably three at the most, trans rights seems to have been outside the normal range of progressive activist viewpoints entirely in the sense that - at least in the UK - the people who rose to positions of dominance and influence did so by shunning anyone who actually treated trans women as people, and worse. I mean this very literally, not in the usual hyperbolic sense where any dissent from the activist canon of views is spun as dehumanising trans women - it seems people had a choice between being willing to talk to trans women or gaining connections and influence.

I have trouble describing any view wrt. trans folks as "mainstream". The dynamic you describe is quite real but it looks like the result of salami-slicing politics within progressive activism itself, rather than any discernible 'mainstream' influence.

Obviously, the mainstream isn't exactly campaigning for trans people to be treated in any particular way, but there's a kind of baseline expected level of respect for them as people that's changed over time, and I get the impression that the activists fall below that baseline - especially when compared to people of similar ages and social backgrounds who aren't proud crusaders for social justice. Not only that, the "salami-slicing politics" seems to happen after the non-activist consensus shifts to the point the consensus within the activist community is untenable, not before - of course, the activists spin this as evil bigots suddenly infiltrating their glorious community for justice, but in reality those views were the almost-unchallenged status quo up until that point. Even back when there was much less awareness of the existence of trans people, the activist community was vicious and nasty enough that I suspect it would've made mainstream people uncomfortable if actually exposed to their actions.

Also, it seems like the non-mainstream communities which acted as welcoming spaces for trans people back in the earlier days were often non-activist ones, founded around the kind of "liberal" ideas about diversity and acceptance that activists decry. Then more recently the activists used that historic support for trans people to demand some of them end that diversity and acceptance, because that's supposed to be what it means to support trans people these days.

>The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights > >In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade.

These are not shifts to the left, they are a shifts towards liberalism.

The left still has a big problem with gender identity. Take a look at Rosie Duffield and Jess Phillips in the Labour Party, Joanne Cherry in the SNP, and the issues surrounding the formation of the Alba Party.

I'm not sure how requiring other people to use particular pronouns they might disagree are appropriate can be termed "liberalism".

My point was actually that the Overton window has been shifting to the left. It has been shifting to the left on social issues basically ever since the French Revolution, and to the left on economic issue ever since the end of the Cold War.

People looked at Trump and thought "wow, what a far right extremist", but compare Trump to a far right extremist from 100 years ago, and you'll realise just how far left the window has shifted.