"How do we explain this tirade of abuse against someone I would describe as the grandfather of gay rights if I wasn’t worried that the use of such a gender-specific title might earn me a tsunami of online abuse?"

That's a quote from this Spectator article about Peter Tatchell. Here he wrote more broadly about the feedback that he got following putting his name alongside those of over a hundred others to an article arguing in favour of free speech:

For me, free speech is one of the most precious of all human rights. It is the foundation of a democratic, open society. It should be defended without exception, unless it involves threats, harassment or incitements to violence.
The most effective way to defeat bigoted ideas is not by proscription but by challenging and exposing them - and by presenting better, non-bigoted ideas. That's why I've often accepted invitations to debate homophobes, misogynists, transphobes and anti-Muslim zealots. The feedback I've received nearly always suggests that they've come out of such debates damaged and discredited.
... Although used to being assailed and vilified, I was stunned by the vicious and often untrue nature of the Twitter attacks - and by the sheer volume. A colleague estimates that I received 4,000 to 5,000 mostly hostile comments from Saturday to Monday. They ran from 8am to midnight, continuous and relentless. At peak times, there were 30-40 comments a minute.
Some were fine: critical but polite and fair. Many were hateful and abusive: homo, foreigner, misogynist, paedophile, nutter and so on. Others were threatening: "I would like to tweet about your murder you f*cking parasite."
Most tweets completely misrepresented what the letter said and my personal record of support for trans people for over four decades. It is one of the largest and most vituperative onslaughts in my 48 years of human rights activism.
... I couldn't win whatever I said. If I did not support trans issues I would be accused of prejudice and neglect. When I did support them, I was condemned for uninvited interventions and disempowering trans campaigners.

Though I appreciate Tatchell's stand for free speech, I also tend to agree with the following point that the article I drew the headline from also made:

As it happens, I think the feminists complaining about No Platform, and possibly even Tatchell himself, unwittingly helped to nurture this censorious tyranny of identity politics with their old slogan ‘the personal is political’.