that hexbear users who complained of chasers were misjudging or exaggerating the extent of the problem

This is exactly what happened.

The two instances that I am aware of.

The first instance was a cis guy responding explicitly to a prompt from a trans person, talking about how their attraction to a non medically transitioned trans man wouldn't work, precisely because he acknowledged that his attraction would be based on elements that would make the hypothetical trans man in question uncomfortable.

This was not a cis person volunteering an opinion to trans folk unasked for. It was a cis guy responding to an explicit question from a trans person, whilst respecting trans identities and acknowledging the reality of dysphoria.

The resulting discussion about that topic lead to a huge outbreak of transphobic commentary from external users. That lead to me making a post calling out the transphobia and aggressively banning anyone that crossed the line.

This all happened months before hexbear joined, and the post from me addressing the issue is still visible in 196.

It's not an accident that this incident only became an issue for hexbear folk after the 196 mods refused to remove anti tankie political commentary at hexbear's request.

The second instance was a hexbear user reporting someone making chasery comments to them. I asked for details so I could ban the person in question. Before telling me who it was, the hexbear user asked me not to ban the account in question, because they looked like they were a newly out trans person that had taken a joke too far (they were calling people m'lady as a joke). In any case, I talked to the poster making the comments, and told them that it's making people uncomfortable and they need to stop. They did (they already had before I messaged them)

And that's the "endemic" of chasers. A trans person making an ill conceived joke, and a single cis person answering a direct question from months ago.

I can absolutely understand why some people would be uncomfortable with both of the events in question. But even allowing for that, what we have is two misrepresented events that were actively addressed at the time they occurred, one of which occurred months before hexbear even appeared on the scene.

Again, it's not an accident that most of the chasers hexbear are concerned about apparently hang out in 196, a community that hexbear users wanted to join until they found out they couldn't. Only then did the chasers and transphobia appear in their narrative.