Because to them it’s all weird sex shit.

Just like everyone not Christian “worships Satan”

most people already (unfairly) brand pedophiles as monsters, and so placing trans people into the same category as pedophiles is a way of alienating trans people from the “regular folk”, marking them as the same “monsters” as “pedophiles”.

to clarify on the “unfairly”: pedophilia is a paraphilic disorder (a paraphilia (a subjectively “atypical” fetish) that, when satisfied, may bring harm to others), not a crime; attraction is not sexual assault.

FWIW, this was the same thing that homophobes were doing to gay people.

It’s not based in evidence or logic.

Could be that phenomenon (illusory correlation?) where there are a few rare examples of someone who is [sexual minority aka. gay/trans] is also a pedophile, and that particular example of a crime becomes prolific…but the general population doesn’t have any experience with [sexual minority] people. So they assume that being [sexual minority] means you also have pedophilic tendencies because that’s the only connection they know thanks to that prolific crime.

Once you call someone a pedo, that’s it end of thought end of evidence. They are a oedo and so they are evil

Even little babies know the difference between mommy and daddy. The shift in attitude that’s required to reform transphobia (I know) means digging into the basement of how you think of yourself and the people you love. This is threatening, it’s scary.

For the conservative, a trans person should not exist. It contradicts the ‘natural’ hierarchy or is a rebellion against God. So their must be an alternative motive: sexual perversion. So you connect the dots between “scary” and “sexually deviant” and pedophile is the natural result.

Calling a trans person a sexual threat soothes the dissonance by shifting the identity “trans” into something where the repulsion and fear make sense. Pedophilia is a box where you can put people whom you fear and hate them actively without the need to examine your own motivations or ever, ever have to look at it from a trans perspective.

Everyone is right; its an easy way to equate “deviancy” and to deny people rights. Its not just LGBT+; whenever nazis want to make a group of people a target, they accuse them of being “rapists” or “pedophiles.” The OG Nazis accused the Jews of wanting to molest Aryan women. Just look at Birth of a Nation. Or Trumps comments about Mexicans being rapists. It is also just generalized dehumanizing language.

But also: there is power in redefining “pedophilia.” It lets them attack LGBT+ by calling them “groomers” but then involve the services of inspectors who exist to… “verify” genitalia? It allows them to bring back child marriage or protect powerful clergy or rich assholes like Epstien, while attacking gay marriage. Libertarians attack the age of consent and want to bring back child labor. Everything becomes pedophilia except actual pedophilia. The real question becomes, why, when one has enough money or institutional power to do anything, like go to space or buy a senator to protect your wealth systemically, why does become extremely interested in fucking children?

It’s just to alienate and villainize the people they don’t like. Image someone as criminal and disgusting and other people will grow the same feeling. It’s what, Trump does too, with immigrants and trans people. Hitler did the same with jews. Spreading hate 101.

projection, they are most likely pedophiles themselves, or pedos in the closet that hadnt SA a child yet. Also seen this with people bragging that they know a pedo.

Because trans people are different, and they’re afraid of different people. So they make assumptions that those people are somehow dangerous. Racism, xenophobia, transphobia; it’s all the same stupid mentality.

People were once told that if you wore the clothes of the opposite sex, you were a pervert. If you wanted to be the other sex, you were a sexual deviant. And people who have no experience outside of these views TOLD to them find out there are people out there like that, they are perverted deviants who must be doing other deviant things to. That’s how people connect the two. False logic and correlation based on ignorance.

Apart from concerted sociopolitical efforts to make an underclass that can be harmed at will and blamed for everything, there’s a couple of less deliberately malicious explanation for a lot of people.

1: Category violation -> perversion -> predator -> monster.

2: I don’t think it’s real -> they are lying -> why would they lie about gender -> to lull people into a false sense of security -> predator -> monster

Both are of course incredibly false and hateful, and both of course are pushed maliciously and cynically by many, but I think some people are actually taken in by one or other of these.

Transgender people often (wrongly) get their gender identity conflated with their sexuality. Transphobes already have a visceral reaction to a transgender person, so those feelings automatically extend to how they see a transgender person’s sexuality. And as others have mentioned they may be projecting their own perversions on other people. They have an unhealthy view of sexuality in general, which may be the origin for their transphobia aswell.

When I came out to my mother as transgender she had a hard time dealing with it. She seemed to have a weird fixation with my sexuality and sexual orientation whenever I tried to educate her on the subject, even after I explained to her that sexuality and sexual orientation is not related to my transgender identity.

My mom has always been a prude when it came to raising her boys and constantly would police our vocabulary and sexual jokes. But she had no issues making jokes and comments about my sexuality when I came out to her as a transgender woman. So I can only assume she had unresolved issues with the way she sees sexuality in a way that it makes her uncomfortable and she was projecting her own perversions and unhealthy view of sexuality onto my transgender identity. Because to her why else would I transition if not for my sexual perversions, since that’s the only way she can see world.

On a side note, ever since I started my transition I pretty much stopped watching porn all together. I masturbate less and my mind isn’t constantly fixated on sex and I’m able to experience the world through a much healthier lense. When I’m attracted to someone now, I’m not distracted by my sexual impulses as much and I’m much better able to connect with them as a person. So in short, embracing my transgender identity has dramatically decreased my uncontrolled sexual impulses. So when people paint us as some sort of deviant perverts, it’s actually quite the opposite and nothing could be further from the truth. Not to mention, our sexuality is only a sliver of our transgender identity and we don’t care for strangers making it a focus.

Since at least the 1970s and probably much earlier, any and all non-heterosexual people have been painted as pedophiles by right wing / conservatives.

Indeed, a lot of the pedophile panic these days is driven by those people, because it is one of the few things they can get everyone to hate, and that hate often shuts down nuance and reason, and while real pedophiles are a problem, they want to expand that unthinking hate, that knee jerk ‘burn the heretic’ reaction to more people.

This is the reason we now see people attacking even completely fictional media, because they’re trying as hard as possible to slippery slope it.

It’s actually a very simple ploy they’ve used since before I was born (I’m not young). Anything they can paint as sexual, or that actually is out of the sexual “norm,” they will use as a scapegoat. They used it against blacks (coming after their white women), gays, and now trans. Pedophilia and rape are the two Worst Things, and if they can tie the Bad Guy du jour, that equals fear-votes. The best kind of right wing votes in all the land.

Your mistake is believing that everyone is acting logically or in good faith.