Interestingly he also asked why is this all kicking off now and I had no answer.
It is kicking off now in part because now is the time when a male who chooses to be legally considered a woman has no disadvantages to fear.
I mean, think about it; when the suffragettes fought for women's right to vote, would any male have given up his right to vote for the right to wear dresses in public? I do not think so. (He would not have been able to enter women's spaces, as there were no public spaces for women.)
When single women were not served in restaurants - would any male have wanted to be considered a woman and treated accordingly?
When women were not allowed to have bank accounts - would any male have closed his bank account for the right to wear dresses?
In the suffragettes' days, public toilets for women weren't really a thing, or may just have been on their way to becoming a thing.
Women had to basically just squat in the streets and lift their skirts (which may have been one of the reasons underpants AND trousers took so long to became popular) just high enough to not pee on them.
Men identifying as women would only have gotten to wear a dress and to pee in the streets, and that would basically have been it - and on the downside, lost a lot of legal rights.
Now, there are only a tiny few official discriminations against women, such as primogeniture laws, which most people probably don't even know about (I don't think they're a thing in Germany) . Most misogyny takes place in a grey area where it can be explained away as coincidence. It is just coincidence there are no so few women in the government. Just a coincidence that there are so few female top managers. Et cetera.
And if a male who identifies as transwoman is hired instead of an actual woman - well, that is just coincidence, then! (Whereas if there was officially lower wages for women, the employer would have no choice but to pay his fellow male who is legally a woman lower wages)
What also plays a role is the shift from men perceiving women as private property, to be used only by one male owner, to perceiving all women as public property of all men.
To a male Muslim, it is a catastrophe if his wife's hair is seen by any male other than himself (and he knows very well what constitutes another male). To a conservative Christian in the US, the same applies to males other than him ogling his wife in the changing rooms or showers of a public pool.
But to the liberal male, a kind of man rapidly increasing in number, it is okay that the woman he has sex with is also used and abused by other men, as he also gets to use and abuse all women.
(Not saying the latter kind of man consciously thinks about it, but it is the underlying attitude.)
Conservative men do not respect women any more than liberal men, but they want their "property" to not be "damaged" by other males.
Which is why they tend to oppose genderism.
As this kind of attitude becomes less common, transgenderism can become popular.