@scarpa
Nobody ever accuses trans men of being trans for nefarious purposes. Nobody spends entire threads implying trans men have a deviant sexual fetish. So I assume by that measure people are largely happy to assume that, whether or not they understand it or even think it's 'right', trans men aren't acting maliciously. Yet almost every thread I see on here descends into assuming all trans women are fetishists, trying to gain access to female spaces for nefarious purposes, etc.
I know you can't entirely extract the social power dynamic from anything and I know the power dynamic between male bodied and female bodied people might be a consideration for some bad faith actors using this as a cover, in a way that isn't possible for trans men because patriarchy.
But I find it wild that the starting assumption about 'motive' is so different.
Why would it be wild? Paraphilias are far more common in male people than female. 99% of sexual assaults are committed by male people. Male people commit (and suffer) violence more often than female people. The proportion of trans women who are are mature adult males is greater than the proportion of trans men who are mature adult females. A trans women in a woman's space knows (even if she doesn't want to know) that she has a physical advantage over the female people in that space. A trans man in a man's space knows that the male people in that space have a physical advantage over him.
And that's before we get into the socialisation that trains female people to smile and accommodate males (of any gender) who demand their attention, space and sometime bodies rather than risk their anger, and the complementing socialisation of males to expect that as their due and feel righteous anger when those expectations are not met.
With that cultural context, I find it wild that anyone would expect trans men not to exhibit different motives and behaviours in male-only spaces to trans women in female-only spaces.
And it is unavoidably true that the replacement of "woman" as a word with gender neutral or strictly biological equivalents in public discourse is more common than the equivalent treatment of the word "man" and failure to do so more often targeted.
To be clear, I don't doubt that many trans women do genuinely believe in their identity as a woman. I do not think every trans woman is a bad actor. But neither do I accept that a male's self-image as a woman gives them the right to redefine womanhood for every woman just to accommodate that self-image. I do not accept males forcing their own definition of womanhood over the voices of the female people who are saying "no, this is not what being a woman is like, there are consequences to our sex, good and bad, that matter, and it's not ok to reduce our lived experience of womanhood to just the subset of factors that can be achieved by a male as well".
So I'd be happy to find a way to accommodate trans women socially, but only in parallel with supporting the rights of female people to define themselves, maintain female-only spaces, opportunities and provisions and speak in their own interests as a valid political group.