I think the two things are inextricably linked, to be honest.
In the last decade we have seen a meteoric rise in the number of children, mainly adolescent girls, identifying as trans, at the same time as a concerted effort to force people to agree that adult trans women are women in all circumstances and belong in all women's spaces. Note that the former group is young, vulnerable and predominantly born female, whereas the latter group consists of mature adults, predominantly born male.
Why did society never stop to ask itself why so many teenage girls don't want to be women? The explosion in numbers has been reminiscent of previous trends of eating disorders and self harm in teenage girls, but this is the first time that this cohort has specifically tried to opt out of womanhood in large numbers. Why? Could it be because, from where they're standing, womanhood looks fucking terrifying? They're the first generation who have grown up with the internet, social media, seeing online porn at a very young age. They've seen women being objectified, slut shamed, victims of revenge porn, assaulted and raped, and that's without even discussing things like menstruation, pregnancy, abortions, childbirth, motherhood, menopause and all the discrimination that comes along with it.
I don't think it's remotely surprising that they've latched on to a rainbow flag waving movement which tells them becoming an adult woman is optional, that they can become a man instead, or just non-binary if they don't want to fully commit.
If you see women as people who are mistreated and disrespected, whose boundaries and autonomy are constantly disregarded, why would you want to become one?
Instead of telling these girls that womanhood is not actually optional, and then trying to figure out how to make the world a better place for women, society has encouraged them in these beliefs.
But why?
To me, the answer is obvious. If you accept that vulnerable teenagers can identify as the opposite sex, or neither sex, if you agree that a teenage girl can grow up to become a man like Elliot Page, you can't then logically say that a trans woman is not a woman because of their biological sex.
These young, vulnerable people attract much more sympathy than people like Isla Bryson or Roxanne Tickle or Laurel Hubbard or India Willoughby or even Eddie Izzard. If you want to break down society's belief that sex is real and binary and important, "trans kids" are much more likely to garner sympathy from the average person and open their mind to the idea that perhaps it is all about how people identify.
And yet, the day after the publication of the Cass review, which is essentially the story of how a generation of mainly teenage girls have been let down, who is getting most of the attention in the media? Who is being interviewed? Mainly adult trans women. The kind of people who, we are told, have been using women's toilets for decades without any issues.
Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but housing violent male offenders in women's prisons, denying female rape survivors single sex groups and suing women for having the audacity to create one app which isn't for male users... this is all new. That's no longer about using the toilet, it's about the belief that female people should not be allowed to have anything for themselves. Not a rape crisis group, not an app, not even a word for themselves.
And I don't think this movement would have been anywhere near as successful as it has been in dismantling women's boundaries in this way without the myth of the sad trans child who will commit suicide if they are not affirmed.