Totally, utterly apalling.
There is also some suggestion in the artcle the Wood/Thompson/White showed no signs of being transgender in the past. I would suggest that this does not necessarily mean that he is simply a man taking advantage of a loophole, but just that our understanding of what (MH) conditions can manifest with trans symptoms is too limited (and being purposely limited and steered towards the people that of course are sympathetic and harmless and have been victims).
To my mind being trans in any capacity is part of a MH disorder, which like other MH disorders, may be dangerous to the person and/or to others or not, and caused by (some serious interruption of normal psychological and identity development - in many cases CSA with strong humilation events and lack of any safe parental figures, and some underlying susceptibility perhaps) and the problem is that most people simply don't have an accurate understanding of what these conditions look like in RL outside of the cliches.
We have the trope of everyone on MN knowing a narc, but actually this is true, but it is the slightly less obvious ones we need to worry about, where we (FWRers excluded after direct experience usually) and polticians etc can be totally hoodwinked by these men with high functioning, high masking, highly adaptive malignant pathologies. I do believe that some of their strategies are not necesarily under their deliberate control - like a narc rage - there is so much underlying denial and disorder that control over that is to some extent a facade - it is merely them managing their symptoms - like trying to control the flow of lava. That is the danger I think, that we see control and choice where I think actually it is not control and choice in the way that healthy people make these choices.
I don't say this to absolve them, far from it, I say this because i think it is worse than we think sometimes, that so many of these dangerous men are so warped that they need serious MH treatment, not simply prison punishment as if they may be punished and redeemed by normal means - they cannot be. We need to recognise that and do more.
Many needed psychological inpatient treatment way before any trans stuff was identified. The trend to demedicalise everything is actually very dangerous sometimes. Misogyny IMO often goes way beyond 'normal', healthy, psychological processes. I think we would benefit from pathlogising some of its manifestations, rather than seeing it as a mere lifestyle choice or socialisation that can be easily changed or educated out of.
It is easy to underestimate the mental/ psycholgical processes/ tricks/denials etc that are at work here because they are so alien to normal people - even we we think we get it.
That the drive for mental/emotional 'survival' (and the warped definition of survival for those who have suffered serious MH threats/ disturbances), the preservation of denial etc is as strong a motivator as hunger or thirst or fire, and what people will do to preserve their own MH stability and constructs even if that is by deviant/unhealthy damaging strategies. They may also be patient and stealthy as with some long term trans campaigners and the determiantion of groomers etc, not all by overtly violent means. But IMO these are all beyond normal methods of repair.
Some one on another thread was talking about the dangers of looking into the abyss to closely for too long - but this is actually what we need to make the woke people do.
We must have safeguarding and intelligent MH educated safeguarding to push back aganst this. Feminist social based arguments alone are not enough I beilieve as this goes beyond mere social conditioning. Unfortunately some MH professionals have been got at from the inside as with other walks of life by these persistent behind the scenes, and of course as said on other threads.
As so many have said, there are powerful men who benefit from all this behind the scenes.
Somehow we have to do more.