This is a very interesting post thank you stealthsquirrelnutkin.
On another thread I posted about growing up gender confused and lesbian, and I said that I realise in retrospect that by despising all things 'girly', I was also despising myself.
Fortunately for me, I discovered feminism, and learned to value myself as a woman, a different kind of woman, a lesbian woman with butch tendencies😎
Like you, I worry about young lesbians who never manage to balance the rejection of gender stereotypes, and of heterosexuality, with keeping self-respect for themselves as women.
The lure of becoming a transman instead of a lesbian must be powerful, the trans juggernaut being as powerful and all-pervasive as it is, resulting in a zeitgeist where the scars of an optional double mastectomy can be celebrated.
There is, I think you will agree, a line to be walked between being butch because there's something about the style and swagger that makes you feel good, and trying to look like you're not a woman full stop.
The danger for young girls growing up gender-confused is that they may step over the line from not wanting to look like a gender stereotypical woman, into not wanting to look like a woman at all, and then not wanting to even be a woman.
Then if they start to find puberty blockers, hormones and surgery promoted as 'gender affirming care', they are in real danger of long-term mental and physical problems.
And after all the hormones and surgery, the likelihood is that they won't really look like men - transmen often lack the height, gait, mannerisms, voice, bodyshape, comportment etc., to pass as men.
But by then, as you say stealthsquirrelnutkin, the damage is done.