Wow this thread is a real lesson in framing. Pretty sure if OP had come on and said ‘should young women be able to wear what they want without being told they are asking for/up for sex’? - most women on this board would agree. Because it’s been seen as an attack against the GC group then instead there’s all sorts of weird arguments being made
It's a lesson in not falling into the traps set by gender identity ideologues, as that's what's happened here.
OP didn't start the thread to debate whether James Esses is right or wrong about what women wear - she had already concluded that she didn't agree with him and was troubled by what that meant for gender critical women in terms of Esses' promotion of gender critical views.
The accusation of guilt-by-association (or association fallacy) is a well-worn silencing tactic and has been used against women for a long time to counter arguments for women's rights. In my opinion, it works especially well on women because we tend to be more empathetic and take these accusations very seriously (even though we shouldn't, logically).
Gender identity ideologues pull this one all the time, pointing to Nazis attending rallies, etc as meaning something that it does not mean - this serves two main purposes - (1) to prompt infighting within a group to achieve a 'divide and conquer' effect and (2) to distract women from the actual argument and to redirect their attention to other issues they care about that aren't actually the issue being addressed.
As villou says, just look at the energy that women have spent on this thread trying to reconcile their perceived guilt-by-association with their gender critical beliefs unnecessarily. The answer to gender identity ideologists when they say "oh, but this person also believes x" should be something along the lines of "well, they also believe the sun is hot - are you saying it's not because this person thinks it too?".
It's easier to spot this kind of accusation when it's about outright Nazis, as people don't go on to defend the Nazi position. But when it's something that seems like it's a controversial opinion but debatable, it's very easy to get drawn into defending that person's random views on another topic without noticing the logical fallacy involved. Which is exactly what gender ideologues want, because the more time and energy women spend debating whether some gender critical person is also a misogynist is time and energy that isn't spent monitoring what's happening, writing letters, challenging policy, researching and sharing information and lobbying the government and other organisations to recognise that biological sex matters.