Even little babies know the difference between mommy and daddy. The shift in attitude that’s required to reform transphobia (I know) means digging into the basement of how you think of yourself and the people you love. This is threatening, it’s scary.

For the conservative, a trans person should not exist. It contradicts the ‘natural’ hierarchy or is a rebellion against God. So their must be an alternative motive: sexual perversion. So you connect the dots between “scary” and “sexually deviant” and pedophile is the natural result.

Calling a trans person a sexual threat soothes the dissonance by shifting the identity “trans” into something where the repulsion and fear make sense. Pedophilia is a box where you can put people whom you fear and hate them actively without the need to examine your own motivations or ever, ever have to look at it from a trans perspective.