I actually think the reaction to trans people has gone backwards. In the 50s 60s it was “War Hero and athlete now a woman, what a stunner the pretty little lady is isn’t she lads!?” Which was, sexist, and a bit creepy, and not exactly body positive. But a positive portrayal for the time and accepting of their gender at least. Look like a woman, do all the artifice of being a woman, you’re a woman of course what the fuck else would you be?

The bigotry seems to track with the removal of artifice from gender performance in favour of naturalist essentialism from the 1920s on (corsets are wrong and constricting, and so are wide skirts with pockets even though both are practical for the lives women actually lived. Just look like the ideal form already why don’t you, or get surgery if you don’t, and we’ll judge you for that too!) and then accelerating in the post-60s era.

I’m not saying that the women liberation movements of the 60s caused this, (they were, mostly, good and cool and more of that please) but we can trace modern TERF anti-trans bigotry to that time, specifically a group of Lesbian Separatists and adjacent groups with a biological essentialist view of womanhood, ironically based around the ability to bear children. It’s now merged with alt-right chuddery, which aside from occasional swings of trans panic mostly ignored trans people in favour of standard gay bashing until the 2000s.