In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.
In a trans woman’s eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that’s seemingly fuelled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one’s femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. – Julia Serano, Whipping Girl

This is a common transmisogynistic pattern of thought:

P1: Women’s bodies are inherently sexual. That is: to be a woman is to be a sex object.
P2: Men only dress and act like women as part of a sex act - because they desire to be a sex object.
P3: Trans women are men who dress and act like women.
C: Trans women are engaging in a public sex act, the content of which is to present herself as a sex object.

P1 is generally unspoken, while P2-3 may be explicitly affirmed in defending C. This pattern leads to a wide range of injustices, including public bathroom laws, three articles laws, bans on drag performances, bans on gender affirming care, and the “trans panic defense” as a justification for murder. Since we (trans women) are, according to this line of thought, engaging in a public sex act, we can be regulated and punished. Using a public restroom becomes sexual harassment, wearing women’s clothing become public indecency, drag performances become sex work, gender affirming care for minors becomes grooming, and murder is justified because trans sexuality is a form of coercive trickery. There is a clear line from trans women being sex objects, to the everyday activity of trans women being a sex act, to violence and oppression and deprivation.

Notably, there are some redundancies in the reasoning and it can consistently be presented as such:

P1: Women’s bodies are inherently sexual. That is: to be a woman is to be a sex object.
P2: Trans women are women.
C: Trans women are engaging in a public sex act, the content of which is to present herself as a sex object.

P2 and 3 in the original argument are sometimes presented as justifications for the connection between P1 and C. This is because the person who engages in this pattern of thought does not typically affirm that trans women are women, and so must explain why they still fit the sexual object role. Cross-dressing or similar actions or identities are therefore used as both a bridge and a smokescreen. However, this move is only at the surface. What drives the transmisogynistic argument is an internal affirmation that trans women are women without an external or public affirmation. Trans women are oppressed as women, but part of this oppression is to for our identity as women to be denied. However, the denial of our womanhood only works because we are women.

Many of the forms of oppression trans women face are variations on women’s oppression more broadly. If you are a woman, it is safer to use public restrooms in a group. If you are a woman, you must self-monitor your appearance to avoid dangerous interactions and a loss of social status. If you are a woman, anything you create will be interpreted according to your perceived sexual value. If you are a woman, changing or expressing or valuing your body is an impurity and invitation to unwanted sexual behavior. And, if you are a woman and you are assaulted or even murdered, it is justified because all women want it and all women are temptresses. In all of these cases, we, as both trans and cis women, are reduced to sex objects, are denied our autonomy, self-ownership, and safety, and are subject to the property(object)-owning authority of men.

Misogyny is the pervasive dehumanization of women, and it takes different shapes depending on how our womanhood is perceived. All women are criminals for the misogynist, but what the crime is may differ. The crime of the trans woman is to be assigned a different sex at birth and to transition, but it is only a crime because we are women. The denial of the transmisogynist is self-defeating, because their accusations only work with the presumption of affirmation. Transmisogyny is misogyny and the liberation of women generally and of trans women in particular is biconditional. To abolish transmisogyny we must abolish misogyny and to abolish misogyny we must abolish transmisogyny. Trans liberation is a necessary path in defeating patriarchy.

Let me listen to me and not to them
May I be very well and happy
May I be whichever they can thrive
Or just may they not.
They do not think not only only
But always with prefer
And therefore I like what is mine
For which not only willing but willingly
Because which it matters. They find it one in union.
In union there is strength.
- Gertrude Stein, Stanzas in Meditation

Image: Man and Woman I by Edvard Munch (1905)