I want to preface this response by saying that I agree with you in some ways, but I think that this is much more nuanced -- and from one side it can be really hard to gauge how transgender women feel about things without the voice of one... I am also not every transgender person.
I certainly do not consider people with just transgender attraction to be " chasers" or fetishizing me, but I must confess I have been mean to men when I should not have been because I felt that I was being portrayed in a different way than I am. What I am trying to say is something like " are you a top or a bottom?" offends me. If the entire purpose of presenting as a woman in the first place is to get away from the social expectations of a man, then why am I now being given the social expectations of a gay man?
If you got in a relationship with a cisgender woman, you most likely wouldn't ask her if she was a top or a bottom. And that is my point. Whenever men treat transgender people like this, as if they are somehow different than the gender they identify with (what??), it is just as transphobic as calling me a man -- really. Because asking me these questions you would ask another man if you are going to have sex with them implies that I am another man you are going to have sex with. Ultimately then, if you think of me like this, you are still thinking of me as a man -- just a man who dresses as a woman, and that is being fetishized and objectified in a way that does not consider me and the problems I face associated with my identity at all, only the sexualization of me looking like a woman and having the sex organ of a male. They are fetishizing you being originally assigned as a man when this is the case, because they are thinking man in women's clothes -- a fetish -- not transgender women -- a gender identity which you can be sexually attracted to.
It IS unfortunate that men who are not like this are often lopped in with them, and I will be the first to admit I have done this before. But you have to understand that it is very much a minefield.
For some people, if not even your own significant other can understand you and still treats you like society does then it can feel incredibly hopeless to ever escape the boxes that the entire identity is about escaping.
It doesn't bother me if a stranger misgenders me, even intentionally. However, being treated like a man in my personal life really does bother me. Especially when it is so obvious that I am not. Even in heterosexual sex, I have had men say shit to me like " I'm going to make you c** like a girl" -- or " now you can make it feel like a girl" as if the gate was kept for me being classified as a woman until I touched their penis. THAT is fetishization, because you are disregarding my identity and the fact that I am transgender in order to get your " turning a crossdresser into a woman fetish". Because every time I have ever c**med, I did it like a girl, because I am a girl.
And I am one of the luckier transgender women, the majority of transgender women I meet I would say look " more manly" than me, or are at least perceived that way. I am intersex by sex, but AMAB (assigned male at birth), one example of a feature I have most other males do not have is my female hips. I have been on hormone therapy for quite some time. So if I have these problems in my personal life, then I would imagine most transgender women are. I've been with guys who wanted to do " prison roleplay" where I was meant to be a man in prison who was forced to be a woman in prison, and yeah -- not my cup of tea dude, cause once again i'm not a man dressed as a woman, I am a woman being perceived as a man. Even worse, by a sexual partner. Not very gender-affirming. Because people were stupid enough to link self expression to sex, I have to run away from a personality that i've never even had for a millisecond for my entire life, not only when it comes to policy and civil rights, but also in my personal life and relationships.
I can understand your frustration, but you have to understand we are also frustrated.
Yes, Cody's story is unfortunate for him... But there are also other members of the story, including Jackie -- who wants to be with a man but cannot because few men in her area are okay with others knowing that they are with her. I can tell you from experience it doesn't feel good no matter how much someone appreciates you if they are embarrassed of you.
For people like me, things can feel very hopeless. What I really want to do is get married and have children, but finding someone who would be alright with spending their life with you is infinitely difficult compared to finding someone who will have sex with you, which is infinitely easy.
So while I agree there is a problem, I don't think we are the problem or create the problem by treating men as fetishizers, only contribute to the problem, we both are contributing to this problem -- and so are men that are into something different than transgender women.
And to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with even liking transgender women who are dominant and use their PP, that's not the problem. Even being into crossdressers, not a problem. But transgender people and crossdressers are not the same thing, and it hurts my feelings when I am treated like a crossdresser because I am not one. Why many transgender women have disdain for crossdressers as well, because other people confuse us for each other. Some people even think Drag Race is what transgender women are. This is not the fault of the crossdressers though, but we are still being treated this way so we have a right to be upset about it I think. The problem is that if they were a cis woman, you wouldn't assume those things, you wouldn't assume they want to do what a man does in the bedroom. There are plenty of women who peg men, but you would never assume that this is what a woman would want to do, and in fact you should assume quite the opposite because that is typical of a woman, unless notified differently.
Without trans-attracted men, 100-percent I would have already killed myself. I remember very early on I was at a bar and was receiving all these compliments from guys, and it really was like a coming to confidence story for me. I had never really experienced appreciation for what I was, and feeling that appreciation for the first time honestly pulled me out of a very dark place I was at the time. So I am thankful for men who treat transgender people correctly... But this is probably 4/10 men that I deal with romantically. The vast majority will say or do something really fucked up before it is over, so I am sorry that the rest of the men have to always be suspect for being like those guys.
To conclude, I think it needs to be said that you can be attracted to transgender people but still hold transphobia as the driving factor for that attraction.
If you are not viewing transgender women as " real women", but are attracted to them, then you are taking advantage of the fact I am a woman to get off on your fetish that has nothing to do with me other than that I am an AMAB person who wears different clothes and has boobs.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being skoliosexual, or gynosexual as some of these men might be. Nothing wrong with having preferences, either, whether this is in sex, gender, or otherwise.
What I do have a problem with is men asserting that I am something I am not (a guy in a dress) for their sexual interest. Nothing transphobic about transgender attraction, but very transphobic to assert male social roles onto a transgender person, or have them play as a " forced-feminized man"
