The "bash gays" play started not working and backfiring in the early 00s and conservatives had to look around for their next target to other and demonize and settled on trans people as a group that was still vulnerable enough to run effective attacks on.

You think that started turning after Matthew Shepard?

if you look at conservative propaganda they also conflate it to like, people with lots of piercings, or women who dye their hair unnatural colors. ultimately it's just trying to find people who are different in their community and other them bsky.app/profile/insa...

They keep targeting smaller and smaller groups hoping we don’t know someone in that group. Black people, Jewish people, single women, gay people, trans people… the out group will be small conservatives will blame everything on one person no one knows or can find because they aren’t on social media.

My memory is it started more in the early teens following the rapid collapse of gay bashing as a political strategy after it was highly effective for them in '04.