why do transphobes mention pedophiles/compare them to pedophiles when most trans people (as do most people) hate pedophiles?

Everybody hates pedophiles, so by calling [insert group here], pedophiles then you get most people to hate you.

Since at least the 1970s and probably much earlier, any and all non-heterosexual people have been painted as pedophiles by right wing / conservatives.
Indeed, a lot of the pedophile panic these days is driven by those people, because it is one of the few things they can get everyone to hate, and that hate often shuts down nuance and reason, and while real pedophiles are a problem, they want to expand that unthinking hate, that knee jerk 'burn the heretic' reaction to more people.
This is the reason we now see people attacking even completely fictional media, because they're trying as hard as possible to slippery slope it.

It's projection they don't want to remove pedophiles from their own ranks, and demonizing a scapegoat minority group they can blame their own failures on.
They really wish these articles were about trans people instead of clergy
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2021/03/are-catholic-clergy-more-likely-to-be-paedophiles-than-the-general-public-redux/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/06/23/evangelical-leaders-sexual-abuse-gateway-church-sbc/74127494007/
https://religionnews.com/2025/01/15/more-than-5-billion-spent-on-catholic-sexual-abuse-allegations-new-report-finds/

Because it's sexual and they aren't developed to believe sex exists

Everyone is right; its an easy way to equate "deviancy" and to deny people rights. Its not just LGBT+; whenever nazis want to make a group of people a target, they accuse them of being "rapists" or "pedophiles." The OG Nazis accused the Jews of wanting to molest Aryan women. Just look at Birth of a Nation. Or Trumps comments about Mexicans being rapists. It is also just generalized dehumanizing language.
But also: there is power in redefining "pedophilia." It lets them attack LGBT+ by calling them "groomers" but then involve the services of inspectors who exist to... "verify" genitalia? It allows them to bring back child marriage or protect powerful clergy or rich assholes like Epstien, while attacking gay marriage. Libertarians attack the age of consent and want to bring back child labor. Everything becomes pedophilia except actual pedophilia. The real question becomes, why, when one has enough money or institutional power to do anything, like go to space or buy a senator to protect your wealth systemically, why does become extremely interested in fucking children?

It's not meant to make sense. It's meant to make you shut down any argument in favor of giving non heterosexual people human rights. That's all.

Because clearly the only reasons to change your gender is to creep on women and children in changing rooms/public toilets, and for cheating at women's sports that pay a fraction of the male sports in winnings.
I'm afraid there's just no other way that those activities can be done!
- Seems like a lot of effort to creep on women. You'd have to be the most determined individual on the planet to change your sex just for that purpose. Too bad people have absolute dogshit critical thinking skills in general. They cannot comprehend how ridiculous or impractical their views are :-/

If you have some time, some months ago I shared an article that I think explains that (and how that argument started decades ago with gay people and then moved to trans people now) in !lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org: https://beehaw.org/post/12888662

They are conflating trans healthcare for children with pedophilia.

There is an ongoing attempt to create an equivalence of Trans Persons (and anyone exposing youth to LGBTQ+ ideas in any form, including loving families) to pedophiles through CONSTANT repetition, despite any lack of widespread evidence. There is also a simultaneous attempt to strongly advocate for death penalty for pedophiles. I'm sure you can see where this is heading ......
- Also, pedophiles are not all child molesters and vice versa.
  In fact, most child abusers are not pedophiles. They victimize children not because they are children but because they are easy prey.
  It's about the power and control. If their victims weren't children, they'd be called sociopaths or psychopaths.
  Pedophilia can be easily treated but because of hate-mongers who have conflated these two things, many fear they'll be arrested if they seek help. Even if they've never done anything wrong. Some do become abusers because they feel like they have no safe way of dealing with their feelings.
  Trying to equate LGBTQ to pedophilia is using misinformation and lies to hurt and scare.
  It's the ultimate in hate and ignorance.
- Mass purge of the Republican Party and owner class?
  
  Only if justice was class blind, but it’s not.
  
  If the Republican Party can purge the United Kingdom they deserve the win that's impressive range.
- The question I want answered is was the (fake) word "pedosexual" made up by them or by trolls making fun of them?
  
  "Pedosexual" was a false flag operation by 4channers to try and make people think LGBTQ folks supported pedos.

Your mistake is believing that everyone is acting logically or in good faith.
- Or, as it's often the case, informed! Many people hate not just out of ignorance but also because everyone else is doing it but they don't know why.
  During the Lavender Scare, some homophobic government officials had to be explicitly informed what being gay meant because they were operating/ruining lives on a vague idea. :/

Because children are almost always used as an excuse for hating something you don't really understand. They're a group that can't speak for themselves, so it's easy to frame everything as "think of the children".

As someone who used to, although with gay not trans people, I believed that gay people were sexual deviants and that society accepting them would then go on to accept paedos, and that accepting deviancy was the problem that should be stopped.
Contrary to what others have posted I didn't conflate gay people with paedos, or label the two groups as equivalent, except in that I thought they were both deviant.

most paedophiles are cis men. Cis women paedophiles absolutely dwarf paedophiles trans people even when accounting for population.
It turns out, people who violate others don't need to go through years of doctor's visits and dehumanizing bureaucracy to breach someone's boundaries.
It's just the same fascist projection repeated ad nauseum because it works. You immediately have to go on the defensive and tiptoe around the taboo subject of paedophilia instead of actually challenging their assumptions. Anything less gets you accused of accepting child abuse, which is just the first step repeated again. By the time you've even addressed the claims, anyone worth reaching out to has logged off and the fascists have inched closer to the levers of the state.
It never was about paedophilia, or rape, or abuse, or sports. It's about exploiting emotions and appealing to a constructed idea of "common sense" that can tie you up in its endless tendrils so they can ignore you and dehumanise you more efficiently.

Transphobes aren't using logic. They try to brand us as pedophiles to try to get rational people on their side and to normalize hate, but it's a distraction. We're obviously not pedos.
It also serves dual purpose because most transphobes look up to politicians who are literal pedos
- Yuuup. Ten times out of ten it's a republican politician who needs to "think of the children" a lot less.
- Of the infinitesimally small percentage who might be, (a) it has absolutely nothing to do with them being trans and (b) I wager they'd be less likely to act on it than cis pedos since the risk of violence is already significantly higher just from being trans. Not to defend pedos in any way- we want absolutely nothing to do with them
  Use your brain

This is how propaganda works. Take something you want people to hate, and insist that it is equivalent to something people already hate.

projection, they are most likely pedophiles themselves, or pedos in the closet that hadnt SA a child yet. Also seen this with people bragging that they know a pedo.
- yes that's the spirit

It's just to alienate and villainize the people they don't like. Image someone as criminal and disgusting and other people will grow the same feeling. It's what, Trump does too, with immigrants and trans people. Hitler did the same with jews. Spreading hate 101.

It’s actually a very simple ploy they’ve used since before I was born (I’m not young). Anything they can paint as sexual, or that actually is out of the sexual “norm,” they will use as a scapegoat. They used it against blacks (coming after their white women), gays, and now trans. Pedophilia and rape are the two Worst Things, and if they can tie the Bad Guy du jour, that equals fear-votes. The best kind of right wing votes in all the land.

To distract from the fact that their churches are literal child rape conveyor belts
- it's all part of the childist propaganda that says only people from outside of the family could ever hurt children when reality says otherwise. hence the church calling themselves God's family, priests being called father, paternalistic bs like that
- Are you telling me that lesbians weren't allowed to get married because their was no groom(ing)?

As you said, most people hate pedophiles. So by constantly labeling trans people as pedophiles, transphobes are trying to get most people to hate us.

It's very basic 'think of the children' rhetoric.
Our emotions are more easily manipulated in this way, because generally people are hard wired to protect babies and children.
So by associating trans people with paedophiles, right wingers are able to more easily hijack into what would otherwise be rational people. It also makes it more difficult to debate against because nobody wants to be labelled as someone who wants to hurt kids.
- Best answer here. So much overthinking in this thread. Nope, OP nailed it, that simple, nothing need be added.

Pure propaganda.
Just before I left the right, some people admitted it was a "noble lie", to uphold male supremacy, as if one is able to change their gender why should they even stay in highly abusive relationships.
Of course true believers will eat up the "protect the children" line, but the opportunists just want be able to beat their wives into a bloody bulb, who will still love them after all of that, they just want a stronger "cisheteronormativity".

I think a lot of it comes from thought correlation traps that people easily fall into. The path goes as such
Guys, going into girls bathrooms are creepy sex perverts. -> Guys pretending to be girls going into girls bathrooms are even creepier sex perverts. -> Pedophiles are the creepiest of sex perverts -> Trans people are creepy pedophiles
It's all baseless assumption and bias, and full of logical fallacy's but an incredibly easy train of thought that follows normalized cultural perceptions for decades. That's why people get stuck on those issues, when it really shouldn't be a big deal at all.
- baseless
  incredibly easy
  The two criteria for whether a MAGA hat can be wrapped around a concept

Projection.

Because to them it's all weird sex shit.
Just like everyone not Christian "worships Satan"

Because 'protecting the children' is really effective, as most people want to protect children, especially their own.
Here's how I think it goes for a lot of people:
1: never have actually interacted with trans people
2: the first time you are introduced to trans people is a transphobic friend or pastor or podcast host or whoever. I believe it's most effective if the person is someone you trust, especially in a position of authority.
3: they tell you trans people are evil wicked perverts, and since you trust this person and have never heard of this before, you believe it. And besides, who doesn't want to protect children? Evil wicked perverts, that's who, and you are not an evil wicked pervert are you? (Personally, I theorise that people are most likely to believe and keep believing whoever happens to be the first person to tell them about a certain subject.)
4: chances are, this leads to you isolating yourself from anyone who could prove you this isn't true. If you somehow became friends with a trans person, you might understand that maybe they are not evil wicked perverts, but since your first reaction to learning someone is trans would be aggression, this is very unlikely to happen. (You could compare this to how cults isolate their members from people outside the cult to prevent them from encountering different perspectives that could change their mind.)
So, long story short: propaganda.

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.
- well done. best philosophical/psychological post in the thread.

Well considering they elected Epstein's closest friend (yeah it's on tape), I would'nt try to make sens out of this. They need to hate people, they usually pick the easiest target aka minorities.

People were once told that if you wore the clothes of the opposite sex, you were a pervert. If you wanted to be the other sex, you were a sexual deviant. And people who have no experience outside of these views TOLD to them find out there are people out there like that, they are perverted deviants who must be doing other deviant things to. That's how people connect the two. False logic and correlation based on ignorance.

95% because they're basically nazis.
puts on prof hat
Well, in some countries, there was indeed historical link between sexual/gender minorities and pedophile advocacy movements (well "movements" is kind of a strong word here) during the 1950s to 1980s. It's hard for us to understand today, but during my studies, I've worked on that topic and met a few people invested in creating or dismantling this link.
But :
It didn't last for long.
That's certainly not what they have in mind.
Most importantly, although public and documented cases exist, those minor parts of the LGBT movements were CERTAINLY NOT the strongest allies of the pedophile advocacy movement. Their strongest allies were actually well.. more probably from the ruling class.
- Anyone can be a pedophile, regardless of other characteristics. The major champions of actual sexual abuse of minors today are politically right wing. Compare age-of-consent laws in red states to blue, or advocacy/performance of child marriages, and a pattern appears.
  The conflation of evidence-based methods of sexual education with "sexualizing children" is a bald faced attempt to make kids more vulnerable. Kids trained in the importance of consent are far less likely to keep quiet when dealing with an abuser.
  I would not concede, as you have here, that there was ever any appreciable link between trans advocacy and sexual abuse advocacy. The fact that some people somewhere advocated for both is true of any movement of sufficient size.
  
  Mmh. Yeah. That's a sound point.
- Even back then those co-operations were very controversial (some pedophile advocacy group got doxxed then all of its members' lives destroyed by LGBT people, back in the eighties), or were stuff like "if the straights get to have AoC at 16 so we do".

if you believe that sex and gender are synonymous and assigned at birth then someone who doesn't like their gender becomes a walking contradiction.
any person with a healthy relationship to having their worldview challenged would see that and think "hey maybe i was taught wrong"
unfortunately for everyone on earth conservatives define themselves by thinking that what they were taught is the rightiest thing ever actually so that doesn't happen
as for why pedophiles specifically, they're a group of people who are so thoroughly hated any and all violence against them is 'justified'

Projection and prejudice, probably.

They took all the lessons learned from the satanic panic and the gay panic and applied them to the next target.

They are pedo projecting. Every accusation is a confession. The ones that call random people & groups pedos without any evidence like Musk does are telling on themselves.
- It's always this. History has borne it out.

FWIW, this was the same thing that homophobes were doing to gay people.
It's not based in evidence or logic.
Could be that phenomenon (illusory correlation?) where there are a few rare examples of someone who is [sexual minority aka. gay/trans] is also a pedophile, and that particular example of a crime becomes prolific...but the general population doesn't have any experience with [sexual minority] people. So they assume that being [sexual minority] means you also have pedophilic tendencies because that's the only connection they know thanks to that prolific crime.

Transgender people often (wrongly) get their gender identity conflated with their sexuality. Transphobes already have a visceral reaction to a transgender person, so those feelings automatically extend to how they see a transgender person's sexuality. And as others have mentioned they may be projecting their own perversions on other people. They have an unhealthy view of sexuality in general, which may be the origin for their transphobia aswell.
When I came out to my mother as transgender she had a hard time dealing with it. She seemed to have a weird fixation with my sexuality and sexual orientation whenever I tried to educate her on the subject, even after I explained to her that sexuality and sexual orientation is not related to my transgender identity.
My mom has always been a prude when it came to raising her boys and constantly would police our vocabulary and sexual jokes. But she had no issues making jokes and comments about my sexuality when I came out to her as a transgender woman. So I can only assume she had unresolved issues with the way she sees sexuality in a way that it makes her uncomfortable and she was projecting her own perversions and unhealthy view of sexuality onto my transgender identity. Because to her why else would I transition if not for my sexual perversions, since that's the only way she can see world.
On a side note, ever since I started my transition I pretty much stopped watching porn all together. I masturbate less and my mind isn't constantly fixated on sex and I'm able to experience the world through a much healthier lense. When I'm attracted to someone now, I'm not distracted by my sexual impulses as much and I'm much better able to connect with them as a person. So in short, embracing my transgender identity has dramatically decreased my uncontrolled sexual impulses. So when people paint us as some sort of deviant perverts, it's actually quite the opposite and nothing could be further from the truth. Not to mention, our sexuality is only a sliver of our transgender identity and we don't care for strangers making it a focus.

Apart from concerted sociopolitical efforts to make an underclass that can be harmed at will and blamed for everything, there's a couple of less deliberately malicious explanation for a lot of people.
1: Category violation -> perversion -> predator -> monster.
2: I don't think it's real -> they are lying -> why would they lie about gender -> to lull people into a false sense of security -> predator -> monster
Both are of course incredibly false and hateful, and both of course are pushed maliciously and cynically by many, but I think some people are actually taken in by one or other of these.

Once you call someone a pedo, that's it end of thought end of evidence. They are a oedo and so they are evil

when most trans people (as do most people) hate pedophiles.
People do not choose to be pedophiles just like gay people do not choose to be gay.
Its the way your brain is wired and hating people because of something out of their control force them into the shadows, prevent them from getting the help they need and make the problem much worse.
As long as a pedophile doesn't not commit a crime by acting on their desires, they don't deserve to be hated
- hard pill to swallow, but anyone allowing pedophiles to be treated as an underclass is part of falling for anti-queer propaganda and equating being weird with being dangerous to society. if someone has a weird paraphilia that isn't forced on someone else who can't consent then it's nobody's business. the only way to eliminate uncomfortable attractions is thought police or installing a chip in everyone's brains.
  it's why queer spaces turn fashy as soon as the furries, the neopronouns and the trans man lesbians aren't welcome anymore

most people already (unfairly) brand pedophiles as monsters, and so placing trans people into the same category as pedophiles is a way of alienating trans people from the "regular folk", marking them as the same "monsters" as "pedophiles".
to clarify on the "unfairly": pedophilia is a paraphilic disorder (a paraphilia (a subjectively "atypical" fetish) that, when satisfied, may bring harm to others), not a crime; attraction is not sexual assault.

It's just bigotry and there is no logic.

Because trans people are different, and they're afraid of different people. So they make assumptions that those people are somehow dangerous. Racism, xenophobia, transphobia; it's all the same stupid mentality.
- I actually agree with bigots that we are dangerous as trans people (to cisheteronormative society). the caveat is that we shouldn't give a fuck what they think since conforming to a violent society doesn't benefit trans people. it's why marginalizing pedophiles doesn't make child rape go away, because they're just a scapegoat for all the normal people and parents without any sexual attraction to their victims abusing children because of the power hierarchy

- Let me set something straight real quick --
  Pushing ideology: forcing someone to conform to a set of social standards that you believe should fit the body parts they were born with
  Not pushing ideology: validating that they have the freedom to feel or act differently than the cultural expectation
  The real "gender ideology" was cishet gender ideology this entire time.
- That's a load of shit. I'm sorry but it is. You don't need permission to tell someone to stay away from your kid. And the treatment for minors is puberty blockers. Not surgery. It's less life altering than getting a tattoo. Perpetuating hate because you need to give yourself permission to keep people away from your kids because you don't understand what's actually happening is just a load of shit.
  Do better.

projection, mostly. they can't imagine being in a women's space without taking advantage of it, and they don't understand that that's a them issue.
- idk, there's some truth to what you're saying but I don't think all those TERF women wanna abuse women's spaces. it's just socially beneficial for them to hate us because society encourages anti-queer violence. and that's the part that puts women's spaces in danger, being a minority. same for any marginalized identity

To transphobes, ANY acceptance of trans folks is too much acceptance. So, they try and spread propaganda that’s awful and scary. Unfortunately, enough ignorant people will believe it. When dealing with the general public, you almost can’t have a reasonable discussion on the topic without pedophilia coming up. The subject is complex enough, and this further muddies the waters, which is what transphobes want. Even though it’s been debunked, there’s now an association in some people’s minds between transsexuals and pedophilia.
Eventually people will laugh at this idea, and look at it the way we look at tragic paranoia like the Salem witch trials. Sadly, that won’t happen soon enough to help the people whose rights are being violated right now.

Because projection.

Can’t call em Nazis, so that’s the next worst thing on the list.

Projection is confession when one chooses to inflict pain on others and self.
They want to abuse children. By blaming trans folks, they ate seeing up “see they do it too!” as cover for their evil actions.

I think that because of hypersexualization in society, which includes, for example, sexualization of nudity, has led to a situation where anything related to sex that deviates from the so-called norm, is lumped together. This also leads to transgender people who support helping young people with gender dysphoria or just want to raise awareness and make transgenderism not be a taboo and therefore also be taught in schools/talked about in public, to be lumped together with anyone who associates sex with children. of course the sex part in transgender people talks about gender while the sex part in pedophiles talks about sexual intercourse, and these people are so close-minded that to them talking about sex and children instantly means pedophilia.
I think it's similar to people who consider nudist families to be incestual.
Of course there are also those who just can't accept anything that is different from them and therefore just blame them at being the worst possible thing they can think of that they see any sort of connection to. For example, people call other races monkeys because they are too different to them to consider them human and so they are more related to something that isn't human but is similar, and importantly inferior.
- I think you're correct except for your cause and effect conclusion.
  They've ALWAYS been saying these things. It wasn't caused by anything that's developed in the past 100 years.
  I would say that the "hypersexuality" is caused by people not listening to those fucks anymore.
  
  Hyper sexualization has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years, it's just that it has gotten way worse with the digital age.

Because people they shouldn't trust but do, lie to them.

Go ask one somewhere where they won't be banned for explaining it to u.
Plus what's ur goal here start a fight? Have a thread dunking on people who can't defend themselves without getting banned?
- People who bitch about being banned/blocked are always the most blockable/bannable human beings imaginable, istg.
- If there was some sort of evidence that would back up the explanation you wouldn’t get banned.
  You get banned because there is no reason other than hatred they are falsely labeled as pedophiles.
  It would be more accurate to say all conservatives or Christians are pedophiles. At least most of the documented instances have been.
- Something you'd like to share with us?
  
  Nar just pointing out the stupidity of asking such a question in such a place lol.