This is just from the top of my head, but I suppose that it goes back to first principles: gender essentialism is a key ideology organizing society and extending to sexism, homophobia, genderism and transphobia. Then gender essentialism dictates broad sets of behaviors that are based on cisgender and heterosexual expectations, including sex temperament.

It may not come up often, but as long as it is visible as a distinct “thing” then it can get you in trouble. A cis-passing trans person might not get everyday harassment etc, but that does not mean there is no murderous transphobia. Similarly, a demisexual cis man can get in trouble because not being enthusiastic about women can have him pegged as gay etc, so he has to pretend he is consumed by sex drive to fit it. Then there is all the social BS asexual people get which includes negative stereotypes (like being repressed latent homosexuals and/or SA survivors) and overall diminishing their voice, like “it must be …anything else” except for you not genuinely want sex or being attracted to people of any gender.

There might not be pogroms against asexual people, but that doesn’t mean there is not invisibility and discrimination once you scratch the surface. It can go as far as life and family benefits that are structured around the expectation that people get sexually and romantically involved, form core families, bring up kids. Not only parents and relatives might get nosy if you are not dating or have a family by a certain age, but there might be salary and welfare adjustments that also make these assumptions.

Being asexual is connected to the main oppressions queer and trans people face and there is no reason to take asexual oppression less seriously than sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, because it is interacting with those.

Suggesting Jordan Peterson as someone who “earnestly tried to respond to the question”.

They realized that their previous strategy does not work. Now they desperately need the vote of the most desperate constituents.

MUCH, MUCH worse

Emphasis placed wisely

Oh dear, I saw that.

And immediately looked away.

they are told all the time that “cis-phobia” is just as big of a deal or a bigger deal than transphobia

This is mind-blowingly stupid. These people did not know the term cis three years ago, not even in the context of organic chemistry, and now it’s a bigger problem that transphobia.

I am sorry to hear that.

The Cass Review was a study the British government asked for. British institutions have been influenced by trans-exclusionary politics. TERF, rad-fem, or gender-critical views are related to a fringe 1970s flavor of feminism, but in the 2010s has taken the meaning of any transphobic woman and also any transphobic person or movement.

Rowling, the author of Harry Potter has bank-rolled similar individuals and groups. Most importantly, the Cass Review and the Supreme Court ruling are considered moves made by Rowling and other transphobes to roll back trans rights in the UK. The Supreme Court ruling was followed up by an EHRC guidance, an organization that was criticized for transphobic views before.

After the guidance there is a widespread witch hunt of trans people in public bathrooms in the UK, which is similar to many Southern US “bathroom bills”. Following the Cass Review, there were many critics of its methods and conclusions, but the UK blindly chose to stop treating young trans people. A clinical trial was designed, a scientific test to see if a treatment is effective, for puberty blockers.

These are drugs that stop some sex-specific hormones from causing changes to the body to make it sexually mature (like growing hair in places, developing muscle mass, growing breasts), because these changes might cause discomfort to young trans people.

A scientist in the team doing the trial stopped it, and several transphobic media wrote about it. They claimed the study stopped because it was considered harmful for participants. This is a talk-point of TERFs, who want these treatments to be prohibited altogether.

It turns out that the scientist who caused the trial to stop was a TERF himself, and another scientist said there was no real reason for it to stop. The scientist who stopped the study was taken out of the team, because his beliefs could make the result less fair.

The media that wrote about stopping the trial are now writing a lot about taking him out of the team, and it seems they try to make it appear as censorship of TERF views.

I hope this helps.