There's a lot of conservative men who see themselves as straight, and don't accept that trans women are "actual" women, who find themselves attracted to them an

There's a lot of conservative men who see themselves as straight, and don't accept that trans women are "actual" women, who find themselves attracted to them anyways. These three beliefs are contradictory: accepting two of them requires compromising on the third. The three options, in short, are: 1. If they're straight and they're attracted to trans women, then that must mean they see trans women as women in some way. This would require that they re-examine their bigotry toward trans women, which many of them are unwilling to do. 2. If they're attracted to trans women but don't accept that trans women are women, then they must not be straight. This is an aspect of their identity that they are almost never willing to compromise on, as it usually just isn't true, it would jeopardize their masculinity in their view, and (even in the rare case where they actually aren't straight) it would require re-examining their bigotry toward gay men. 3. If they're straight and don't accept trans women aren't women, then they must not be really be attracted to them. Unlike the other options, this one does not require re-examining any bigotry or jeopardizing their masculinity, just a lot of denial and repression, so it tends to be more popular. One traditional "fourth option" to this is the idea of the "trap", that trans women (or at least the attractive ones) are really just gay men pretending to be women so they can maliciously "trap" straight men into having sex with them. This doesn't really resolve the contradiction as much as it gives them something to hate to distract them from it.