The reasoning in the screenshot there is: 1. "I, a heterosexual man, am attracted to female people of all ages, including, explicitly, very young girls." 2. "You are attracted to male people the way I am attracted to female people, so you must be implicitly attracted to boys."

The same person would doubtlessly defend their self-identified attraction to minors with some evopsych nonsense about how it's "natural" to prize youth, while also insisting that it's harmless because they are constrained by accepting social bounds and fear of consequences.

But a person who is openly or identifiably gay has stepped outside of at least one boundary the homophobe strongly feels should constrain everyone, and may also be the subject of an otherwise rare opportunity for the adult male homophobe to imagine unwanted sexual attention.

So, the predatory tendencies that the homophobe allows to fester and possibly even wallows in within himself is projected onto gay people, cast as being "unnatural" in the same way that it is "natural" within himself, and then becomes a serious problem that must be addressed.

I'm referring to a male homophobe in these tweets as I suspect this is a strongly gendered phenomenon, but it's hardly exclusively the province of one gender. See Germaine Greer, and also the misogynistic apologetics of grown women who are quick to believe girls "tempt" grown men

@AlexandraErin @molly0xFFF Every accusation is a confession.

@AlexandraErin Is there a single conservative who isn’t a pedophile? Seems unlikely

@AlexandraErin “it’s fine when I do it, somehow”

@AlexandraErin He really just tried to pull a "we are ALL pedophiles on this blessed day :)" like it was nothing

@AlexandraErin It’s PEAK “my experiences are universal truth”

@AlexandraErin God you could write a doctoral thesis on that paragraph, but the core is "Liking women is fine. Liking men is fine. Liking girls is fine. Liking boys is wrong." UH hang on go back one???

@AlexandraErin Thanks to people like Ray Blanchard and Michael Seto, teleiophilia (sexual attraction to adults) means over 15±3. To be consistent with other chronophilias, it uses Tanner stages instead of age. Transphobes define pedophilia around their attraction to minors.

@AlexandraErin @hungrybowtie if you've ever interacted with catholic posters, this is the one move; they do the no true scotsman and "they were gay and not part of the church"; they're locked in, there's so much abuse they see in their church & this is how they ignore it

@AlexandraErin "I am a pedophile, therefore you are a pedophile" is a hell of an argument.

@AlexandraErin The last people I want to be bothered with are children. I barely want to be bothered with ADULTS. The Peter Pan syndrome of eternal youth by association is a toxic masculinity/patriarchy psychosis, not a sexual identity.

@AlexandraErin Similar reasoning: If a man is willing to r*pe someone he expects that a gay man would do the same to him.

@AlexandraErin So much of anti-LGBTQ bigotry is rooted in unexamined anti-maleness, meaning an ingrained belief that within all men lies a dormant sexual predator waiting to emerge, and that desire to predate is what motivates gay/trans folks. It’s a real self-indictment