It's a slow drip cocktail of a reprogramming effort to "shock the monkey" into full on acceptance. It's been going on for ages, we're the lucky recipients of the end result....
So true. And it's civilization-wide. If you take a look at the nations that have adopted the policy, you will quickly notice they're all Western.
It has more to do with the contagion you describe than it does with any real world considerations.
I think this is a lost cause we're simply obliged to fight, though. Going back to De Tocqueville, Democritization is an almost inexorable force in the modern world. When you successfully attach a cause to the success of Democritization, you have made a potent political weapon out of it. When you're able to stick something as being against Democritization, the weapon is even more potent.
In short, those who oppose transgenderism itself are associated with the people who protested racial integration of schools in the 1950's. We're all tossed into the same picket line though that isn't where we belong.
I also think that is to what we can attribute the success of the modern Pro-Life movement. Two movements on the opposite sides of the aisle, but we can attribute their success to the same thing...funny.