The whole association of trans women with incels/MRAs is of course a deliberate campaign of misgendering-by-proxy, intended to say "you are like cis men and unlike cis women in this specific way", and is in any case irrelevant to the extent to which trans women are deserving of sympathy for the incredible levels of suffering they are undergoing right now. That said, I have been wondering if some of this supposed connection is based on misconstrued thought patterns from closeted transfems.
For example, I was in my late teens/early twenties during the "new atheism"/gamergate era, i.e. exactly the right age for it, but the whole thing sort-of passed me by somehow and I didn't even know about gamergate until after it was over. That said, one or two MRA ideas did leak into my world, specifically relating to a frustration with the perceived bad choices women often make when it comes to romantic partners.
To be clear, this wasn't coming from a desire for these women to date me instead, since I was in a relationship at the time anyway and (though I didn't know the word then) was asexual too. Rather, as someone who had spent a lot of time alone with men (at single-sex schools), I knew a lot about their inner lives, motivations, body language, etc, and was frustrated that my female friends just jumped into relationships with men who (to me) showed all the danger signs of being abusive, without paying any attention if I tried to explain my logic.
I expressed the belief that almost always a woman is far better off remaining single than dating a man, and if she must date someone why not a woman instead? (Though over time I realised that this view might be interpreted as fetishistic of lesbians, so I stopped saying it).
The fact that I was myself (apparently) a man dating a woman constantly filled me with anxiety, no matter how much I was characterised by romantic partners as "not like other men" or whatever. Because of this I worked really hard to reverse the usual heterosexual power dynamics in my relationships, e.g. taking on 90% of the housework and emotional labour, something that is amusing to look back on knowing the underlying reason why that happened.
So hearing a political movement expressing the view, "it's frustrating that women date bad men," felt like something I could agree with, only when I researched other views of this movement did I find what it really stood for. Specifically the difference between, "it is frustrating [for me] that women date bad guys [because they should be dating me instead]" (which is what they meant by it), and, "it is frustrating [for women] that women date bad guys [due to patriarchal/comphet pressure and an insufficient awareness of the warning signs and inability to escape when they find out]" (which is what I meant by it), is one that eluded me and tricked me into initially agreeing with an MRA assertion.
In hindsight, my views were actually those that are really common for lesbians, e.g. the groan you let out when your friend announces a new boyfriend, and knowing that you're going to have to meet this guy and pretend to like him. But as someone who thought of myself as a man, I started to panic that in agreeing with this one MRA position I was actually saying something really bad and misogynistic, and made a point from that point on of doing the opposite of how I felt, vocally celebrating my female friends' male partners, even when I deep down could tell that they would be abusive in private. Ironically, in my desire to not be a misogynist, I ended up being insufficiently critical of misogynists, because men who are critical of women's romantic partners are presumed to be acting with predatory intent.
So, this is pure speculation, but I sometimes wonder how many other closeted trans girls found themselves feeling guilty for repeating what they thought of as MRA talking points, things that, if contextualised as said by a woman, would have been perfectly normal and reasonable and actually pro-feminist.
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