Gender essentialism is useful for those who utilize it because it allows for a complete and total enabling of abuse from all angles. To label all men and/or masc-aligned people as inherently predatory and all women and/or fem-aligned people as inherently victims excuses behavior as either a symptom of an immutable, nature-based trait or as literally impossible, depending on which group you are shuffled into. To acknowledge the behavior typically associated with cis men is nurtured by society and completely within our power collectively to change is far less convenient than the idea that this is simply how things are. Especially so if you are interested in denying the victimhood of members of the former camp/the abusive actions of members of the latter. Nothing will ever improve if we continue to fall into this way of thinking, especially as trans people who have experienced our society’s gender dynamics in a fundamentally different way to the average cis person. It absolutely must be purged and we must acknowledge that while society may influence and incentivize certain behavior, it isn’t an inherent trait and therefore individuals must be able to be treated as just that- individuals whose capacity for harm or to be harmed is in no way an inditement upon their identity, let alone anyone else’s.