Yeah, that's so unbelievably not fucking surprising. A weird amount of harassment I've gotten for being trans has been kinda (or occasionally extremely) sexual. Also the redder the area the more I get street harassment.

ETA: Oh upon reading the article, the city I'm thinking of (Lexington, KY, I basically couldn't take a walk without being catcalled there) is in the top 10 cities.

And yeah, anti trans bigotry is interesting because it seems to be an alliance of exterminationist bigotry ("x people should not exist or should be hidden and we should work towards that goal", examples of targeted groups include disabled people, Jewish people, and gay people) and supremacist bigotry ("x people are our lessers and must be forced into their place beneath us", anti black racism is the classic example). You have plenty of transphobes who just want us gone no matter what, but you also have quite a few who think our place is as discreet sex workers and are mad that we are insisting we deserve to live in society as equals and do whatever work we want. They were fine with us as prostitutes, but not as mechanics, as shameful side pieces but how dare we say we deserve to be spouses.

That perspective of us is deeply entwined in the insistence that anything pertaining to us is sexual. They look at us and reduce us solely to the lens of sex then condemn us for it. Then when some of us internalize that our only value as people is as sex objects they point and say "see look, we told you".