It was around 25 or so years ago, when some of them joined protests against anti-gay laws here, when USSR dissapeared and goverment was thinking which laws import from USSR and which don't. They were there for the gay cause, as they all were homosexual. I was in my early 20s. My thoughts were absolutely same as now about such type of transgender/transsexual people - they just want to silently live with a man, and do not want any attention, they want to blend up with people and live normal lives, just like LGB people do.

If you mean transgenders of new wave, then it was around 4-5 years ago, when my ex-boyfriend went living to Russia, and was met there with homophobia, he seems to break down, and decided that he is straight woman now, and not a gay man, to make life easier. He started taking hormones, even made some face surgery (but not bottom one and don't want to make bottom one), however, he went full crazy on genderqueer ideology, so he started believing and saying things like: "I am better woman than women, because I have all advantages of being man and no disadvantages of women - I have beauty and boobs, I will never get pregnant or have periods, I have male brain, so can be bro for men", often going hard on women too, especially with male/female brain stuff, assuming that males are much smarter, and similar things. He made me genderqueer theory sceptical. And then Vancouver Rape Relief situation happened and made me gender critical. And in my circles I was least gender critical for a long time, as majority of transsexuals/transgenders I know - all were heavily gender critical.