Because back then, they were transvestites. They often had surgery (sometimes minimal, sometimes maximal) and went to great effort to look the part.... and they NEVER, EVER claimed to be actual, women. The ONLY women-only spaces they would attempt to enter were public toilets, where they were somewhere between accepted and tolerated by women.
The situation now is very different. Transgender identified males demand access to ALL women-only facilities, without exceptions - toilets, changing rooms, spas & health clubs, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centres, women's hospitals and women's wards in general hospitals and prisons. They will scream from the rooftops any time a space, however small, is reserved for woman (see Tickle v Giggle in Australia). As an obvious, biological male, I can now waltz right into a women's toilet, and if challenged, can say the magic words "I am a woman" and there is NOTHING the women in there can do to remove me. If they try THEY will be labelled as transphobes, if they try to remove me physically, I can make an assault complaint, and THEY can be charged with assault.
This is the world YOU advocate that we ought to be living in