I ran across a story which was said to be "one of the best TG stories ever", or something like that. It was well-written, I'll give it that, but -- if I had to make my own list of 100 favorite TG stories, it would not make the list. It had an interesting idea, but not enough for me to read the whole thing a second time.

I can only speculate as to why someone would call it "best", but I couldn't help noticing that it was what I would describe as rather "masculine." It was from the point of view of a (male) gangster and it was, loosely speaking, in the Sam Spade / Micky Spillane tradition. To the extent women appeared, they were merely props, objects in the protagonist's journey to redemption.

As a life-long feminist, I'm aware that Serious Literature is accused of being quite sexist, not only in terms of who can be a Serious
Writer, but also what is considered appropriate subject matter. Books, poetry, plays and movies, etc., that deal with "masculine" subjects -- war, conquest (including sexual), or men's lives and deaths -- are considered Serious. (Ignoring the humanity of female characters -- if there are any -- earns bonus points.) Those that deal with things that are usually left to women to deal with -- family, marriage, children, emotional relationships, etc. -- and especially those which center the point of view of the female characters are considered "chick lit" and thus inherently Not Serious. Lists of "most important books," etc., invariably consist mostly if not entirely of works by men on masculine topics. It's all part of the overall trend of valuing what is important to men, especially men from privileged groups, over other voices.

I wonder if some of that prejudice is carried over in people's judgement of TG literature.

The thing is, if the point of TG literature is to provide narratives that are specifically meaningful to TG people (since non-TG literature mostly ignores the existence of TG people and, in the few cases that do recognize their existence, it fetishizes them), I think that stories that are "good" in conventional (cis male) terms are going to be "bad" in terms of telling stories that speak specifically to us. Just as literature that speaks to women's experience will seem weak and trivial when viewed in masculine-centered terms, so literature that speaks to trans women's experience will seem confused, illogical, deranged, overly emotional, and focussed on trivialities and irrelevancies when viewed from a cis perspective. One of the things I like about Bailey Summer's writings, for instance, is how they get inside the minds of TG people and of the people in their lives. Other authors use childlike and even clunky language to get inside the experience of TG children (and of abused TG children.) These are the stories I read and reread and download so I can read them when I need validation in the middle of the night.

And, IMHO, that's about as fair a criterion for "best" as I can come up with. (YMMV of course.)