> Is it possible that these phenomena relate to the seemingly explosive rise in transgenderism?

No. Being transgender is not the result of having imbalanced hormone levels. The proof is the fact that giving trans women testosterone doesn't "cure" their gender dysphoria (it may actually make it worse), and same goes for giving trans men estrogen.

> Particularly MtF, which is much more common than the reverse.

Not true. This is an artifact of the fact that, for decades, sexologists were primarily only interested in studying MtF people, and that the transgender population was only measured in terms of who was allowed to transition (and, like the sexologists studying it, the doctors who prescribed hormones significantly favored MtF patients).

It turns out that when you remove the gatekeeping bullshit and actually measure the real trans population, not just the population of people allowed to medically transition, people transition in both directions at approximately the same rate (meaning the MtF population is about the same size as the FtM population).

> The proof is the fact that giving trans women testosterone doesn't "cure" their gender dysphoria

Interesting! I was wondering about this the other day. Do you have any links?

I don’t have any links off the top of my head, but it’s generally accepted by the medical community at this point that the only effective treatment for gender dysphoria is to transition. I’d try to dig up links but I’m on mobile and the brief search I just did only talks about cross-sex hormone therapy (though the lack of quick info on same-sex hormone therapy itself is a big clue that it doesn’t work).

By occam's razor, I have to wonder the same thing. Also it seems there is already some tenuous evidence that being exposed to artificial hormones in-utero can be correlated with transgenderism [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_defects_of_diethylstilbe... - section: sexual differentiation

I've always wondered that.

It would be quite difficult to determine if transgenderism is more common now than it once was, or if we're more open to recognizing and helping people who are transgendered.

Makes me wonder if there are any "endocrine disruptors" that work in the opposite direction.

All human Zygotes start out as female, and a burst of androgens makes some fetuses develop male sexual characteristics. If those androgens aren't released, the child retains female sexual presentation, even if they have XY chromosomes. As is commonly mentioned, this is why men have nipples even though they're not functional for men.

According to my very weak understanding, it's easier to prevent that from happening than it is to accidentally introduce enough xenoandrogens to cause a XX fetus to develop male sexual characteristics.

Surprisingly, the only things I can find suggesting the existence of xenoandrogens seem to be attempts to sell me things.

I wonder why.

Your sentiment echoes my own:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939166

I would love a reliable way to measure Birth Control and SSRIs in the water, and compare it to decades ago. I feel like there's a good chance these are "sleeper issues" affecting global health (in addition to the plastics as discussed).

Maybe somewhere there's an ice core that's saved representative water from the decades?

Regarding estrogens from BC in the water, some fish findings are quite suggestive:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/birth-control-pill-threat...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160304092230.h...