It is the obligation of THAT person to provide evidence, since they are making the claim that it is some "evil toxin in the environment".
Alternatively, quotes are sometimes used in a dismissive manner, but it would be unusual for an author to be dismissive of a word and yet find value in introducing it into a conversation.
Could that be explained by the unfortunate lack of trans acceptance?
Not necessarily, there are other possibilities, for example the mechanism might not be lack of male hormones, but elevated female hormones, or environmental contaminant analogs thereof.
The hormone panel is typically T,E1,E2, but human hormonal pathways are complex[2] and not fully understood. There are, for examples, hypotheses involving "backdoor" pathways that should/could be verified, but aren't due to lack of research funding directed toward an admittedly small group of people.
1. That's not to say all or even most, but it is very very common.
2. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Diag...
How well documented is this, like when this has been tried has it been done as part of a formal medical study? What I'm really hoping is someone can say something like "here's the randomized controlled trial comparing treatments".
Well, that's not quite accurate. (a) there isn't a large increase of trans people, historically speaking, just folks being more open and honest about their status recently, since it's become marginally less punished in a few specific places, than it has been prior, and (b) in recent years, trans men or transmasc folks are the largest group of those new influx, not trans women.
> There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen
If people were getting estrogen in the environment that they didn't want in any amount meaningful enough to effect them, you'd wouldn't expect to see more trans women (trans women, generally speaking, are usually deficient in estrogen), you'd expect to see more dysphoric men. You'd expect to see a sharp increase in cis men presenting with ED and gynecomastia and such. (Which, to be fair, is a thing we're seeing. But so far, appears to be mainly linked to increasing obesity rates)
> Maybe they would even benefit more from hormone treatments in the opposite direction than the "gender affirming" treatments.
This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. So barbaric in fact, that it's been outlawed in many nations -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy for more info
It does feel like I've seen more men with more than just regular moobs, who aren't necessarily otherwise severely obese. The trans women I know have less shapely breasts even though they're deliberately taking hormones, and it's a bit bizarre. Not a huge amount, but enough to notice.
> This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
It is barbaric to not even consider a different point of view because it opposes your religion (yes, I think it is a religion at this point)
Sorry if I appear harsh, but I believe that in a couple of decades we will look back at what the pharma industry is doing to "trans" people as we look back on lobotomy now.
The world has changed quite a lot in recent decades in ways that have substantial impact on how much info is available, how much an individual can explore their own internal identity and myriad other things and it's unfortunately mostly not talked about in those terms.
We also pass out medicalized labels for all kinds of things that used to be handled differently. A child who might have been labeled shy at one time might get diagnosed with selective mutism these days and receive an IEP at school for it.
It's a really complicated topic. This is a big forum. It's not really a question that's likely to get meaningfully hashed out here in some good faith fashion that has some hope of moving things forward, either scientifically or in terms of human rights.
If you are seriously curious about this, I suggest you explore it more quietly than tossing out questions on a front page post on HN. It's not that such questions cannot be asked and explored, it's just this is a really tough way to do it and have it go good places.
Same question is of my interest as well and I find local community to be well openminded compared to other online communities where raising this kind of question will be widely perceived as offence to vocal trans community.
That's one of many spaces where we can openly bring it up and respectfully discuss.
It's quite difficult to explore the topic on your own without hearing other people.
Why?
In my experience, that's how one typically finds good info and meaningful feedback and does so with less pain than can be involved in standing on a big stage in front of everyone with a bullhorn and blaring their "controversial" supposed "position" to the world, knowing the world will scream back, often without making any real effort to understand what was actually said -- or so it can feel on the receiving end.
Personally I am open to any discussions as it is the only way known so far to explore and understand other people.
Certainly there may and probably will be some pushback and some people may get offended along the way. And that's alright. It shouldn't be the reason for censoring or shunning any topics. Nowadays we have growing share of people in society who are offended with anything and it's a sign of immaturity, not a healthy discussion.
Adults on the contrary, are called adults because among other things they can look at stuff and openly discuss everything, particularly things that may not portray them well.
Shunning discussion because it can hurt someone leads to large misunderstanding on subjects and multiplies weird beliefs that have nothing to do with reality.
I also wasn't telling you, in specific, what to do.
It was a good faith suggestion of best practices based on substantial experience with being very controversial and trying to find a path forward on my interests under circumstances where my willingness to debate, my ability to be thick-skinned and so forth were not getting me the desired results and were coming at an excessive cost.
I've expressed disagreement with your PoV and explained why when you asked.
We have exchanged opinions and that's great. Let's not dig further.
Have a good day.
The front page is the perfect place for such communication, the lack of truly social discourse and individualistic isolation is what creates such reactionary tension while trying to reconcile all the distortions in the zeitgeist of the world.
I think mental stressors of such social failure is whats leading to such childish ideas that adults seem to preoccupy their lives with today, and environmental pollution is definitely contributing to bringing those about.
I didn't suggest it should be.
I will note that so far I have two replies, both nominally "arguing against" my supposed "position" here. Both strike me as a wild misinterpretation of what I have said.
And that's exactly why tossing out questions or comments on a front page post on a large forum can be problematic.
Which isn't to say one should never do such. But it's frequently not exactly gratifying.
"One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as left-handed could be related to the same factors that are causing ..."