Sure. And the growth of the movie industry gave rise to left-handedness.

The movie industry started to boom in the early 1900s, which is precisely when left-handedness rates skyrocketed: https://i0.wp.com/slowrevealgraphs.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

We know we are adding a lot of environmental estrogens. Establishing a causal relationship between that fact and human behavior is hard, and may or may not exist.

Also I’m sure it would only explain part of the observed increase, since there are social factors at play.

There's a number of flaws with the "thesis" (to put it charitably):

- Not every trans person experiences gender dysphoria

- Trans people have existed historically and widespread non-binary gender identities have been observed in indigenous societies prior to modern pollution

- There are men who take estrogen for health benefits and they generally don't report gender dysphoria or desire to transition

- Men with low testosterone levels generally don't report gender dysphoria or desire to transition

- There's no literature whatsoever suggesting any link between hormone levels or other endocrinologic factors and gender dysphoria or the desire to transition

- Being openly trans was practically illegal and subject to mockery, harrassment and violence until fairly recently, even more so than being an openly gay man was

- Due to the "underground" nature of trans identities, many elder trans people lacked the language or concepts to express their identity, instead landing on more socially acceptable identities (e.g. gay men or lesbians) or adopted labels like "transvestite" whereas young people are more likely to embrace identities under the queer, trans and non-binary umbrella

- While society and the law has become a lot more accepting of queer and trans identities, access to mental health and medical care like hormone treatments and surgery is often gatekept to "protect" people seeking it (with the implication being that they are likely wrong about thinking they need it) and a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" is usually one of the most reliable ways to gain access to these even when it doesn't accurately describe the person's experience ("autogynophilia" is the mirror version of this where "gender euphoria" specifically for trans women when allowed to express themselves as women is medicalized and framed as a sexual fetish to delegtimize it)

For the record, I'm not trans but I know and have spoken to trans people in my personal life and have read a lot about it from "both sides".

Your arguments would be more effective if you provided respected sources for each. As a passerby, some don't pass my smell test, but I'm always willing to learn.

Providing good sources requires substantial effort, and doing so seems to have limited, if any, persuasive power. This isn't Wikipedia. If you're genuinely willing to learn you can look things up for yourself.

(note that people demanding sources like this are often selective about what they demand them for...)

Please don't break the site guidelines like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

See also: "Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor" - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demand...

Why should I have to do this if what OP said was also provided without context? What is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. The null hypothesis is that no, there is no link between these two phenomena. What I'm providing are just alternative explanations, some of which should literally be common knowledge (spend 2 seconds looking into how Pride parades started and you have all the resources you need).

If you're more inclined to believe technobabble than sociological explanations when you don't understand the facts behind either, that's a bias you might want to investigate further.

Of course you don't have to. As a reader, the chain went -

OP1 - Here is my unpopular opinion.

OP2 - May or may not be right.

OP3 - Here is a big list of reasons why you're wrong.

The first two didn't provide any sources either, admittedly, but they didn't really make any statements of fact.

I didn't ask to pick on you or because I have some political motive(honestly, I have no idea or opinion on whether OP1 was right), only because it was the first post presented as definitive in the chain.

As OP2, my problem with OP3 is that none of that evidence really refutes OP1, which is why I said that the connection is hard to prove, or disprove. There could still be an environmental cause for some of the increase. But because gender is socially constructed, the effects of social change obviously can’t be discounted.

Honestly I think we should take OP1’s thesis seriously, but not as proven. And as usual cut down on pollutants for the wildlife it does affect.

> Not every trans person experiences gender dysphoria

Uh, isn't this sort of definitional? My impression is that every trans person is experiencing gender dysphoria; that's like, what trans is.

No, it is not. See WPATH SOC v8, which mentions in many places that dysphoria "may or may not be present".

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.21...

It talks a lot about "gender incongruence".

The distinction being dysphoria includes distress, while incongruence does not? This seems like an arguable difference in scope of whether "trans" includes people who aren't distressed about gender incongruence.

The current consensus amongst medical professionals is that gender dysphoria is not requisite for being trans. This was not the case in the fairly recent past.

There is also "gender euphoria" which may be experienced by people who do not/did not experience dysphoria.

I'm not sure whether from a clinical standpoint distress about incongruance is the same as dysphoria.

There are a lot of people who would have failed to meet previous diagnostic criteria but nonetheless are happy to have received gender affirming medical care. I think the best we can do is provide people with bodily autonomy on an informed consent basis.

Layman here. They're just doing this to distance trans from gender dysphoria, making it a "legitimate" thing as opposed to a "condition" like gender dysphoria, because the latter implies treatment.

Side note. Why does Android keep auto-correcting dysphoria as dysphagia. Wtf is dysphagia anyways?

"layman"?

You called being trans a "social contagion" in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37291089

It most likely is, for many people. In that it involves the adoption of a false self-belief via one's peers, from within the framework of the gender identity belief system. An interesting sociological phenomenon.

We can also look at the rise in people adopting 'they/them' and similar unusual personal pronouns as a measure of the rise in number of acolytes of that belief system.

It's a denial of material reality, replaced with a sort of spiritual essence of 'woman' or 'man' or some ill-defined in-between.

Not sure what me saying that in the other thread has to do with me posting here with a "layman" hot take?

And for anyone reading this, I really have no issue with trans people. Pretty much everyone starts with a clean slate with me in my book.

Don’t even bother replying to new 1-karma accounts on hot button issues. Your sanity will appreciate it.

Did you reply to the wrong comment by mistake? None of the accounts in this thread (except one that got flagged to death) are new, and my account is the oldest one in this reply chain.

Nope, it's all about identity now. If you say you are, then you are. No medical conditions or diagnosis required.

For example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4V-Nme86U

This is most of the reason why it's become so controversial in recent years, because law and policy are being implemented based on this, rather than the previous, medicalized understanding.

Why are there more female to male (that male to female) transitions then? Surely these hormones (if they have the affect you describe) would be reducing the number of born women who become men?

Why are you so sure as to use the word “surely”? That might be an obvious conclusion but obvious does not mean it’s correct in biochemistry. Just ask the doctors who spent the last two decades removing the amyloid plaques that obviously cause Alzheimer’s.

Sorry I miss-read your statement, I thought you were professing a clear connection, but reading again that isn't what you were saying.

It's a theory at least.

While I agree with you in principle, having your balls cut off does not sound like an easy thing to go through.

The recovery from that particular procedure doesn't seem to be significantly worse than getting a vasectomy, though the infertility is rather more permanent.

If it's any consolation I know someone who went through that and now wants them back. Ergo, there are problems if you go through that too. Perhaps it's too easy to do it...

All surgeries have regret rates. Gender affirming surgeries are one of the lowest at 1-2%.

Access to such surgeries is already difficult, people almost always have to wait a year or more and have multiple psych evals.

I know several people who have regrets despite being 100% trans - they just would have preferred options that were not available at the time.

There are also people who aren't trans that get surgery to change their genitals, and are delighted with results.

There are more things in sex and gender than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Mine is not a philosophy. I'm closely related to someone who has to deal with the fall out of such procedures. The standards being met for surgery are fairly low and the psych evaluations are not always conclusive.

The optimal regret rate is greater than zero.

(regret is the result of "false positives" which are obviously harmful, but "false negatives" are harmful too, probably more so - balance is required)

You seem to have missed that I was referencing Hamlet:

> There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Had missed that entirely. Thanks for the clarification.

Nah, trans people have been around a lot longer than this.

It's more like left-handedness (or good old homosexuality), in that the rate of incidence is not increasing but rather that social repression has backed off slightly and people feel a bit more confident being out.

People can be a bit more open about their gender when they're less afraid of being killed for it.

I agree with you, but as far as I know there is a large gender imbalance (Female to Male is much more common than Male to Female - almost twice as common). How would you explain that?

Society is largely still more accepting of Female to Male transition, than Male to Female. Plus the gendered power balance might leave more people adverse to making the shift in public.

I would also 'guess' that those who transition and dress moving from female to male, can 'pass' more easily in society. Even if someone still has female features, if they dress like a guy, no one cares.

I don’t have any research to back this up but I am willing to bet that this is more due to social stigma than any genetic component.

> Nah, trans people have been around a lot longer than this.

He didn't say that they weren't :-/

> in that the rate of incidence is not increasing but rather that social repression has backed off slightly and people feel a bit more confident being out.

What evidence are you basing this statement on?

Look at the rates of lefthandedness rising after they did away with the superstitious torture bullshit.

> Nah, trans people have been around a lot longer than this.

He’s talking about the increase. He never claimed trans is new.

> It's more like left-handedness (or good old homosexuality), in that the rate of incidence is not increasing but rather that social repression has backed off slightly and people feel a bit more confident being out.

I hear this exact same argument for autism, adhd, gender disphoria, cancer, heart disease...

I also hear about how hard it is to come out, and how you should believe what someone tells you because no one would sign up for this lifestyle without good merit. And I also hear about the increase of hate crimes, and the fact that it is the topic de jour of modern American politics.

Seems like we are consistently eating our cake and having it too, here.

And how about this unpopular solution: giving those suffering gender dysphoria additional testosterone/oestrogen (or whatever) to augment the lack in their bodies, thereby eradicating the need for (life changing) surgery, giving them a chance to live as life intended and maintaining their ability to reproduce?

Gender dysphoria is not about lacking a hormone. People born a man with 100 percent of the testosterone the 'should' have, can still have a total need to transition to Female. Giving them more testosterone won't help.

It's literally impossible to change sex (transition to female). I think you meant to say "transition to woman", and even then, I disagree with you.

No. Testosterone in men has drastically declined. It used to be ~50% higher than today.

https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-levels-100-year...

> As you can see, average testosterone in the USA was something like 625 ng/dl in the 70’s, until the early 80’s. This is reasonably high testosterone. But since then it has been falling steadily.

> For the average American man in the period of 2013 – 2016, testosterone was 420 ng/dl. (source)

The reason trans people suffer with their natal puberty and hormones is not because they aren't receiving enough hormone, but because they're receiving the wrong hormones which disrupt the brain and/or cause undesired sexual characteristics (including bodily proportions and bone/fat distribution) which cause existential mental distress. Giving extra testosterone to men with low testosterone may help, but giving extra testosterone to trans women forced through a male puberty is psychological and physical abuse.

But giving hormones to children (who may not recognise the future repercussions of their childhood decisions) to prevent puberty etc is not psychological or physical abuse? How is that not active, literal abuse?

The suggestion I'm making is therapeutic - it is supportive of the biology of the person who is suffering with a unbalanced hormones. At the end of the treatment I propose, it remains a possibility that the person can live a normal life, being able to reproduce etc - as opposed to becoming sterilised.

You're wrong. Trans people don't have unbalanced hormones, they have normal amounts of the wrong hormones, both as teens and adults. Puberty causes irreversible physical effects with lifelong psychological harms, and forcing more of the wrong hormones is even more harmful. And in the vast majority of cases, people during and after puberty who are harmed by natal hormones, continue to be harmed by them throughout their adulthood. You don't know better than trans people what their needs are, so stop trying to convince people to poison them by overdosing them on hormones which will cause bodily changes (skeletal changes, voice dysphoria, hair loss) that traumatize them for the rest of their life.

As for whether preserving fertility (banking sperm or eggs) before starting hormones (as teens or adults) is a worthwhile tradeoff on an individual level, that's a choice for an individual to make. In no circumstances is it not abuse to force more of natal hormones into a trans person already harmed by them.

In general, prior to using any hormone-altering drugs, they will have the usual range of hormonal levels in accordance with their sex.

This idea that the trans-identifying have the 'wrong hormones' and all that is essentially just a cult-like religious belief.

Looking at it from a perspective grounded in material biological reality: they desire to be the opposite sex, which isn't possible, so instead take hormone-altering drugs in an attempt to mimic some of the secondary sex characteristics that develop naturally on individuals of the opposite sex.

That's it, no magical thinking required.

I think the problem is that popular culture is increasingly moving towards hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine stereotypes. So people who don't fit the mould end up feeling that they aren't a "real" man/woman.

The current gender zeitgeist is mostly confined to the western cultural sphere. If it were a biochemical phenomenon you would expect to see it happening everywhere.

Personally I think that the way the media talks about the male half of the population is responsible. Nobody ever says anything good about men, the male brand has become as toxic as Enron, and some people don’t want to be associated with it anymore.

If gender is largely a social construction then probably gender dysphoria is too.

> If it were a biochemical phenomenon you would expect to see it happening everywhere.

You actually do see it happening everywhere.

Seems plausible.

But social environment is obviously a major factor too. Some of the recent uptrend is likely learned.