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.