(note that people demanding sources like this are often selective about what they demand them for...)
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.
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.
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.
Uh, isn't this sort of definitional? My impression is that every trans person is experiencing gender dysphoria; that's like, what trans is.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.21...
It talks a lot about "gender incongruence".
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.
Side note. Why does Android keep auto-correcting dysphoria as dysphagia. Wtf is dysphagia anyways?
You called being trans a "social contagion" in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37291089
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.
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.
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.
- 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".