How did the trans trend come about and gain such momentum?

I think this current strain of transgenderist ideology has been so enthusiastically embraced by every institution of patriarchy, because of its concept of "cis men" and "cis women".

It sucks up patriarchal arse like a Dyson. Saying men are born to rule and women innately service and obey... , the "T" tells men "You're so BIG and powerful...". and lo and behold, the men decide it's the Most Urgent Civil Right Ever, and throws it cash and favours.

Should have read the whole thread first. Gah.

RE women allegedly watching violent porn: I cannot foresee any woman enjoying vomiting whilst having a penis forced down her throat. Teen girls, being raped and assaulted at school, will see that porn and think that this is how all men will treat them forever. In those circumstances, I'd have been reaching for the blockers. I was pretty pissed about how girls were treated when I was at primary (I have mentioned my own sexual assault at age eight many times on this forum) and would have done anything not to be a girl if someone had told me that was an option.

It's only with adulthood that I've realised that it was never "being a girl" that was the problem, but how girls and women are treated. These teen girls heading off to Tavistock are in grave danger of having their bodies changed before they have the chance to realise that the problem is actually not them. This is not a bug, it's a feature: it destroys feminism by preventing feminist awakening in the women and girls who need feminism the most because men and boys have hurt them the most.

The reality is that the 'third gender' is ONLY for biological males in these countries.

Albania's Sworn Virgins are female.

nopeni, it's just the history of technology creating social change.

the perfect storm is the contraceptive tech, medical tech, and internet tech. everything else follows.

Perfect storm.

First time in history that women have sustained rights of their own, and it's not just a passing fad.

First time in history that gay rights have seemed to be accepted and normalised.

First time that "politically correct" speak tries to stop racism, sexism and homophobia.

First time in history that men don't automatically dominate everything.

First time in history that men can all talk candidly online in communities (like Reddit's incel groups).

First time in history that porn is available 24/7 all the time and is increasingly violent and weird.

First time in history that children are exposed to all this too, all the time.

Bam - anger, frustration, sex politics. The perfect storm for a men's rights movement like this.

The extension of the trans umbrella to include fetishists surely also plays a role?

20 years ago gender dysphoria was assumed to mean you didn't like your secondary sexual characteristics or the gender role associated with it by society, and the expectation was that you would embark on a journey to modify your body and your presentation in order to 'pass.'

Now you don't need to pass. You don't need to dislike your penis. You can be proud of your penis and enjoy putting it into vaginas.

And if you dress up as a woman for sexual kicks - the old-fashioned transvestite - the new trans ideology says you, too are welcome in female spaces. So the law will change to accomodate your sexual fetish.

What men want, they get.

looming threat of actual self inflicted death. "then they'll be sorry"

"A poster on here (maybe AngryAttackKittens) made a really good point that a lot of the girls who want to be boys may be identifying themselves out of the scary pornified sexual relationships that have become 'normal' for young boys to expect. This gives them a legitimate escape that pressure, with added extra attention & specialness. "

gender stuff is the new eating disorders (serves similar purposes)

attention
control
concern
legitimacy and validation of distress, confusion, fear
rejection of humiliating sex role for girls

It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between the decline of gender fluidity/non conformity since the 70s and the prevelance to trans indetifying people over the same period.

I think we're on the same side doedoe.

I'm pointing to the anthropological finding that "third genders" are more prevalent in highly patriarchal societies with rigid sex-stereotypes and gender roles (in the old fashioned social sciences sense of gender). That's just an observation about how human beings relate to one another within cultues, and how the overall patterns of those relationships vary from one culture to another.

One might then hypothesise, based on that observation, that this indicates that the existence of third genders, being so variable across cultures, is not evidence that "trans people have always been with us and being trans is innate", but rather, evidence that phenomena which might be interpreted as "being trans" are sufficiently culturally variable to suggest that culture and social construction play a massive part in their prevalence, rather than being "natural".

To this, I personally would add a value judgement, namely that third genders do, as you say, seem all about re-inforcing sex stereotypes and gender roles, with the primary goal of keeping women subservient and second class citizens, and that this is clearly a bad thing.

So yes, I think we're on the same side here - I just want to use anthropology to point out that the way the current western European/North American trans ideology co-opts and appropriates "third genders" to defend a simplistic view that "being trans is entirely a biological things which is always there" is not plausible - because prevalence of third genders is highly variable cross-culturally and historically, and there is a strong correlation between the existence of third genders within a culture and that culture being highly patriarchal and having high degrees of inequality between men and women.

"doedoe just as a point of information, Bacha Posh and Sworn Virgins are both biologically female."

Sworn virgins are virtually non-existent; not sure how common Bacha Posh are, but it is very wrong and misleading to imply that 'third genders' might just be male or female - the overwhelming majority of people that would be classed as third gender are biological males, and acting out a sort of sub/wife role in a relationship with men. Often linked to prostitution.

Plenty of cultures have so-called 'third gender' biologically male transgender and then homosexual women are simply 'lesbian'.

It's important to recognise the homophobia in 'third gender', rather than to hold it up as some sort of model.

doedoe just as a point of information, Bacha Posh and Sworn Virgins are both biologically female. (Afghanistan also has Bacha Bazi, the male equivalent, and arguably it is far better to be a Bacha Posh, i.e. girl brought up as a boy until adulthood, when they face the trauma of being shoved back into their very restrictive box, than it is to be a Bacha Bazi which is basically a boy kept as a slave and subjected to repeated rape and sexual abuse by adult men).

However you are right in that the group who benefits from the existence of third genders in all societies which have them, whether those third genders are male or female, is people with penises, because these third genders always have the effect of reinforcing restrictive sexual stereotypes (where restrictive is the understatement of the year - we're talking about social structures which normalise and legitimate physical and sexual abuse here, not just social structures which allow firms to sack women workers for not wearing heels).

Does anyone know what academic research is going on into this

None because it isn't funded, universities refuse to allow it and/or journals won't publish it. Not to mention that it earns the BIGOT stamp on one's CV and guarantees unemployment.

Does anyone know what academic research is going on into this?

A few years ago I slogged through a fair few studies that confirmed what we already know. Social pressure (AKA peer pressure) is one of the most effective ways to fast track altered behaviour in individuals and groups.

So if children are bombarded with messages from adults, which are then strictly enforced and reinforced by their peers, and they get social credits (love bombing, raised social status, higher profile etc.) by reflecting those messages back via their behaviour.... more and more of them will take a potentially, wholly synthetic spark, and aided and abetted by adults, turn it into a personal forest fire.

I suspect that is how the contagion works, particular in the young. The question is was that the intent when specific strategies in terms of social sanctions/credits were first established ?

IMO it was no "happy accident".

Yes, it's the getting medically locked in and living with the consequences that's problematic.

It's generally accepted that teenage pregnancy by choice is inadvisable and to be discouraged. Because the consequences are life changing, irreversible and lifelong. I put teenage transition in the same bracket.

Another big yes here to social contagion, there just can't be another explanation for the explosion in teen girls being referred to the Tavistock. The high rates of girls with ASD and mental health problems also identifying as trans is another real concern. Correlation is not necessarily causation, in either direction, but this needs to be looked into.
Does anyone know what academic research is going on into this?

That's kind of what being a teenager is, the developmental stage where you figure out who you are in relation to other people. Trying on new identities is part of it. Potentially getting locked into those experimental identities medically is cause for concern.

AAK absolutely. Social contagion is so well documented in teenagers (anorexia, suicide, sexual behaviour, musical and cultural preferences). Teenagers are curious, inexperienced and searching for their place in the world. Why wouldn't social contagion sometimes take place?

I'm baffled when people claim that there is never ever ever a social element to teen trans identity. But that identifying as a goth or Christian, for example, is totally different.

"So called "third genders" (two spirit people in some Native American tribes, Sworn Virgins in Albania, Bacha Posh in Afghanistan, Hijira in India, etc. etc.) tend to be more common in cultures with very rigid gender roles. In other words, while there may be a physiological/neurological element to dysphoria, it is enhanced/damped down by whether it's easy or hard to be gender non-conforming in a given society. Almost as if "third genders" act as a sort of safety valve to blow off steam in a society which insists on rigidly pigeon-holing people.
"

This two spirit/etc stuff smacks of noble savage trying to promote something that is very regressive.

The reality is that the 'third gender' is ONLY for biological males in these countries. It's not a third gender so much as a way to erase homosexuality, as in Iran, where it's transgender surgery is mandatory for gay males.

There's absolutely an element of social contagion among young people. Sometimes one person will "come out" as trans and within a year a dozen of their friends will too.

Please don’t shoot me but....in my opinion the trans and gender fluid stuff seems to have rocketed recently with a lot of influences coming from the USA. I have young ( teenage) relatives who are born and raised there and a quick look at some of their Facebook profiles and those of their friends show that quite a few of them and also their friends are describing themselves as either “gender fluid”, “pansexual” or some are “trans”. Along with a whole host of other new terms
I’m not saying that some people don’t suffer gender dysphoria but from what I’ve seen it’s become a “cool” thing within friendship groups.
Sorry if I offend anyone that was not my intent.

IMO because peadophiles and hebephiles are a bigger group than people realise. While there statistically has to be a cross over in membership with the trans group I suspect most of the money and political arm twisting is coming from men with no interest in extra large frocks.

The TRA cause is the perfect Trogen Horse because it reframed all and any perfectly reasonable objections as a phobia. It has enforced a faith over objective reality, with heretics primed to stay quiet out of fear from repercussions.

The clever use of suicide as a tool of emotional blackmail and manipulation has allowed a vastly lowered bar with regards to children's ability to self assess, self diagnose and consent to treatments with life long, irreversible consequences.

I suspect that children's, tweens' and young teens' vastly increased agency over their mind and body (from toddlerhood at this point, and despite parental opposition) and the suddenly lowered bar to ability consent are the primary interests.

This is not the first time they have hopped on somebody else's cause for their own motives. It won't be the last. They just seem to be getting better and faster at it.

I have been asking myself the same question op. Clearly this whole movement hasn't come out of nowhere but it certainly feels like it has. I think it's utterly chilling how a group of men have been working in the background to erode our rights. I am very grateful for the women here who have been shouting about it - I remember seeing trans threads 2 or 3 years ago and not only did I think people were expressing bigoted opinions (sincere apologies. I couldn't have been more wrong), but most people seemed to think the same. It is heartening now that the 'you're all bigots' voices are now a minorIty, even in AIBU. There is obviously still work to be done but the posts here are effecting change.

I care not what a few somewhat screwed up women get their jollies from. I care a lot about what effect it has on the majority of women who don't like such practices, when porn tells a substantial proportion of rapey men that this sort of behaviour is okay.

Yep. I also find the determination of some men to deal with that tiny little voice that says that maybe wanking to someone else's pain isn't a healthy thing to do by attempting to convince themselves that women are as messed up as they are very interesting.

The LGBT scene has also skyrocketed in recent decades

Kind of. I think it is also that it has morphed to include the Queer scene and this has blended to include the kink scene. At the same time, lesbian and women-only places have folded and gone.