There's more trans people nowadays because it is more accepted

It's "more common " these days because of social contagion and AGP men realising they can threaten and oppress women into accepting their private sexual fantasies in plain sight. Of everyone. Including children.

I had a thought the other day. I don't know if anyone here ever watched the channel 4 programme "Skins"? It (fiction) followed a group of teenagers with all the various usual coming of age issues. I remember that series 1 was all teens the same age as me, ie millennials born in the late 80s.

Then series 2 and onward followed their younger siblings instead. Millennials born in the early 90s. It's subtle, but it made a big difference to the programme and the themes and what's more I remember it feeling incredibly accurate, and immediately being turned off series 2 because their problems were things I couldn't relate to.

The difference in those couple of years - we had instant messaging and texting, but didn't get social media until we were 15/16/17. And it was MySpace. There was no Twitter, no Tumblr, no tiktok, no vine, no Snapchat. YouTube existed but not as a platform like it is now. Hardly anyone went on the internet except for geeks and most people that did went on places like deviant art or live Journal. There were forums of course but not so many sites with algorithms dedicated to showing you content they know you'll like in order to keep you viewing longer. Those things were only just starting to be invented.

They had MySpace and Facebook from about 13 and very quickly got Tumblr and Twitter after that. Algorithms are go.

That's not the cohort that are becoming trans in such large numbers I don't think, they'd be about 30 now, but it was interesting to me when I realised that little shift and what it potentially meant.

Helena describes the impact of sm and tumblr. This is an amazing and heart wrenching account.

https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name

My perception of myself as trans formed in the intersection between overwhelming emotional struggles, heavy fantasy, emotional and intellectual infatuation with males (real people, fictional characters, and the idea of males generally), fanfiction, social and ideological incentives to be trans, and insulation from experiences and perspectives that might have challenged the views I was developing about myself and the world. Each individual girl’s story will vary, give or take a few factors, but in the broadest sense these are the basic factors that comprise the trans “social contagion” described by people like researcher Lisa Littman and Abigail Shrier in her book, Irreversible Damage, particularly when we are talking about male-attracted girls. What I’ve said here barely scratches the surface.

It was all shared and evolved through online friends on tumblr

It was the 'Affluenza Virus' and it was as much about mental health generally. I remember the anorexia study being mentioned but the whole book looks at how visual advertising and media impacts mental health.

I agree re anorexia always existing - I remember reading of it being documented in even the medieval times and before. But seen as extreme fasting.

We have to be a little careful about looking back on the 80s with rose tinted spectacles. It is absolutely true that fashions of the time challenged gender norms without any suggestion that it meant people were trans. Nobody suggested that Annie Lennox should start testosterone as she must really be male, and Adam Ant was not suspected to be female despite his taste in eye makeup. And i do think that's important, and the way that attitude has changed has definitely had a negative impact on young people's beliefs around gender nowadays. I also think there was more variety in fashion - it was easier to find a "tribe" to belong to as there was more choice. When I look at my teens' friends now, they are all a lot more homogenous in look, music taste etc than I recall we were in the 80s.(Though that may be me looking back too fondly I suppose.)
But we must be careful not to reinvent the 80s as a time of tolerance and acceptance. Gender sterotypes were well and truly ingrained in the "normal" world. I could watch the stars on MTV and think it was cool how they expressed themselves, but I wasn't even allowed to wear trousers to work myself, and women's rights were far less than now. I think homophobia was extremely prevalent and open too. People have got better at disguising prejudices as something else now I think, but I'm not sure things have actually changed that much really. There are a few things I'd like to bring back from my youth, but a lot that, despite everything, I think is actually better now.

I read a tweet the other day that said something like "in the 1970s and 80s I spent many hours pretending to be the Bionic Woman and Wonderwoman. Today I am a proud gay man and hate to think what would have happened to me if I were a child today."

The homophobia and total lack of willingness to break down gender stereotypes is currently so strong that we would prefer to trans our children rather than help them to embrace their individuality

It's apparently well understood that many things that we in the west think of as objective categories of mental illness, like anorexia, are no such thing. While they probably represent some kinds of underlying psychological and biological capacities, they are very much culturally constructed.

You see quite different normative ways of being mentally ill in different cultures. There are a few which seem to be more like a "traditional" illness and follow much similar patters, schizophrenia being one. But overall it's not the case.

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

Someone said that there wasn't a glut of children committing suicide 50 years ago because they couldn't transition.

In many ways children were freer to explorer their gender expression years ago, whereas now any deviation is seen as a pathway to transition.

There was an island somewhere (I need to look it up as I've mentioned this a lot) that didn't get TV till relatively late. Prior to tv they had no recorded mental health issues such as anorexia

Anorexia has always existed and is culturally interpreted, such as seen as a religious expression through the lens of extreme fasting in some African countries where female bodies are considered more attractive with fat, or in European countries in centuries past.

There's also the question of what "really trans" means. People tend to talk about it as a kind of objective category.

In reality what it has been in the past is a treatment pathway for certain problems some people have with their sexed body. The underlying problem was a sense of alienation from the body. Changing the appearance of the body was an attempt to mitigate that. Nothing more.

We now seem instead to have built "being trans" into a social construct about how you buck gender norms, for people who somehow feel those norms don't reflect their authentic selves. It's a world where getting plastic surgery makes you more yourself.

Exactly. People are frequently not on the same page in terms of understanding and definition when they talk about "trans" issues.

No thanks for clarifying Nitro.

My memory is hazy and the book where I read it is actually about the impact of advertising and how that's created a capitalist driven depression where no one feels good enough.

There's still no denying the impact of SM on our girls though. And some boys. And I still maintain trans a socially driven idea magnified by online social platforms. We do also have an issue with self diagnosis of a range of neuro divergent conditions, some which may be genuine and others not. And with it a real 'them and us,' tribal attitude, around the conditions too.

Someone pointed out to me recently that stroke can be seen as causing a neuro divergent condition in many, as does brain injury, but it's not something that's seen as trendy enough. See #neurospicy on tiktok.

I am sorry OP, but I really do think we need to start engaging in conversations like these. We can't just keep avoiding them and then coming on here. An option here was just to offer some suggestions in answer to her question - she did actually invite a discussion.

There is no hope of people realising our views are reasonable if we refuse to have conversations when the opportunity naturally arises and instead let them get their views of us from the lies gender ideologues tell about what we say and who we are.

The Fiji study didn’t actually show that at all though WarriorN - I’m not accusing you of referencing it in a wool-pulling effort, it’s endlessly thrown about as “proof” it’s All About The Media, including by people who should absolutely know better.

What the media is responsible for is what the archly superior-feeling acid-tongued anorexics & bulimics would deem wannarexics & fauxlemics. Not in the truly cruel sense of “you’re too fat to sit with us”; but rather the girls at school who’ve eaten breakfast & will go home & eat again, but sit & hold court at lunch, demanding to be coaxed through eating either a lettuce leaf or, alternatively, a calorie-dense - but always delicious - “fear food” (latter followed by weeping & the threat they will vomit if left unattended for even a second). Some do try harder (as it were), but they seek the secrets of the translucent girls who cluster by the radiators, baggy uniforms hanging from bony frames; & all the Tips & Tricks the internet has to offer to (happily) no avail. They have no inner sense of an eating disorder - perhaps none of disordered eating, even, despite the carefully curated performances. Mercifully not everyone’s brain has the override function that lets them embrace self-destruction [in that form]. Wannas & fauxs littered* all the online spaces for people with eating disorders in the 90s & 00s; sometimes being honest, sometimes telling a fantasy version of their “anorexia story” based on the endless YouTube videos & spates of documentaries about paeds ED treatment. For people who were only ever tourists, fitspo began to edge out thinspo (& bonespo) - & then BoPo appeared & scooped them up.

BoPo is particularly important when it comes to the girls who self-identified as anorexic at (for example) 16 stone, BMI 28, after losing 4lbs in 6 months. Not, to be clear, girls who’d recovered & then kept gaining weight &/or developed BED. Not overweight bulimics. There was a movement saying you could be anorexic at any weight & self-ID was valid. That doctors refusing to diagnose you were ignorant & gatekeeping. Goodness knows eating disorders aren’t about weight. But the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa are clear on the BMI under 17.5 bit & OSFED isn’t a dirty acronym. Absolutely insistent it was anorexic they were though. Often claiming that they needed nutritional supplement drinks, or even tube feeding, and that it was fatphobia & discrimination & gatekeeping stopping them from receiving appropriate & necessary treatment. With the rise of body positivity though, there was a substantial migration of members of this group into the BoPo movement & anorexia recovery spaces. In these new spaces, they didn’t talk about never having been underweight etc, but were… very vocal about the media & how pressured they felt to meet standards of beauty shown there. (I’m really sorry I don’t have any links for you - it’s online discussions from years ago, lots from platforms no longer in existence.)

Arguably, the media does pretty much the same thing with the phenomenon of the trans child they used to do with anorexic adolescents. As with the endless articles there used to be about eating disorders** a how-to guide for symptoms is supplied. Attention - & sympathy - is guaranteed. You have the option of becoming an advocate & an activist. For some people, it will present an irresistible prospect…

• there are far fewer such spaces than there used to be, but there are now chronically/functionally anorexic women in their forties & fifties who helped make early spaces involved in making & remaking new spaces to evade the bans on discussion of self-harm & eating disorders ** which had a negative impact on people with the genetic predisposition to eating disorders, yes, but were not sufficient to flip the switch (as it were)

Case in point- tiktok tic epidemic. Instagram self harm contagion. Ana sites.

Mostly girls affected.

It's media and social media led social contagion.

There was an island somewhere (I need to look it up as I've mentioned this a lot) that didn't get TV till relatively late. Prior to tv they had no recorded mental health issues such as anorexia. Within a decade of TV they did. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to the impact of media sources - big study out this week demonstrating this?

As Helen Joyce outlines in trans, there were a number of snake oil experimental "drs" who messed about with hormones for people with cross dressing fetishes.

There's buckets of homophobia and confusion over gender stereotypes in the mix. All societies/ cultures that have rigid gender roles and stereotypes have developed "categories" of permissible "third sexes." These have been merrily appropriated, pathologised and medicalised.

Gender stereotyping in toys and tv got worse from the 80s onwards in particular. It's only in the last 10 years that things like Disney, Lego, barbie and toy manufacturers have begun to attempt to reverse that trend. Watch and compare rapunzel and encanto...

So it's big pharma plus social media led contagion. And porn. All stand to profit from it.

At that age (assuming controlled internet access), it's being pushed by parents. Typically they are homophobic and/or deeply religious.

There's also the question of what "really trans" means. People tend to talk about it as a kind of objective category.

In reality what it has been in the past is a treatment pathway for certain problems some people have with their sexed body. The underlying problem was a sense of alienation from the body. Changing the appearance of the body was an attempt to mitigate that. Nothing more.

We now seem instead to have built "being trans" into a social construct about how you buck gender norms, for people who somehow feel those norms don't reflect their authentic selves. It's a world where getting plastic surgery makes you more yourself.

However for there to be a 4000% rise in gender referals for one demographic (young and adolescent girls), I think questions have to be asked. I believer that a tiny % of that group will be trans require medical intervention to live their lives comfortably... and despite the panic I think most of the rest will desist before anything damaging is done,

I want to make a very clear point here. That % increase is in REFERRALS and referrals only. There is a HUGE number of teenage and younger females who are identifying as trans who are not referred.

I would not count on enough of those going through treatment ‘desisting’ before harm. I am happy to post links to a paper written in Australia which also mirrors what was written in the interim Cass report. These young transitioners are arriving pre-prepped with how to manipulate the system. In fact, too many (enough to cause concern with the world’s clinics) are not giving themselves a chance.

And they are prepped thanks to lobby groups, trans influencers and social media.

In the ‘70s, 80’s, 90’s and ‘00s the only trans people I knew of were the older men dressed in fishnets and revealing women’s clothing, hanging around in the ladies public toilets. I’ve never met an older woman wanting to become a man. I was a tom boy then and still am today. What a waste of all these kid’s precious youth being tied up in this trend. It’s horrifying that they are pushing this in schools.

Why was my post deleted?

I still know a few middle-aged people who are into being goths, hippies or similar subcultures. None of them seem to require the exhausting validation that TRAs demand, and none of them are lifelong medical patients because of their identity.

I was talking about this with my DP over the weekend. At school we each knew a raft of non-conformists (DP included) who marked out their individuality with goth or emo or hippy dress, views, ideologies, affectations. I don't recall any of them ever being either counselled or lauded for being brave or 'true to themselves'.

Between us we know precisely one person who carried that into adult life and still in his 40s lives a very spiritual 'hippy' lifestyle and so could be considered 'genuine' rather than just trying a lifestyle on for size.

Everyone else grew out of their 'thing' somewhere between GCSEs and Uni. Often it aligned with leaving the classmates they'd known all their childhood behind and joining the wider world.

We also know one adult between us who has transitioned in adulthood, on the basis that she now feels free to do so (MTF transition).

I would think / hope that this will all prove itself to be another trend, although sadly one with further-reaching psychological consequences than an regrettable piercing or questionable over-use of eye-liner.