When Exactly did Trans/Non Binary Become So Commonplace?

[miniaturepixieonacid]

This isn't to start (yet another!) debate on the rights and wrongs of gender identification, transitioning etc. Just pondering on how quickly and in what year it became so common.

I'm just watching an old episode of Waterloo Road (Drama set in a comprehensive school) where one of the characters (Casey Barry for anyone who watched it) realises that she wants to be a boy rather than a tomboy and everyone reacts as if it's extremely unusual. The other pupils mock and bully her, her brother gets violent and tells her she is disgusting and a freak and the teachers talk about what a difficult road she has ahead and how much support she will need.

The episode is set in 2013. Not the 1990s. Only just over 10 years ago. But in a Year 10/11 class in a comprehensive in 2024 this wouldn't even raise an eyebrow, would it. There will be several trans and non binary pupils (maybe even several per year group) and pupils would consider it normal.

I teach in a prep school (only goes up to Year 8) so we haven't actually yet had a single pupil transition to the opposite gender. There's one 10 year old who I could potentially see it happening to over the next couple of years but it hasn't yet. So I'm relatively unknowledgable about the whole thing.

Interested to know from secondary school teachers who have been teaching for 10+ years what year you think it was that transitioning and being non binary went from rare to a relatively popular trend.

FFS. because they love the person.

Maybe that poster is bi or even pansexual (I know not everyone accepts the latter term but if gender and sexuality are not to be conflicted then it’s probably the most appropriate term). In reality it is a same sex relationship though, much as a trans woman in a relationship with a natal woman would be a heterosexual one.

Quite, it's not like being trans is anything new.

It’s very common among girls at the moment. Especially if they’re on the autism spectrum, socially anxious and have other mental health co-morbidities.

The referral of girls with these profiles to gender clinics have increased markedly.

Yet somehow people are supposed to pretend that all of these girls who wanted to be boys were always there, and that this isn’t social contagion. Because vulnerable teen girls aren’t at all susceptible to social trends 🙄

If these girls who wanted to be boys were always there, where are the middle aged women who are also coming out?

I think it’s dying as a tend though. 3-4 years ago maybe 8 girls in my daughter’s high school year “came out” as trans/NB, and did so to a lot of attention. Now it’s all a bit “cringe” apparently.

My DD's are early mid 20's - the first time I heard of it was when dd1 went to a big 6th form college, she had long standing support needs but came into contact with 3 trans students 1 of whom had been kicked out by parents. Bear in mind there were 2800 students, it was really wasn't common.

My younger dd had a couple transition (both f-m) in year 11 at her school, also huge, 2900 students. Then in the years following they know several f-m they had known since younger and there was no indication before but what they all have in common is they had issues in their home lives from fairly young, think bereavement, dysfunctional household, parent with mental health issues, acrimonious divorce ... none I know come from ideal family circumstances.

It seems that 2015 was a huge turning point just anecdotally.

When it became a bandwagon to jump on. By people, companies and film and tv makers.

But some underlying cases of gender dysphoria has always existed and we have a relative who aged 4 announced they were a boy, refused to wear dresses, hated their name, cut own hair off at 6 and demanded to be called a boys name, all before social media really even existed and certainly before this current wave. (This was around 2000)

@nolongersurprised I read about being prevalent in the autistic community because I have an autistic child. I was on a couple of fb groups but left because I was attacked for using him instead of they for my own child and assuming his gender 😬
I do feel quite worried for my child and other vulnerable children.

”Assuming his gender”😂. That’s batshit.

It has always been there.

I worked for an organisation in the 1990s and there was a trans man who worked there.

However, there was definitely a point where it exploded at secondary schools, I worked in one until last year and in mine it probably started around 2017 and absolutely exploded 2018-2019 and for a few years we had about 60 kids out of 2000 where we needed to remember pronouns (which often changed quite frequently).

Seems to be dying away a bit now.

Trans is a cuIture bound syndrome. There are many types.

There is a syndrome called Koro. It’s where men become convinced their penis is shrinking inside their bodies. It happens in epidemics in certain parts of the world, sometimes lasting for days, sometimes years.

Koro: a man is convinced his penis is disappearing inside his body.

Trans: a man is convinced his penis is wrong for his body.

Both are convinced. Both are demonstrably wrong about their bodies. The penis isn’t disappearing and the penis isn’t wrong for a man’s body.

There is no difference. The fact that “there have always been trans people” is no different to the fact there have always been cases of Koro, or any of the other culture bound syndromes. Trans isn’t even the only culture bound syndrome that is given legitimacy, there are others that are accepted as legitimate in their respective cultures, even if they happen in obvious social contagion waves like trans.

However, trans is the only one to which so much legitimacy has been given that children are sterilised, rendered asexual and medicalised for life as a result of that legitimacy.

History will look back on this time with horror.

I taught from 1980 to 2007, in 7 schools (London and Manchester).

Not a single "trans kid" in any of those (secondary) schools.

Of course it’s always existed, due to the narrow expectations for how girls and boys should behave and how many parents (even the ones who claim to be liberal and easy going) force children into sexist stereotypes from the moment they find out their child’s sex. It’s clear from your own description - ‘refused to wear dresses and cut all their hair off’. Boys aren’t made to wear dresses, of course to a young child with far more literal thinking they’d believe to be comfortable in their own existence if they conform to the right sociological box rather than be a girl who can have short hair and never have to wear a dress. Because neither of those things makes a girl a boy, it’s just the poisonous idea that being a girl or boy is about what you like and how you look.

I agree.

For all of the insistence that everyone is so much more free now that there are 74 genders (I’m not exaggerating) sex based stereotypes are so much more rigid and regressive than they were in the 70s and 80s.

Now men/boys in dresses and make up must be “trans”, back in the 80s all the rock stars wore make up and long hair. Girls in the 70s wore whatever they liked without being told they must be “trans” for preferring trousers and short hair.

Sadly, some parents - including the founder of mermaids - would rather have a trans daughter than a gay son. She’s on record stating that her husband struggled with her gender-non conforming son, “effeminate” son liking dolls but when they took them away he was sad. Eventually they decided he was trans

My own personal theory is that after gay marriage was legalised society needed a new group to focus on freeing, so it was the trans community. Toxic body positivity culture means young people are made to feel like there’s something wrong with them if they don’t love their bodies. So they go looking for answers in the LGBTQ community.

I’ll preface this that I’m solely focusing on teens and children in my discussion and it doesn’t necessarily apply to adults or all teens/kids.

of course there are genuine trans people out there who will feel this way regardless of when they were born or growing up. But I can recall hating my changing body as I went through puberty, hating the male gaze and harassment that came with it. Had I been a teenager now I think I’d have likely experimented with being ‘non binary’ and more androgynous as a coping mechanism. And to be honest I don’t blame them if that’s what it is for some.

It means she was a lesbian because she was a female attracted to other females.

But because she identifies as a man now, we all have to twist reality otherwise she will get upset.

Once you start twisting reality, nothing makes sense.

A lot of posters are talking about being kind and accepting and not needing labels ... which I agree with up to a point ... BUT I think we need to differentiate between 1) challenging gender stereotypes and 2) the trans phenomenon.

1. Challenging gender stereotypes - great. There have always been masculine girls and feminine men, and people who are quite androgynous, and that's fine. As people have said, particularly in music/arts, we had Bowie in the 70s, Boy George in the 80s, Brian Molko in the 90s, all gender non-conforming. If a boy wants long hair and likes crafts, or a girl wants short hair and loves football, brilliant, why not.

2. Current trans ideology - not so great (in my view), i.e. affirming that the boy with long hair is "really a girl" and the girl who loves footie is "really a boy", giving teens puberty blockers, which lead in some cases to irreversible cross-sex hormones and surgery for (very) young adults. Particularly as autistic kids tend to be slower to emotionally mature. When I was a socially-inept 18-year-old in the 90s, I was still totally trying to find my tribe (via music/clothes etc), and if the gender thing had been around I'd have been far too "young" to make an informed decision about medical transition.

I'm a kind and liberal person, and I'm all for breaking down gender stereotypes, but I'm really worried about the effects of gender ideology on vulnerable young people.

Look at the play Galatea by John Lyly, from the 1580s. the two central characters are queer, trans lovers. it's nothing new, it's just now in the open.

Both are stunningly beautiful by patriarchal male standards and are thus up for ritual sacrifice to appease Neptune. Their fathers disguise them as boys to avoid being chosen to die. They meet and fall in love but neither reveals that he is a she. In the end, after battle between different Gods, one is turned into a real male. Note: Gods can do this, especially Greek and Roman ones. It's part of the job description.

How in the fuck is this about trans? It is about same-sex attraction maybe (remembering that each knew they were female under the costume and assumed the other was really male). But not trans.

Trans and non binary people have been around for as long as people have been alive. There are names for us in many cultures in history, we are not a new thing.

I debated whether or not to answer, because as a non binary person, I realise I won't be welcomed here. But yeah. We have been around a long time. It's not a new thing as folks might claim.

Does anyone who still thinks trans people are "born into the wrong body" ever stop to think about how outrageously offensive the concept that by growing your hair, wearing make up and having people call you Susan instead of Steve you're suddenly in the "right" body is to people with physical disabilities?

And when Steve “transitions” to “female”, becoming a woman is always about clothes, make up. Never about cleaning the bathroom, cooking the meals and making the school lunches.

No one can ever explain what is in the wrong body either. The only thing that makes sense is one’s consciousness or soul. Which means you have to believe a consciousness or soul can be gendered, that is, masculine or feminine. Which is of course unscientific nonsense.

If you don’t believe in gendered souls then the only explanation is that some people have a dysmorphia about their bodies. The solution to body dysmorphia is not to change the body.

You should ask your DH to clean the bathrooms and cook dinner. Probably not school lunches though, probably get it wrong.

It's possible for something to be 'new' and a genuine issue btw. Bulimia didn't exist before the 70s for example (ie it's not just that it was happening and not recognised, but it emerged as a new phenomenon which then spread by 'social contagion'). Obviously bulimia is a serious condition. I'm not suggesting being trans is an illness, just saying that if it is 'socially influenced' then that doesn't mean it's not 'real' or should be treated with less respect.

Everyone is welcome to share their opinion.

I believe there are two sexes, that the 74 genders are made-up but there are infinite personalities. You believe you have a particular gender identity.

It’s ok to disagree and debate with people.