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

[PerverseConverse]

Still new to this subject and trying to get my head round it. I am genuinely interested in how being trans became such a thing for want of a better expression.
At uni 20 years ago, I knew of one man who wanted to be a woman. I don't think gender dysphoria was ever mentioned in our discussions as friends. He started off dressing more "androgynously" and calling himself by a female name. He was a nice guy, mature student, ex-forces, gentle, caring, lots of parent issues, possibly divorced but to be honest I can't remember. I started to feel a bit freaked out around him for some reason. My gut was waving red flags at me but I couldn't say why. Just something off. So I distanced myself. Out of the whole (small) university he was the only openly trans person AFAIK and I had a far few friends in the LGB group. My point being that back then it was very rare. Now if the media are to be believed there are so many trans people that we need to completely change society to accommodate and accept them. Gender dysphoria is a rare condition yet trans is being pushed and pushed. Where has all this come from and why? Why does not fitting in now equal being trans? How did teenagers navigate those difficult years before they were brainwashed without deciding they were actually in the wrong body? I really don't get what's going on and it scares me that our children are having this aggressively pushed at them and are having to accept unisex toilets or communal sleeping places at Guides where boys can obtain access to female spaces and nobody has a right to object because he says he's a girl. The world seems to have lost all perspective and gone mad. Quite frankly I want the world to stop so I can get off and then come back once sanity is restored. Assuming it ever will be.

The LGBT scene has also skyrocketed in recent decades. However, the trans kids thing is a bit weird and I honestly can't get my head around it.

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.

Another interesting point I recently read was - where are all the middle age women who now wish to be men? It appears to be almost exclusively late onset M2F. If its now more socially acceptable to be trans and that's why there's an explosion in their visibility... Why are there big holes in the demographic? Shouldn't they be evenly spread; or shouldn't the trend for more WtM continue?

This was quite an interesting thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3328210-Follow-the-money-who-is-funding-the-US-transborg

Also this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3241837-Why-has-the-trans-lobby-been-so-successful

Also, why were previous cultures - even the culture we grew up in - not aware of this army of people who were desperately unhappy in their own bodies? If it's a real and widespread phenomenon, surely it would have been more visible?

Well, that's an interesting question, Not. According to my anthropologist professor friend, all cultures have gender (in the old-school social sciences sense of socially and culturally sanctioned roles/behaviours/dress codes/occupations deemed appropriate for one sex or the other). But two things are worth noting.

First, there's considerable variation from one culture to another (Medieval Iceland, modern day Navajo culture - weaving is a woman's job, Medieval England - weaving is a man's job). Some jobs do tend to be reasonably stable across cultures, largely for physiological reasons (big game hunting, ploughing with heavy draft animals - both men's jobs in most cultures because of the need for strength; looking after babies and toddlers - women's work, because of lactation).

Second (and relevant to this discussion) an individual culture can adopt either a flexible or a rigid attitude to gender roles. So a woman does a traditionally bloke thing - is the response of the people around her "bit eccentric, but each to their own..." or is it "stone the witch, she has transgressed the order of nature..."?

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.

I personally don't think it's an accident that the huge rise in trans identifying teens is coinciding with a backlash against feminism and a society which seems to have gone backwards over the last twenty years in terms of how hard children/teens are forced into gendered boxes (the pinkification/khakification of childhood, the Kardashian plastic barbie doll look for teen girls, toxically hyper-masculine role models for teen boys).

I think it's a kind of perfect storm, reflecting the world as it is at the moment. My optimistic side thinks it will settle down. But since it's a man's rights movement the new laws will be barged through before then. Women's rights movement on the other hand? Women will keep having to toil away over the decades and centuries. Dealing with pushbacks. Having to gratefully except any scraps left behind.

True, people have sometimes stepped outside their gender roles in socially sanctioned ways. But this belief that people who don't conform to gender roles might actually be a member of the opposite sex, instead of some third gender or an imitation - that's new.

I'm glad I grew up before this 'pinkification' took hold. It does make me wonder how the princess culture is affecting girls. Are we going to see fewer women going into what were already traditionally male careers?

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.

I'm not sure I believe this considering that women are apparently the principle viewers of violent porn, as evidenced by the recent Pornhub data analysis.

women are apparently the principle viewers of violent porn

I don't believe that for a second. Perhaps men using female identities.

I'm not sure I believe this considering that women are apparently the principle viewers of violent porn, as evidenced by the recent Pornhub data analysis.

Really? With the rise in middle aged men pretending to be women, I find it more likely to be men using female names.

I think they present too small a percentage of the population to affect the stats. If you do your research, there are plenty of women that like bdsm. Being dominated is one of the most common female fantasies as evidenced by the popularity of 50 Shades.

Accepting the pornhub stats, I'd still say viewing and doing are very different.

Also, what are the stats for the women viewing and enjoying violent porn? Are they the same demographic?
Of course people can enjoy BDSM, but a women in her 20/30s exploring their own sexuality is different animal than a young teenager with no sexual experience thinking she will be expected to engage in violent sex.

If I had been a teenager today, I think it's very likely I may have identified as trans. It wasn't an option. I grew up.i learnt that life isn't fair. It wasn't easy. I still have body issues which sometimes get me down, but I pull my socks up and get on with things. I am glad it was not an option, because I think cutting yourself up and filling yourself with chemicals will cause you more physical and mental harm, whereas I built mental strength

Whether women watch (and some do) is entirely beside the point. A woman watching may be doing so for any one of a number of (fairly screwed up reasons) but on the whole she is not imagining herself as the victim. A man watching is imagining himself as the perpetrator - then taking those sexual practices (oral till the woman chokes and cries, strangulation, slapping, turning PIV into anal without consent mid session) into the real world and doing them there.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.