[valenciarose]

It’s not sound and ultimately it’s based in the grief of people who believe they have somehow lost their child (or spouse, or sibling) because they transitioned. I don’t want to minimize the pain of people who have this mindset, no matter how destructive it is. Their sense of loss is genuine and it drives them to the same level of commitment that you see from parents who lose a child to a drunk driver. But, while the pain is real, the loss is either not real or is self-inflicted. Trans people leave the lives of people who won’t let them be themselves, but we don’t stop loving our family because we’re trans.

More people are transitioning, at all ages. More of the people who do so are visible, because of modest reductions in stigma and because there’s no longer a requirement that we disappear and cut all ties (the medical establishment used to require this). Your typical 40-50 year old parent has no idea how many of the people they went to High School and College with are trans, because they were hidden. In much the same way people had no idea how many people were gay. So this looks like an explosive change. I do expect we will see much less late transition (later than early adulthood), because more of those trans people will transition earlier.

So, why are more people transitioning? Because it’s possible and they understand it to be possible, not because there are more people who are trans. This is why it’s happening across all ages. I am a late transitioner. I started to transition as soon as I understood three things: that being trans and transitioning was a real thing, that I would not destroy my life by doing so, and that trans people can live happy fulfilled lives.

What about desistance? Some small percentage of people who transition decide that it wasn’t right for them. Most of them because of oppression, but some because it doesn’t work for them. This is much smaller than the set of people who regret that they didn’t transition, or that they waited so long to do so. It’s lower than the rate of regret for any elective surgery. There is some risk that non-binary kids who emphatically reject their assigned sex at birth are getting social pressure to conform to the other end of the binary. The pressure to be not trans at all is still very high. High enough that I don’t worry about cis kids being pressured into transition.

And there are many trans people who don’t need or want to transition, who find sufficient expression or acknowledgement in other ways. They aren’t less trans, you just don’t know they are.

[lemonberry]

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I have no agenda here. I have one trans friend (that I know of). After seeing the topic on Rogan's podcast I did some quick searching online and it opened up a few lines of thought I hadn't considered or wasn't aware of.

Edit: added "(that I know of)" to acknowledge my limited knowledge of my friend's gender or sexuality.

[UncleMeat]

Rogan has been, at best, insensitive to trans people. Given the volume of people who hold agendas against trans people and trans rights and Rogan's willingness to host people without holding a critical eye to their opinions, I'd be very careful about using his podcast as a jumping off point to the topic. I'd really recommend reading the stories of trans people directly and engaging with the scientific community.

[fock]

so could you produce some numbers about transitions? because frankly this discussion (just as the more street-oriented fraction of BLM...) seems driven by a very vocal but ultimately minuscule number of people. And if now in some avantgarde-circles (which never were related to the majority of people and also today generally have their very own orthodoxy... ) trans is en vogue, I doubt that this is the mass phenomenon you think it is.

[valenciarose]

It’s not a mass phenomenon. Neither is Autism. Fewer people are trans than are gay, but nobody really knows. At the bottom end it’s 0.3%-0.6% of the population, but that’s only people who are out. If you survey people in their low 20s, it’s higher. We’re a little less common than redheads in all likelihood. Gay people in the early 80s knew there were a lot more gay people than straight people saw, but they had no idea what the true numbers were. It’s like that.

Most of the trans people I know aren’t remotely avant-garde. I know a bunch of suburban women in monogamous relationships with their spouses or partners. I know a couple of suburban trans guys who are still married to the men they married before they figured it out, one of them with kids. I know several trans guys in health care. I do know a few trans people who are artist and writer types and are more flamboyant. The first trans woman I met worked at the same Wall Street brokerage I did and was very quiet.

When I go to (back when travel was a thing) places that are less friendly than the coasts and people see the trans flag pin on my bag, I frequently have people come out to me and talk about how they can never transition.

There is really no orthodoxy beyond believe people about their gender. Trans people are very different from each other and their experience of being trans varies wildly. There’s some agreement around language and tropes that seem to provoke violence towards us, but many trans people use language to describe themselves that other trans people would be offended by. But that’s true of gay people too.