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by fock 2131 days ago
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.
1 comments
valenciarose 2131 days ago
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.

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