[Manuel_D]

People can, and do, transition as adults. Natal puberty clearly does not prevent all people from transitioning. Effectively 100% of trans people prior to about 2010 transitioned as adults.

Same thing with gay people, as per your example. I'm sure some do remain closeted their entire lives. But plenty of them come out as gay later in life.

[Dylan16807]

> Same thing with gay people, as per your example. I'm sure some do remain closeted their entire lives. But plenty of them come out as gay later in life.

Plenty do, but the ones that don't give credence to the idea that forced closeting as a teenager makes it harder to follow your heart later. And that's in a situation where it doesn't get more difficult to come out later (if you're not married). Transitioning pre- and post- puberty is very different with current medical technology, so a lot more people will get "stuck".

[Manuel_D]

As per the linked study, the desisters tend to no longer experience gender dysphoria. It's not just that they don't transition later in life. The scenario you're describing - people struggling with gender dysphoria but reluctant to transition on account of having undergone natal puberty - does not describe the bulk of the sample.

[KittenInABox]

I don;t see a linked study...

[Manuel_D]

In the child comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44546443

[heavyset_go]

I never said that they don't, just that the opportunities to do so diminish post-puberty and with age, and many people give up on the dream of being themselves.

> But plenty of them come out as gay later in life.

Some do, but statistics show that the majority don't. At some point it stops making sense to identify as a gay/bi person if you've been married for 20 years and have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed, so to speak. The same thing happens with trans people for very practical and biological reasons post-puberty.

[Manuel_D]

The majority of patients stop experiencing gender dysphoria. The analogy to a married person "stuck in the closet" is not correct: in that scenario this person is still same-sex attracted but suppresses that desire. In the case of ~80% of gender dysphoric youth, they stop desiring to be the cross-sex gender altogether. They are not refraining from transition on account of doubting their ability to pass after having gone through natal puberty.

[lelanthran]

> Some do, but statistics show that the majority don't.

Well, yeah. That's because it literally was a passing phase that the child experienced. That's why there's so many studies (some of them linked in this thread) showing that if you simply defer the decision until the minor is a major , the majority of gender dysphoria desists.

IOW, once the child has actually matured a little, their identity confusion goes away.

Deferring is the path of least harm; is it any wonder then that most of the people in the world, including highly secular countries, go that route?

[heavyset_go]

The statistics I am talking about are the rates of gay/bi identification by generation.

There's a reason there's nearly 10x as many gay identifying people in recent generations compared to past, and you can't generalize it as being a "phase". The true rates are likely the same, but people who identify that way dip off as you go back generations.

You notice the same pattern with left-handedness and those who identify as left-handed over time.

[Manuel_D]

About 3% of people 50-65 identify as gay. 4% of 18-29 year old identify as gay. 1% of 65+ identify as gay. At most, the rate increased 4x over the span of half a century: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/23/5-key-fin...

Left handedness increased from about 5% to 12% over the span of more than 60 years: https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/history-of-left-handedness

By comparison rates of transgender identification among minors has increased by a factor of a hundred over the span of just 10 years: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Rates-of-newly-recorded-...

We're talking about an increases that are multiple orders of magnitude greater, over a fraction of the time span.