[nuggets]

There's not really any plausible explanation as to why referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.

The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.

[yosame]

I'm pretty sure this take is incorrect on multiple accounts. Trans demographics tend to skew towards trans women by about a third, not trans men - at least in all the research I've come across.

And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of different gender identities can very plausibily explain increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs here.

[nuggets]

Regarding the change in sex ratio for childhood referrals, this is well documented. See for example this paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324768316_Sex_Ratio...

"Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.

[pseudalopex]

> "Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.

Some social scientists say the analogy is misleading, the term is poorly defined, and contagion has a pejorative connotation irrespective of intent. They are correct.

[defrost]

Well documented should imply multiple papers across multiple countries and across multiple time periods.

If that's the one and only paper you have, then it's a single UK paper that covers seven years of GIDS referrals from numbers that are near zero in 2009 to 1800 referrals in 2016.

Statistically, looking at the last graphic in the paper, it's less a case of "becoming so heavily skewed" and likely more a case of "taking several years to reveal the pattern and weights".

There's scarce numbers to begin with to make a strong claim as to the "natural balance" of referrals being evident at the start and this "being skewed toward" the later clearer pattern.

[nuggets]

There are other papers showing the same sort of pattern elsewhere. For example, you can see one cited in that paper within the introductory paragraphs.

As the commenter upthread noted, the adult demographic is more weighted towards men who want to be women. Why would childhood referrals have become shifted in the opposite direction, much more towards girls who want to be boys?

[defrost]

Why is the question;

> There's not really any plausible explanation as to [..] other than social contagion.

is a leap.

> Why would childhood referrals have become shifted

\1 Have they really shifted, or have the stats on a relatively new thing in a few countries firmed up from nothing, to bugger all, to enough to see a pattern?

\2 As to the pattern now seen - a few boys question whether they like being boys at an earlier age than a few more girls then question whether they like being girls ..

there are other factors, eg: I heard there's a "big change" in the lives of young girls at an age that coincides with a 'surge' (small numbers in a country the size of the UK) in girls exploring whether they want to be girls after all.

Social patterns, depth of communication about places existing where gender question can be asked, word of mouth, etc are factors that play a role - but they are not the sole factors at play in these very low incident observations.

My suggestion to yourself, looking at the questions you've raised and how you've framed them, is to perhaps study some epidemiology and find a mentor with first hand real world experience with low frequency data that gradually comes to light as social norms about reporting evolve - eg: SIDS data in the 1970s / 1980s.

You seem to be making a great many mistakes based on preconceptions and "feels".

If only the Dutch hadn't destroyed quite so many records in "their" East Indies .. there might be other gender frequency records to draw on <shrug>.

[yearolinuxdsktp]

No plausible explanation? I disagree.

It’s about the social safety of transitioning. The paper you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF island, it’s much less safe to be a trans woman than a trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet and don’t come out.

[nuggets]

Then why were there more boys who want to be girls referred prior to a decade ago, compared to girls who want to be boys?

The radical feminist movement in the UK has existed much longer than this, since around the late 1960s to early 1970s.

[heavyset_go]

Because a decade ago marks when the American right decided to scapegoat transwomen after losing their previous scapegoat, gay people and marriage, to SCOTUS in 2015.

2015-2016 is when rhetoric online and globally shifted towards villainizing trans women that weren't on the public's radar before. This was exported to UK politics and has been an incredible political success.

[nuggets]

If that is the cause, how does it explain both the sex ratio shift and the rapid increase in referrals starting from around 2011-2012 onwards? There were gender clinics across Europe reporting similar demographic changes in pediatric referrals. This precedes the political developments in the US that you mentioned.

[nxor]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

Please stop. HN is not a place for political/ideological battle, including about this topic. What HN is for is curious conversation, including about difficult topics, but the guidelines apply, particularly these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[heavyset_go]

Speak for yourself, literally. I'm in that "rest of us in LGB".

It's actually quite the contrary, the rest of the LGB looks at gay transphobes as the hypocrites and useful idiots they are.

[pryce]

To claim there are not really any other candidates for a skew (in that direction or the other) you would have to (like Shrier herself) go out of your way to not bother to talk to trans people, or their doctors, or their families, or sociologists, or talk to any of the people who spend their lives researching gender, what it means, how it affects us, what assumptions we make, whether those ideas stack up when confronted with empirical research, etc etc. I'm not really interested in discussing further with a 30 minute old account.

[nuggets]

What is your alternative explanation for why referrals have so sharply skewed towards girls who want to be boys, within the past decade or so?

It is doctors who first drew attention to this phenomenon. See for example Tavistock whistleblower David Bell.

[pryce]

Increasing social acceptibility and awareness is not mysterious to people who understand that many perceptions about gender are constructions that occur in social contexts.

Why do I owe you any specific "explanation" when the context here is that you are treating Shrier's pseudoscientific book that literally tells parents in the closing chapters that if their kid has a trans friend they should consider moving cities to get their child away from their trans friend as though we are supposed to take transphobic hate literature at face value.

Maybe a better step than me agreeing to do that is that instead you should take the entire corpus of medical literature on the subject, as well as the voices of trans people on the subject of trans people at face value first.

I have no interest in your JAQing off[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions

[nuggets]

You don't have to suggest an explanation for this demographic change if you don't want to.

[defrost]

The statistical evidence for a change in the paper you linked and the other papers in the area is extremely weak.

At one end of the scale is very little data that gives an unreliable picture with a high degree of variability, at the other end of the not very long in time scale is somewhat more data that provides a better picture.

To make such a fuss about " this demographic change " indicates a lack of exposure to such statistics.

Why are you attempting to make such a big deal of bad data here?

[alchemism]

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

[beepbooptheory]

Maybe just think critically, without conspiracy about it for two seconds. With anything else, I'm sure you'd see the classic survivorship bias error you are making here.

[nuggets]

Could you elaborate on what you're alluding to, please?

[heavyset_go]

There's not really any plausible explanation as to why so many left-handed students tend to skew towards boys, rather than girls, other than social contagion.

When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids. Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since many of them are boys and not girls.

[nuggets]

But the adult demographic of left-handers doesn't have, and didn't have, a sex ratio skewed in the opposite direction to the youth demographic. So how is this a relevant comparison?

[pseudalopex]

People assigned male at birth come out later than people assigned female at birth on average. Trans men and trans women receive different stigma. Many AFAB children and adolescents referred to gender clinics identify as non binary. AMAB non binary people reported less acceptance in LGBT circles even. And biology could be a factor.

[nuggets]

That perhaps indicates that these are distinct phenomena and shouldn't be lumped into the same category.

[nxor]

You are correct. And when they try to undermine you they prove your point. There are more mtf people than ftm people because until recently, the it was not a trend among teen girls.