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To me, this is nearly a complete non sequitur. Why the sudden spike of people identifying as trans? Society is more accepting now for sure, but gay people have always been with us. Trans is something new, and certainly in these numbers. I personally believe there is a strong biological cause. I’ll place my bet on ingesting microwaved plastic daily. Actually looking for the reason would imply that there is something wrong with trans people and that they can be fixed or even prevented so I’m not holding my breath.
I think being trans is about as morally wrong as being deaf. I’d expect the federal government to do something in the case of an unparalleled epidemic of deafness.
I agree with most of what you say, though I doubt that you could have a genetic cause for a trait and have it increase at the rates we’re talking about. Absent a bottleneck, the rates of most genetic traits stay fairly constant throughout time and across populations.
I suspect we might be dealing with both social contagioun and environmental chemicals.
We have a lot of chemicals from industrial processes that end up in our food, in our water, and in the air. To the degree that these chemicals disrupt natural hormones and thus thus would change the development of a fetus, that’s going to likely affect gender and sexuality. At some point during fetal development, a male challis brain is flooded with hormones to make the brain masculine. But if you have something that either prevents this from happening or blocks the hormones, or blocks them in certain regions of the brain, it’s entirely plausible to have a male body and a female, or partially female brain. Exposure to chemicals that mimic this process might well create a female with a masculine brain (or partially masculine). Thus you’d have a baby with a brain-body mismatch that isn’t genetic, but is inborn.
On the social side, we have managed to give gayness the veneer of “cool”. Being gay is celebrated in liberal circles as brave, being true to yourself, and often celebrated in media and in public places. They’re given special status and what kids crave — attention and a feeling of special importance. If I’m a nerd, I get shoved into lockers. Low status. If I’m gay, I get protected from that, enforced by the teachers.
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Why the sudden spike in people identifying as something that wasn't an identity in the past? Because it's an identity now.
There were very few authors before the invention of written language. There were very few basketball players before we started playing basketball.
It's not 'more' people identifying as trans, it's 'any', as it was not a thing you could identify as until very recently.
There have been various analogues in different cultures at different times, and we have zero accurate records on how common any of those were in their own times and places.
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The comparison with the deaf community is interesting because my impression is there are absolutely members who would object to government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people, depending on the means. Maybe I ought to caveat my statement similarly.
And they would be wrong to do so.
Doesn't that depend on the method of reduction?
It would be obviously wrong to murder deaf people to reduce their numbers, but would it be obviously wrong to reduce the deaf population by curing them?
I would agree that it would be wrong to cure deaf people against their will, but what if 30% wanted curing? Would it be wrong to reduce deafness by 30% in that scenario? What if more wanted curing but were pressured by the deaf community to reject the cure?
What if, in a world where deafness was reduced to an even smaller fraction of its current presence, librarians and teachers started encouraging hearing children to explore deafness as a potential identity so that it does not go extinct? Would that be noble and something parents needn't worry about?
I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.
Yes, I did. I read it as "government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people..." "...would be wrong to so"
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I can see the scenario where hard-of-hearing children were previously beaten down on, presumed to be slow and inattentive while they're actually just worse at perceiving speech than others. Indeed, that appears to be the experience of at least 1 person I've read about. In that world, I think it would be better if teachers tried to identify children who might be hard of hearing and encourage them to explore "deafness identity" such as sign language, hearing aids and potential cochlear implants in the future. Not to "prevent deafness from going extinct", but to help those children live in society. If parents started to block this and insist their child is perfectly normal without any medical examination to confirm it, I would assume it's the common instinct of trying to look normal which is harmful when you're actually not normal.
I trust you have quotes, at least, from teachers who claim they encourage children to explore transness for the sake of it not going extinct?
No. It was a hypothetical starting with "What if..."
Don't you think that the liberal fetishization of minorities as ideals who are somehow superior to the normies is a real phenomenon?
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That is my understanding as well. I really enjoyed learning sign language but I wouldn’t think twice about curing deafness in all newborns.
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