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Given the response to my post below about culturally bound illnesses I figured it would make sense to write out a top level post specifically discussing gender dysphoria, since I expressed a desire to avoid that topic initially. I was inspired by Scott Alexander's recent post on culturally bound illnesses.
The basic idea of my previous post is that some illnesses which seem quite common in our society, things like anorexia, depression, chronic pain, and gender dysphoria, seem likely to be highly culturally mediated - i.e. they would not exist if the cultural norms we are inoculated in didn't account for them. This goes against the standard narrative for LGBTQ+ people, who often put forth the idea that before a minority gets social approval, there are a ton of 'closeted' individuals who simply live in suffering. Under this model, the social approval actually creates the urge to, for instace, sleep with the same sex or transition gender. (I'm less confident about homosexuality being highly cultural.)
I'm sure someone here could give a better history of rough numbers of trans individuals/gender dysphoria cases over time, but the gist seems to be that numbers have exploded recently. A quick search shows laughable results such as:
And then on the exact same website:
This is some of the most clear double think I've ever seen, and I tend to be much less invested in the trans debate than many here. Other studies are more honest explaining that:
I think this whole topic presents a clear problem, but I'm less sure about the actual solution. I'm sure many would jump at the chance to say we should just tell people who have gender dysphoria to suck it up and keep it to themselves, but I doubt the feasibility of that given how easy it is to create subcultures on the internet. Also, if you try to apply that frame to other problems like say anorexia, or depression, the failure modes become extremely clear.
Then again we can't just let these culturally created illnesses run rampant through our culture, and I predict they will only become increasingly problematic as our communication infrastructure and leisure time scales up. Ideally we want to replace these unhealthy cultural memes with healthier ones, but we run into a chicken and egg problem.
So - what are your recommended solutions to the issue of transgender ideation and other culturally bound issues?
Why do you think this is double think? Youths and adults are different groups and if you read down to where they explain this headline:
"Overall, based on our estimates from 2016-2017 and the current report, we find that the percentage and number of adults who identify as transgender has remained steady over time. The availability of the YRBS data has given us a more direct look into youth gender identity and provides better data than was previously available to us for estimating the size and characteristics of the youth population. Youth ages 13 to 17 comprise a larger share of the transgender-identified population than we previously estimated, currently comprising about 18% of the transgender-identified population in the U.S., up from 10% previously."
This they say is a result of new data from the fact that: "Additionally, in 2017, the YRBS, a national survey of high school students, began asking respondents if they are transgender."
The YRBS (Youth Risk behavior Survey) data was only available after they made their last estimates in 2017. So the explanation could be that there is more in depth data than before so their previous estimate was low, or it could be that the numbers of youths identifying as trans has gone up in the past 6 years while the number of adults so identifying has remained the same. Or some mix of the two. But I am not sure why doublethink is involved at all.
As to the last question, do we need to do anything different at all? At a societal level the number of people identifying as trans is still very very low, and the data from this report might suggest that the increase in youth trans does not translate to adulthood in any case. You could probably surgically transition all 300,000 youths and it really will not have much impact at a social level (not saying you should, just that you could without too many wider impacts). If their parents and doctors agree they need treatment, then treat them, if they don't and the kid wants it anyway then there are already established legal processes for emancipation and the like.
Only at the time of measurement. Youths grow into adults, and unless there's some proposed mechanism intervening, one would expect trans youth to grow up into trans adults, and trans adult to have been, at one point, trans youth. Thus today's trans adults are yesterday's trans youth, and today's trans youth are tomorrow's trans adults. Absent some other influence, a doubling in the number of current trans youth over past baselines would indicate that when those youth grow up, there will have been a significant discontinuity in the number of trans adults from the last generation to this one.
Something else has to be going on for both of the hilighted statements to be true.
They point out the youth figures from the new estimate are now derived from a direct question added to the survey post-2017, where before they were estimating by other means. So that would be the baseline something that could enable both statements to be true.
They say their estimate has increased, not that the true (the actual amount we would see if measured by some omniscient entity) numbers have. Now it is certainly possible their original methodology was actually just as accurate as the direct question method and so the increase is a real one, rather than one driven by the methodology change. That might indicate a recent wave of youth identification. In the reverse if the previous numbers were wrong and the doubled numbers were also correct historically then that might indicate some level of de-transitioning before adulthood.
But because the methodology changed we don't know if either is true.
But that elides the question of what happens between the estimate of the trans youth population, and the survey of trans adults, right?
In what way? There are 300,000 youth trans people and 1.3 million adults (according to their figures) now (or as of 2020 really).
Previously their estimate was 1.6 million in total, 160,000 of which were youths back in 2016.
Presumably all of the youths in the 2016 estimate (using data from 2014-15) aged out of the category and either became adult trans, detransitioned or died. And some number of the adults remained trans, some number detransitioned and some number died. But we don't have those numbers.
There are 391,000 Trans people between 18-24 in their 2020 charts. So some of these would have been from the youth cohort from 2016. We don't know how many were "new" and how many were from the 2016 youth cohort however. It could be there really only were 160,000 back in 2016 and all became adults and trans. Or some number detransitioned and were replaced by new adult trans people.
Is that what you were trying to figure out?
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Indeed, their explanation is that they have better information as the question is now directly asked to youths on the survey post 2017 when it wasn't before, hence why their estimate of the prevalence in youth doubled. But if the measurements are correct then de-transitioning or a recent youth wave would seem to be the most plausible explanations, I would agree.
I have no writings aside from TheMotte, and all I can really offer is that society isn't for anything in particular, it's the emergent behaviors at scale by all the people that make it up. A blind hydra rather than a blind watchmaker perhaps. It will adapt, grow new heads and change as people change and individuals are largely unable to impact it, and governments only marginally more so.
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