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FtM or MtF transgenderism? These are meaningfully different things.
That study didn’t separate the two. IMO anime and similar media plays a role in causing MTF, I have no idea what causes FTM though
It's almost certainly more porn than anime, but you obviously can't bring up porn when coming out to your parents.
Unless you're Andrea Long Chu maybe.
Judging by the sheer quantity of anime avatars I see among the online trans, I rrally think it's the anime. I've personally witnessed the anime -> furry -> trans pipeline, but have never heard of porn being a major part of anyone's trans origin story.
Not that I necessarily think it's the anime itself that does it (though a genre where nearly all men look like ladyboy twinks and nearly all women look like 13 year old schoolgirls can't be particularly healthy for a developing sexuality). It's that anime as a subculture attracts a lot of mentally ill weirdos.
I'm inclined to think that there's some further underlying factor that explains the trans + anime connection, rather than a specifically anime -> trans pipeline (and maybe that underlying factor is just "autism").
I unfortunately can't serve as a perfectly controlled experiment, because I was exposed to anime from an extremely young age. But I was having persistent thoughts about wanting to be a woman by the time I was around 10 years old, and prior to that time, I had only been exposed to what I would consider to be very "normal" mainstream children's anime with pretty normal male role models, like Pokemon and Yugioh and DBZ (Cardcaptor Sakura got shuffled in there too, but, I would be shocked if one show with a female protagonist had such a profound lifelong impact on my psychology).
All three of these media franchises contain, as a central part of the protagonist’s path toward their desired social rewards, a magical identity transformation:
Yugi learns that his true identity is an extraordinary Pharaoh, and that this real identity was lurking within his body and waiting to appear after some puzzling around
Pokémon have their identities changed in a powerful and stunning way; Charmeleon, Butterfree, from egg to eggmazing
Goku shifts into a Saiyan which changes his fundamental identity into something cosmically-important
What is unconsciously grafted into the adolescent’s understanding of the world is that such magical identity transformations are normal and extremely desirable. They are sensed as “reinforcing” in that they occur at key junctions where a character obtains something highly desirable, and where he is otherwise in a stressed or confused state. We can imagine an idea being unconsciously smuggled into the mind: “what if I have my own shocking identity transformation which results in the social rewards I have been pining for? Doesn’t everyone have one of these?”
Where effeminate anime comes in, is that across many anime franchises the female characters are the most “privileged” and anxiolytic within the cast, and usually the most beautiful to boot. Imagine you’re a youth who, as @Botond173 and @4bpp suggest, has a lot of stress related to their gender and social identity. Your favorite activity to reduce stress is to vicariously live another life (essentially inhabiting the body of a new person), and the person you are vicariously experiencing often has a magical identity transformation that drastically improves his life. What’s more, the most comforting / anxiolytic / socially-desired objects in the animeverse are women. Often these women, or girls, are overly-feminine. You’ve essentially been primed to vicariously inhabit another life as relaxation, you’ve been conditioned to associate the highly-feminine with the most comfort, and you’ve been conditioned to expect an identity change to fundamentally flip your life for the better. Now, maybe still, for a lot of people this doesn’t do anything. But let’s say you are wired a little differently, autism or etc. And then on top of this, there are communities that are now ready to shower you in superabundant social praise and validation for your identity transformation, and even the media seems to be on your side, and there are psychological tricks that this community employs purposefully or inadvertently (look at how colorful you will be now; so much novelty; you’re part of a tribe and get a flag and grievances and purpose and . . . ).
Re: the porn element mentioned by @Tanista, one of the ferishes that seem to be far more common among MtFs is “puppygirl” et al. This is essentially the fantasy that you are so socially-desirable that someone wants to command you around all day as a pet, while at the same time providing a comforting identity through the outsourcing of control over your life. I think this is similar to the anime etiology in that there is an identity change which comes with a huge shift in social esteem.
There is some relevant data for this theory, eg the HomeStuck fandom is 50% transgender (100x prevalence?) and the media franchise is essentially (1) I had a fundamental life-altering identity transformation through logging into a digital social ecosystem [sburb]; (2) the coolest and most beautiful and less stressful characters are all women.
I think this is brilliant.
What I would add is that your phrase "magical identity transformation" is fundamentally normal for teenagers. It is both the biological reality of puberty and the narrative logic of progressing from child to adult. "Young adult" media inherently concerns the realization of conflict in the world and the boy's need to become a man. (The Pokemon anime is fundamentally for children because the world is basically good and the conflict is all in good fun, with occasional exceptions. The games are closer to puberty media.)
A lot of trans experience starts with anxiety over puberty, so it makes a lot of sense to me to connect this to soothing soft media.
Is it really that high now?
I thought it had more to do with Homestuck's fascination with alternative sexualities. If I remember correctly by the end of the original story there were maybe two main characters left who were not at least ambiguously gay.
I think there’s a qualitative difference between media where an identity is fulfilled and media where an identity is radically changed in essence. If you’re a boy born in 1920, what media are you reading where identity is changed in essence rather than fulfilled in development? You’re reading about a cowardly adventurer becoming brave, a soldier rising through the ranks, something of that sort. Or if you’re a boy playing WoW or Oblivion, you start as a grunt whose identity is achieved through an expected transformation. In 2020, you’re more likely to read about someone transforming into an animal, some cosmic being, being possessed by a different spirit, something of that sort. But I don’t know, maybe comic books are a counter example. But I think this is just one of the co-factors involved. If we shamed transgenderism and deleted all of their online spaces, IMO there would be a lot fewer cases; the notion of identity transformation would still be in the mind but it would be expressed by (maybe) shifting careers a lot, changing your name, changing religion, becoming Chinese, whatever else. Yesterday’s Lawrence of Arabia is today’s Lilith of Transbabea, but the Bedouin is more aesthetic IMO.
Per a survey of 7279 individuals, 52.1% of Homestuck fandom participants are transgender. I didn’t consider the possibility that it was because of sexuality representation, thanks for that info. I haven’t read it. Though the rate still seems extremely extreme extra high esp as few of the characters are transgender.
Yeah, as a form of experiential avoidance / negative reinforcement. The vicarious escapism is extra reinforced given the default social stressors. The real trigger though IMO is the extreme validation and praise you find in LGBTc places, with so much color and art and tribalism and such; really just a night v day difference for an at-risk nerd.
Correlation, causation.
The people taking a Homestuck community survey in 2025 are clearly selected for a willingness to hold socially ostracized beliefs.
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