It makes sense that as peer acceptance of different gender IDs increases, more (relatively) younger people ID or consider transitioning. Why? For generations, a common thread in trans narratives has been “years lived in private discomfort, even torment.” Remove that, and…
A couple years ago someone made a comment to my friend about “before you were trans,” and she pointed out: “I always was, you just didn’t know it.
What this guy seems to be missing is that “more trans people being welcomed into the world” doesn’t make cis people trans. It makes trans people welcome.
Well — to be fair he seems to get that, but in accepting the framing inherent in the “social contagion” nomenclature, and allowing it to be conflated with “numbers increase when persecution decreases,” an important point of distinction is erased.
His followup raises a good secondary point: “What’s so bad about teens trying on gender identities?” It is important to remember that pushing back against “contagion” framing shouldn’t mean shitting on fluid and changing identities.