Hacker News Reader

Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

Because reality wouldn't be so perverse as to have multiple endocrine disrupters.

> greater LGBTQ+ acceptance recently has led to people being more open with that side of themselves, rather than it being the result of environmental pollution

That's a very weird implication. All human beings are complex products of social, economical, genetic, environmental and historical factors.

External factors do not make a person "less themselves" or "less real".

I think he's overstating the impact, but external factors absolutely impact how people present themselves.

There aren't to many openly gay Saudi Arabians.

Do you think Saudi Arabia is secretly 20% LGBT, like the US gen-z is openly?

That suspiciously high 20% doesn't just include people who are LGB or identify as T. It originates from a poll commissioned by GLAAD, who also included in that category anyone who described themselves as "gender non-conforming". Which could mean anything really: clothing styles, haircuts, hobbies, etc.

Of course there are, but it seems obvious to me that greater LGBTQ+ acceptance recently has led to people being more open with that side of themselves, rather than it being the result of environmental pollution.

Anyway, the alarm is very selective. I don't see people rapidly reducing their animal product consumption because of dioxin, a potent endocrine disruptor that is bioaccumulating. Atrazine is still used in most US corn production, are all the people concerned about plastic avoiding non-organic corn and corn products?

> Of course there are, but it seems obvious to me that greater LGBTQ+ acceptance recently has led to people being more open with that side of themselves, rather than it being the result of environmental pollution.

Why does that seem obvious to you? Additionally, even if it's true, it may not be the only cause in rise of cases of gender dysphoria. Additionally additionally, it's also possible that some change in our environment has affected the prevalence of "LGBTQ+ acceptance" in the first place.

The West's movement away from an Abrahamic worldview has certainly helped with the acceptability.

There's no doubt that there's an aspect of the expectation of acceptance and safety that makes self-identification more viable (certainly more so than the expectation that your family is about to throw a bunch of rocks at you).

However, that does not mean there's been no change in the underlying rates - it just means that the data is noisy.

We've dealt with noisy data before.

I guess a more succinct way to phrase my question-point is: what if as western liberal humans we've always been accepting of anything as it increases in prevalence and something has cased the prevalence of LGBTQ+ to rise to a point where we naturally accept it more? Just a thought experiment I'm definitely not trying to question all the work activists have done. More-so opening the table and asking what if it's an effect and not a cause. I guess covid may be an obvious counter-example but meh.

If there's a shared cause to both it's industrialisation.

It is the reason we're well fed and well educated - here's where I'd look for the cause of acceptance.

It's also the beast we built to burn the world.

It seems that as more people start to absorb the ideology of gender identity that is being pushed upon society, some who wouldn't have otherwise considered it are applying these concepts to themselves.

Hence the trend of people identifying as 'non-binary' in recent years - it's the logical conclusion of believing that 'man' and 'woman' refer to a collection of gendered stereotypes, rather than a description of one's sex.

There's obvious correlation, but causation? And in particular that it would be obvious which way?

I'm sure I'll regret this comment - I really don't have an axe to grind - I just don't find that 'obvious' at all (however real and fine the feeling itself).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com