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But the most common answer given to the question of "why does it seem like there are suddenly so many gay/trans people?" is the graph that shows the "rate of left-handedness by year of birth" that sharply spikes and plateaus after what is apparently a cultural shift in schools to accept left-handed people as they are rather than force them to write right-handed (typically https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c... from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241783005_The_histo...).
She treats the subject very delicately, rightly so, because many people will probably call you a bigot for even asking the question.
From chapter 4 of the book: "In a 2019 article in Psychology Today, Robert Hedaya, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University of Medicine wrote, "It is nothing short of astounding that after hundreds of thousands of years of human history, the fundamental facts of human gender are becoming blurry.""
And in a later passage from the author: "One scientific theory suggests that in utero exposure to EDCs, particularly phthalates, which can lower a fetus's exposure to testosterone, may play a role; these chemicals have been associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in males. Interestingly, ASD and gender dysphoria, two seemingly unrelated conditions, occur together more often than expected"
Not to mention, we have 0 idea how prevalent homosexuality was historically (not to mention transgenderism), and animal studies often don't replicate in humans.
The book is mostly about phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals, and their effects on reproductive health. There is a ton of research on phthalates in humans, the negative correlation between exposure and sperm quantity/quality is undeniable. Do you want me to link to some studies on it? I would not mind, though it is an easy Google.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/selection-bias-is-a-fa...
I mean I personally agree with this in general but Scott Alexander has many fans...
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad...
There is some evidence of a sharp increase in transgenderism in young people .
None in the article people are commenting on and I'm not aware of any data linking that increase to chemical influence.
As an aside, "transgenderism" is a relatively contentious term because while historically it had a purely medical definition, more recently certain groups have reappropriated it to refer to it as if it was an ideology, which does a huge disservice to transgender people.
I do wonder if some of the increase is a shift in how people perceive their own gender. Perhaps some in the non binary would have used different language in the past. I wasn't aware of the term 20 years ago.
That's also probably why non-binary identity is overwhelmingly the most prevalent amongst the youngest generations, as they've been brought up being taught the ideology of gender identity as if it's a fact.
Maybe we'll know 20 years from now, because it is commonly accepted.
If the rate stays mostly flat, when it is acceptable, then we probably had no increase in the previous 20 years (from now).
If the rate of the next 20 years is trending up, then it is likely that it was trending up before it became acceptable.
It is accepted by many but there's a lot of potential for improvement.
It's absolutely possible there are other factors, but considering last year even Fox News produced a short positive report about a trans teenager in a conservative family[0] it's clear society has changed a bit.
[0] https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-regulars-far-freak-140451237...
There's some evidence that this happens in the western world too, though not forcibly imposed by the government, but guided by parents who would rather have a straight daughter or son than a gay son or daughter.
Ps men aren't the only gender that can be gay obviously.
For instance, in https://archive.is/ODLZ4, a recent article on gender identity services in the UK, the author notes that:
"In 2000, the only clinical audit of patients ever carried out by Gids found that more than 25 per cent of referrals had spent time in care, compared with 0.67 per cent of the general population. Children referred to Gids were ten times more likely than the national average to have a registered sex offender as a parent, while 42 per cent had lost a parent through death or separation, and 70 per cent had more than five 'associated features' such as anxiety, depression, abuse, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders or suicide attempts."
But since so many health services switched to an 'affirmation-only' model, and transgenderism has been elevated to a supposed civil rights issue, there has been a distinct lack of curiosity in researching this further.
No gay gene was found, the closest model they have is a cluster of hormonal influencer genes. However we know parasites like Toxoplasmosis can induce polycystic ovary syndrome in women which causes hormone dysfunction (I know because I had POCS its why I don't allow cats near my kids now). Supposedly POCS is highly correlated in lesbians (supposedly emphasized).
Even identical twin studies showed nothing conclusive, sometimes one twin was gay and the other wasn't, sometimes both.
However granted we are biological beings, I strongly suspect endocrine disrupters like microplastics aren't doing anything positive for us.
There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening (i.e. Trans-women can get prostate cancer) where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation without being silenced because it sounds similar to what bigots might say.
If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.
I'd like to say the statement I'm querying is really relevant to my career as I work on back-end systems and my understanding is that it is really important for medical databases to be expanded so that doctors can schedule the right type of medical screening for somebody based on their body. I'm also aware that in certain parts of the world people might not want information stored in databases because they fear persecution based on that stored data.
We should all be careful and sensitive to issues effecting others, and I think by your response you agree with this, well done, lets all keep it up, the world will become a better place for minorities of any kind. This post was more active for me than I expected, really due to an offensive comment I made about the original commenter so I thought I should correct where I made a mistake but also defend my general point of view in my original comment, our discussion got caught up in the rest which was unfair to your point of view.
I am going to contradict my original comment to you:
I absolutely agree with you on 'There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening ... where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation'
I do also think unless we are experts in the domain, we need to be careful in referencing an example because any issue can be complex and varied individual to individual, we can also cause offence with such, without realising it. so I agree my 'bizarre; comment was not the correct way to explain this.
I also agree broadly with 'If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.'
However I also think Science does need oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not, as history has often shown left uncontrolled bad things can happen. There's bigots in Science right, same as anywhere.
Thanks for questioning me, pleasure talking with you.
I'm curious as to what you mean by this. Are you talking about avoiding doing or publishing research that could have undesirable social effects? E.g. in the hypothetical world where it had been discovered in 1980 that there was a gene that made African Americans less bright than white ones this research should not be published?
Or is it that you are worried about biased scientists faking results to harm disadvantaged minorities?
Don't get me wrong this agreement from society is not always balanced, correct and often Science has to disagree and argue the point, but this oversight must still exist, surely?
There's a formal methodology, a social practice, a set of results, a perceived canon...
Is it the problem of lawbreaking experiment side effects you're interested in? E.g. infecting a bunch of people with syphilis to see disease progression?
It was asked without the care one would normally use when approaching such a topic and perhaps that reflects badly but I find the question interesting.
What if we are so controlled by the environment around us? Are our likes and dislikes something we have control over or is it just a result of the world around?
I absolutely think we a are controlled by the environment around us, and we're only properly starting to understand and measure this recently.
Unrelated, what do you think are the causes? Gene mutations in child? Womb environment disruption? Pollutants? Pathogens? God just deciding "I'm going to make this one trans"? Social pressures (wat)?
I agree that no topic is off limits in principle (and in fact I did not say that this topic should be off limits, contrary to what you suggest). However, some topics attract an overwhelming majority of bad faith participants in the discourse. I have already seen quite enough dispassionate debates on HN on the subject of what exactly is wrong with gay and trans people. I have no wish to fan the flames of another one.
It would be more interesting to debate the causes of heterosexuality. (It’s interesting, for example, that people tend to suggest ‘gene mutations’ as a possible cause for homosexuality but not for heterosexuality, even though any genes underlying human sexuality have presumably mutated many times over our evolutionary history.)
Well the cause of heterosexuality seems obvious enough. Making males want to fertilize females will cause babies which spreads the "make male want to fertilize female" mechanism creating genes. So a mutation that makes genes that cause such a feeling will spread.
It's a fairly direct linkage so one could see how genes causing it could reach fixation (and indeed, variations of this desire reached fixation hundreds of millions of years ago).
Conversely, genes that result in, say, mice being sexually attracted to cows wouldn't reach fixation, leading to them being very rare in the mouse population. So most animals will be most attracted to things that have the highest chance they can make healthy offspring with.
In fact, no-one knows what makes people straight, gay, or otherwise. So there is not much to talk about, from a purely scientific point of view.
But anyway, that was an aside. You haven't responded to the main point of either of my comments. If you really are only interested in having a debate about the causes of homosexuality, I'm not the person you're looking for (and the comments on this article aren't the place for it).
To a libertarian like me people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, including changing it as they wish or declining other people's attempts to change it (via a "cure"), but I understand this isn't universal.
To me, a discussion on whether homosexuality has a pathogenic trigger is intellectual curiosity, to someone else it's like a Jew overhearing a couple of bald rough looking fellows talking about how there are too many Jewish movie producers and someone should do something to make there be less of them...
"Just asking questions" is not a plausible defense when the question is this leading. It's like asking "Is women being dumber than men possibly linked to lower testosterone?" and claiming that you are just being curious.
Why would this be unlikely? I'm struggling to think of a cause that would result in both a constant rate of these things AND a rate of several percent (de novo mutations aren't anywhere near common enough to get you constant rate given that gay uncles arent going to be doing 2x as much parenting as fathers and theres only like 40 mutations per generation).
There's also the evidence of people answering "yes" more to "Are you a man attracted to men? Have you had sex with men?" type questions. Yes, there are other explanations like people being more comfortable answering yes, but it's still evidence.
Also, given the huge stigma associated with both until extremely recently, a significant increase in survey responses has such huge confounding factors that it's entirely irrelevant. There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay.
Since gayness is prevalent through the animal kingdom, one of two things must be true: it either helps in group environments (whether you choose to interpret that as group selection or "selfish gene"-style counterintuitive effects) ; or perhaps genes related to gayness happen to be deeply tied to some other very important genes that get easily passed on.
Either way, what is your proposed alternative? Do you think 6%+1% is too large a number for historical proportions of gay+trans people?
By the way, 1% for trans people seems to match pretty well the number of Hijra people in India (10M+ out of 1.4 billion). Another piece of evidence that suggests these rates are relatively constant across the world in vastly different cultures.
This indeed is something that every gay man knows through experience but I suspect that many straight people may not. In many parts of the world (including many parts of the US and Europe) the majority of men available for gay sex do not identify as gay and are not open about their same sex attraction.
But I think a more fundamental issue lies under this squeamishness: the thought of dividing “gender” and “sex” (or more broadly “culture” and “nature”, or even the Cartesian notion of “mind” and “body”), whereas the two cannot be separated in reality. And I think this monism is probably something that trans people would actually understand by intuition far better than me, because changing your sex requires a lot of physical and hormonal changes inside your body that interferes with every other social aspect of their lives (and the social pressures in return create substantial changes in their bodies). Sex isn’t just socially constructed, they’re also biologically formed, it’s just that the dynamics surrounding them are just far more complex than what typical right-wingers think of (a clean separation between man and woman).