The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.
And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of different gender identities can very plausibily explain increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs here.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324768316_Sex_Ratio...
"Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
If that's the one and only paper you have, then it's a single UK paper that covers seven years of GIDS referrals from numbers that are near zero in 2009 to 1800 referrals in 2016.
Statistically, looking at the last graphic in the paper, it's less a case of "becoming so heavily skewed" and likely more a case of "taking several years to reveal the pattern and weights".
There's scarce numbers to begin with to make a strong claim as to the "natural balance" of referrals being evident at the start and this "being skewed toward" the later clearer pattern.
As the commenter upthread noted, the adult demographic is more weighted towards men who want to be women. Why would childhood referrals have become shifted in the opposite direction, much more towards girls who want to be boys?
> There's not really any plausible explanation as to [..] other than social contagion.
is a leap.
> Why would childhood referrals have become shifted
\1 Have they really shifted, or have the stats on a relatively new thing in a few countries firmed up from nothing, to bugger all, to enough to see a pattern?
\2 As to the pattern now seen - a few boys question whether they like being boys at an earlier age than a few more girls then question whether they like being girls ..
there are other factors, eg: I heard there's a "big change" in the lives of young girls at an age that coincides with a 'surge' (small numbers in a country the size of the UK) in girls exploring whether they want to be girls after all.
Social patterns, depth of communication about places existing where gender question can be asked, word of mouth, etc are factors that play a role - but they are not the sole factors at play in these very low incident observations.
My suggestion to yourself, looking at the questions you've raised and how you've framed them, is to perhaps study some epidemiology and find a mentor with first hand real world experience with low frequency data that gradually comes to light as social norms about reporting evolve - eg: SIDS data in the 1970s / 1980s.
You seem to be making a great many mistakes based on preconceptions and "feels".
If only the Dutch hadn't destroyed quite so many records in "their" East Indies .. there might be other gender frequency records to draw on <shrug>.
Some social scientists say the analogy is misleading, the term is poorly defined, and contagion has a pejorative connotation irrespective of intent. They are correct.
It’s about the social safety of transitioning. The paper you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF island, it’s much less safe to be a trans woman than a trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet and don’t come out.
The radical feminist movement in the UK has existed much longer than this, since around the late 1960s to early 1970s.
2015-2016 is when rhetoric online and globally shifted towards villainizing trans women that weren't on the public's radar before. This was exported to UK politics and has been an incredible political success.
It's actually quite the contrary, the rest of the LGB looks at gay transphobes as the hypocrites and useful idiots they are.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
It is doctors who first drew attention to this phenomenon. See for example Tavistock whistleblower David Bell.
Why do I owe you any specific "explanation" when the context here is that you are treating Shrier's pseudoscientific book that literally tells parents in the closing chapters that if their kid has a trans friend they should consider moving cities to get their child away from their trans friend as though we are supposed to take transphobic hate literature at face value.
Maybe a better step than me agreeing to do that is that instead you should take the entire corpus of medical literature on the subject, as well as the voices of trans people on the subject of trans people at face value first.
I have no interest in your JAQing off[1].
At one end of the scale is very little data that gives an unreliable picture with a high degree of variability, at the other end of the not very long in time scale is somewhat more data that provides a better picture.
To make such a fuss about " this demographic change " indicates a lack of exposure to such statistics.
Why are you attempting to make such a big deal of bad data here?
I think some people have backed themselves into an ideological corner on this one.
I'm indifferent to the social issues here, I care about the <gasp> statistics presented.
With the linked and peer reports there's a short time span, limited populations, and a run of yearly statistics that start with very few numbers and end up with less than 2,000.
The initial numbers make the guesstimation of an inital demographic ratio extremely dodgy - it's not sound.
Despite this there's been someone with .. an idealogy(?) .. making numerous comments about "Look at the demographic shift, eh", "What's that all about", "nudge nudge".
The dull numerial reality is there's no strong evidence for a shift .. if anything it's more a "time and increasing sample sizes make for a clearer picture".
When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids. Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since many of them are boys and not girls.