It’s hard to fit my question into a thread title, so sorry if it is confusing. Basically, I’m inquiring about the extent to which probably well-meaning, but nonetheless wrongheaded, experts have made pronouncements about gender exceptionalism.
Examples - I was raised in a fairly progressive environment compared to some, but was told/read that:
there are many more homosexual men than there are homosexual women.
transgender people are overwhelmingly AMAB people who transition to female. AFAB individuals who are actually male are rare.
Given how poorly “common wisdom” has ever successfully characterized most issues related to gender, I’m suspicious. Are there non-biased data sets out there that either refute or confirm these claims?
(Technically this should be a factual question, but realistically individual levels of experience and research are going to be a factor, and I welcome responses based on lived experience, so IMHO it is.)
I think the numbers are probably shifting greatly, if they ever were that skewed.
A significant portion of AFAB people who have lived as butch/transmasculine women as a sort of compromise, are beginning to identify as trans men or nonbinary or genderqueer (and some further specific categories), and many are transitioning to some degree. So a portion of those who have identified as women previously, or would have when there was more gatekeeping, less acceptance, and less information, are taking steps like any or all of: changing pronouns, changing names, taking gender affirming hormones, getting gender affirming surgeries.
I think I’ve read that more AFAB people are identifying as trans now than AMAB, but I’ll have to check.
TERFs have distorted this, of course, to say that trans AFAB people are just “confused butches” or are tired of misogyny and male privilege, so have decided to “escape” it by switching sides.
If you go into the report, it looks like about 0.5% of the adult US population identified as trans. Of those, 38.5% are trans women, and 35.9% are trans men. 25% reported they are “gender nonconforming.”
Looking just at people ages 13-24, around 1.4% identify as trans, which is a substantial increase.
I couldn’t find a breakdown by assigned gender at birth. My opinion on that aspect is anecdotal.
I also “was raised in a fairly progressive environment.” Furthermore, my father was a physician. However, I had never heard either of these claims. Maybe I’m sheltered.
I’m a little rusty with statistics, but 38.5% versus 35.9% sounds to me roughly equal within the margin of error. That is what I would expect.
As social norms evolve, people who previously self-identified as more common identities will become more willing to self-identify as more “exotic” ones.
Am I correct that there has been minimal research on these questions? That leaves us with mainly anecdotal reporting (aka “common wisdom”).
I’d like to add a new aspect to this thread. Recently I saw the documentary Every Body about Intersex individuals. These are people whose sexual physiology (external, internal, and genetic) does not conform to neat categorization into 2 simple polarities. I highly recommend this movie at several levels. This is not a hijack, but rather a natural expansion.
I hypothesize that part of this perception, at least in the past, may have been that it might have been easier for a lesbian couple to live together, as “roommates,” without drawing too much attention to themselves, than it was for a gay couple to do the same.
I’d also hypothesize that, in past decades, if a guy was still single past his 20s, people would start to whisper about him being gay, and that was probably particularly true if he had a male roommate, and/or if he showed any sort of stereotypical gay behaviors (worked in fashion, hair, or entertainment, wore fashionable clothes, had a more emotional or flamboyant personality). I’m not sure that there was the same sort of scrutiny given to unmarried women, on the whole. My understanding is that, in a lot of cultures, homosexual behavior among men has been substantially more proscribed than it has been among women.
For women, there was, at least in the past, the idea of “Lesbian until graduation” (LUG), meaning a woman who experimented with lesbianism while she was in college, but once she graduated, she reverted to being heterosexual (or, at least, stopped engaging in lesbian behavior), even though she might well have actually been lesbian or bisexual. While Wikipedia indicates that there are similar “GUG” and “BUG” acronyms, I’ve usually heard this idea talked about specifically in reference to women.
The common knowledge on numbers of MTF vs FTM trans people used to be true, but the ratio has been equalising or maybe even flipping over the last few years:
Re gay vs lesbian, the UK census found 2.5% of men identifying as gay vs 1.1% of women identifying as lesbian, which fits the received wisdom. It also shows 1.6% of women identifying as bisexual vs 0.9% of men, which agrees with the common belief that women’s sexuality tends to be more flexible than men’s. These percentages are for all age groups - levels are much higher among young people, especially of bisexuals.
This aspect is pretty stark. The percentages of trans-identified youth (ages 13-17) vary from 0.5 to 3.0% by US state. It is quite obvious that it corresponds to the social acceptance level in the state.
I agree that people with intersex conditions are part of the conversation as well. The documentary Intersexion is very good, and at times unfortunately, shocking and distressing.
I have an elderly cousin who is a TERF—in part because she has suffered as a gender-nonconforming lesbian. I mention this because (1) her gender and preferred pronouns would probably be dramatically different if she were the same person but 60 years younger and (2) that means our dataset is going to be all over the map depending on age and location.
I’m interested in the answer but I don’t think it’s knowable yet: early days in listening to who people actually are.