I’m going to suggest that an excess of sensationalist media (and social media) coverage is at least partly responsible.
Oh this misleading rubbish again.
These are the same people who would have written a headline a century ago asking what is behind the rise in people being left handed.
It isnt at all surprising that as society has got more accepting and people are more easily able to find others who feel the same as them, the numbers of those who are willing to be out have increased. It was like that with being left handed (there’s a lovely graph that gets trotted out quite often about that) and its like that here.
Sadly I do wonder if we may see a drop in that as our country continues to be more and more hostile for those who are trans or who are starting to question.
Really odd that throughout the entire article the writer never actually goes into *why* there might be a gender difference in children being seen by GIDS, ie whether or not those assigned female at birth *are* being referred more than boys, what the counter evidence is, what the international evidence is, whether this pattern follows through into trans adult. She talks about how and why there are more referrals overall, but don’t really delve into the question raised by the headline, about the gender difference in the rise.
Personally I suspect that it if there are more AFAB children questioning their gender it’s because boys (and men) experience much stricter gender policing than women – although societal sexism definitely favours boys, it’s traditionally been much easier to explore your gender identity if you’re a girl than if you’re a boy.
In the school where I teach, it’s now about 2 or 3 students in each class.
There is also a huge – and unexplained – overlap between those identifying as non-binary and those with ASD.
Just in case any one is taken in by the silly, glib “left handedness” comparison:
5 comments
I’m going to suggest that an excess of sensationalist media (and social media) coverage is at least partly responsible.
Oh this misleading rubbish again.
These are the same people who would have written a headline a century ago asking what is behind the rise in people being left handed.
It isnt at all surprising that as society has got more accepting and people are more easily able to find others who feel the same as them, the numbers of those who are willing to be out have increased. It was like that with being left handed (there’s a lovely graph that gets trotted out quite often about that) and its like that here.
Sadly I do wonder if we may see a drop in that as our country continues to be more and more hostile for those who are trans or who are starting to question.
Really odd that throughout the entire article the writer never actually goes into *why* there might be a gender difference in children being seen by GIDS, ie whether or not those assigned female at birth *are* being referred more than boys, what the counter evidence is, what the international evidence is, whether this pattern follows through into trans adult. She talks about how and why there are more referrals overall, but don’t really delve into the question raised by the headline, about the gender difference in the rise.
Personally I suspect that it if there are more AFAB children questioning their gender it’s because boys (and men) experience much stricter gender policing than women – although societal sexism definitely favours boys, it’s traditionally been much easier to explore your gender identity if you’re a girl than if you’re a boy.
In the school where I teach, it’s now about 2 or 3 students in each class.
There is also a huge – and unexplained – overlap between those identifying as non-binary and those with ASD.
Just in case any one is taken in by the silly, glib “left handedness” comparison:
[The Left Hand of Daftness](https://voidifremoved.substack.com/p/the-left-hand-of-daftness)
It’s absolute nonsense. The analogy breaks under the slightest scrutiny.