What really jumps out at me from this article is the following quote:
“A condition that used to be vanishingly rare, perhaps one in 10,000 children or less, now seems common. In a random sampling of 6th- to 8th-graders in San Francisco, kids were asked if they identified as male, female or transgendered – 1.3 per cent checked off the transgendered box.”
1.3 percent! That is nearly 1 in 76! I remember early studies showed the incidence of transsexualism to be around 1 in 30k for MTF and 1 in 100k for FTM. Later studies from the 2000s showed larger numbers, between 1 in 1k and 1 in 5k depending.
How can people not see that culture plays a large role in this when confronted with numbers like that. I think these numbers would probably be lower if the survey was not done in San Francisco, but that is my whole point.
I really don’t think it is much of a problem in of itself if teens adopt culturally trendy identities, that is something teens have done for some time, but to the degree which they involve permanent hormonal and medical interventions that is a serious problem, and mental health and medical professionals working on these issues really need to notice this, and practice extreme caution to make sure they aren’t engaging in unnecessary treatments.