Is Transgenderism Just a Celebrity Fad?

Anyone who spends more time in front of a TV than they ought to—which is just about everyone—can likely rattle off a long list of transgender celebrities whose mere presence in a prominent corner of the public square has gone a long way toward advancing the cause in society at large. One of the most recognizable is Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono, daughter of the late musician/Republican politician Sonny Bono and his second wife/singing partner, Cher. (Bono, like Page, is a woman who presents as a man—a far less common decision than the inverse, in Hollywood and elsewhere.) Robert “Alexis” Arquette was a member of the moderately well-known acting family who spent most of his adult life presenting as a woman, undergoing sex reassignment surgery in his late 30s, eventually modifying his label from “transgender” to “gender suspicious,” and finally dying from HIV complications at the age of 47. Olympic athlete and Kardashian-by-marriage Bruce Jenner, whose 2015 decision to become “Caitlyn” was headline news for months, is perhaps the single most famous trans person in the world. Other more or less familiar names like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock (whose memoir is actually titled Redefining Realness)—both cited as inspirations by Ellen Page—augment the ranks of the transgendered famous. Kim Petras (née Tim) first gained recognition as the youngest person ever to be surgically transitioned (at 16) and is now an L.A.-based musician dubbed “the new princess of pop” by a number of publications. The brothers who wrote and directed The Matrix are now the sisters who wrote and directed The Matrix.

Maybe there is something unusual in the celebrity psyche that leaves them prone to gender dysphoria more than the average person. Maybe the same impulse that drives some people to seek out fame inspires some percentage of those folks to take up…other kinds of performance. Psychoanalyzing the correlation is both more difficult and less valuable than simply recognizing the fact: Transgender people are grossly overrepresented in the entertainment class, and thus have a disproportionate influence on American popular culture—and, by extension, on public morality.

This is concerning in part because celebrities in general have an outsized bully pulpit in political and moral conversations. (There’s a reason that, in the last century, identifying Communists in Hollywood was treated as nearly an equal endeavor to identifying Communists in the CIA.) A successful Hollywood writer or actor or singer or director is a person of immense influence. This is partly due to the narrative-forming nature of their industry—history is written by the Victor/Victorias. But it is probably owed more to America’s perverse obsession with the rich and famous. People—especially young people—tend to idolize the men, women, etc. they see featured on TV.

And that is exactly the point: The stated goal of every transgender activist in Hollywood is to give young boys and girls watching at home plenty of good, queer role models to follow. It’s working. Steinmetz’s profile of Elliott Page observes that “1.8% of Gen Z compared with 0.2% of boomers” identify as transgender—an 800 percent increase. She treats this as a reason for optimism (“increased social acceptance”) without much consideration for the source or consequences of that increase. A quick look around suggests that its cause is the imposition of a deliberate agenda by pop-culture creators, and that it has no intention of slowing down.