How did Trans get so popular so fast?

submitted by Narrator from self.GenderCritical

I know that transgender idea has been kicking around since the late 90s. I personally thought it was just some sort of fringe gay male fetish when I first encountered "shemale" stuff on the TVs on a visit to a sex clubs in the late 90s. Gay males were into a lot of weird stuff, but hey, I was at a sex club, so yeah I guess you can show that here and it doesn't bother me. What's weird though is that in about 2014 someone had a meeting or something and all of a sudden the whole transgender thing was a thing. It almost reminds me of how hip hop suddenly switched focus to worshipping criminality in the early 90s with the advent of Gangsta Rap. How did this even happen? Now here we are where that weird gay guy fetish I encountered in the late 90s is being taught to children as totally normal, and it's tripping me out.

Somehow the left started to include transgender people to the detriment of women. It was already awkward enough when they somehow squeezed radical islamists like Ilihan Ohmar in to the shaky coalition of everyone who hates conservatives. Were white women not radicalized enough against the hegemony in a Gramscian way? Did they want a way to put straight white women on the other side of the culture war fence from "The Resistance"? How did this happen?

BTW, if you're curious about what I mean by "Gramscian way", here's a long read on it.

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[–]IridescentAnaconda 20 insightful - 1 fun20 insightful - 0 fun21 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The trans lobby is well funded, in part by pharmaceutical companies.

[–]VioletRemi 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Create problem with disease in minds and sell the solution, nice bussiness plan.

[–]oyasuminasai50 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I do believe there's such a thing as innate transgender identity. But I think many people who are unhappy with themselves or otherwise suffer from poor socialization are attracted to non-binary and trans ideology because it allows them to distance themselves from themselves and into a new identity of their own making. That's how I would explain the explosion of trans and NB identification in the past 10 years.

Some of it stems from an increase in tolerance towards trans and queer people. But when I look at the rise of trans and NB identification, especially among people who have never experienced gender dysphoria, I think it's more an escape mechanism. It's also why I'll - loosely - associate trans and NB identity today with anime culture. It all provides an escape from the material reality. Fictional Japanese cartoons are about as far removed from Western life as you can get.

And - I think - trans and NB identities allow these people to step into a new persona, one that can distance them from real life where they - perhaps - have a difficult time excelling socially, academically, and / or professionally.

[–]anadventure 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

some interesting possible causes, this from a self proclaimed autogynphile on this excellent thread https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCriticalGuys/comments/hhcs34/autogynephilic_male_here_big_rant_about_denial_of/

"a_wild_AGP_appeared 10 days ago

insert 'not an expert' disclaimer here

You're right about the Hippocratic Oath. Back in the 1950s, American doctors refused to perform 'sex changes' (as they were called back then) due to their oaths to do no harm. Patients like George William (Christine) Jorgensen had to travel to Europe to get the surgeries they craved.

Harry Benjamin was the man--a kind and compassionate man by all accounts--who persuaded the US medical establishment to allow surgery to alleviate gender dysphoria. He saw how miserable his patients were, and no cure seemed to exist. He said, "If we cannot alter the conviction to fit the body, should we not alter the body to fit the conviction?"

Essentially, hormones and surgery and living in the desired gender role was palliative care because nothing else worked.

My understanding is that from the 50s until at least the 90s, approval for transitioning was strictly controlled and involved long 'test' periods lasting years, with lots of hoops to jump through, as well as therapy to weed out the people who didn't really need treatment. This is often called the 'gatekeeper' approach. It was resented by many people, who were deeply unhappy due to dysphoria and wanted to transition RIGHT NOW DAMMIT.

Also, the ideal TIM from the gatekeepers' perspective was the HSTS type. AGPs had to pretend to be like HSTS in order to get approval. "No sir, definitely not attracted to women, sir!" And admitting to any kind of sexual motive for transitioning generally got you kicked out. Autogynephilic men like myself learned to downplay or conceal any hint of arousal. It's stayed that way ever since.

Over many years, pressure from the trans activists gradually lowered the barriers to entry and the gatekeepers stopped making such a fuss about whether you were feminine enough, or were attracted to men or women. Which seemed fair at the time. 'Transsexuals' were supposedly much rarer than homosexuals, anyway. Why not make life easier for them?

The trouble is--we're now learning--trans people aren't a fixed percentage of the population like left-handers or homosexuals. Trans is something you become, not something you are. And there are several possible reasons to go trans.

Homosexuals have remained at a steady percentage of the population throughout modern history all over the world: 2-4% of men, 1-2% of women according to the Kinsey Institute (although estimates vary). There's a natural limit to the amount of activist pressure gay, lesbian and bisexual people can exert, because there just aren't that many of them compared to straight people.

And presumably, the number of homosexuals who end up HSTS gradually decreased--at least until very recently--because it became more and more acceptable to live as a feminine gay man rather than a TIM.

But the number of autogynephilic men who were originally given treatment were only a small fraction of the AGP men out there (3% of the male population, maybe more). Recipe for eventual disaster...

At first the gatekeepers were too strict for most of us to bother trying to transition. But the easier it became to get treatment, the more of us opted for it, and the bigger and more powerful the trans lobby grew. Which meant that the barriers dropped even faster since we could exert more and more pressure through sheer numbers.

And a lot of us are white and middle-class--often married with kids and savings (well, kids or savings) by the time we transition--so we have the $$$ and the influence to get what we want from the medical establishment.

At any rate, that's my best guess as to how this has snowballed so quickly.

There are definitely other factors, like LGB organisations jumping onto transgender as the next big worthy cause.

The floodgates appear to have opened in 2013, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual revised its criteria for gender dysphoria (previously gender identity disorder) and made it much easier to qualify for medical transition.

... As for narcissistic types and other disorders--I do think it's possible that some people are getting swept up in the trans craze because it's trendy and cool. But that's much more of a problem on the female (TIF) side."

[–]materialrealityplz 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I've heard a few things.

It piggy-backed on the gay rights movement for one thing, which was totally legitimate. 'Love is love' etc. But of course, trans is a very different thing, but people defend it like it's the same sort of innocent thing. It's really shit that the T (and a bunch of other shit) is lumped in with the LGB. They really don't belong together, especially now.

Adjacent to that, is that charities and orgs, once they are a thing, want to keep functioning. People have jobs, pensions, etc. So once gay rights was pretty much won, these organizations still needed something to fight for, for people to keep their jobs. Big example, Stonewall in the UK. So they shifted their focus from gay rights and such, to trans rights. (Ironically, some of the founders of Stonewall left and formed the LGB Alliance cause their gay status is under attack again by TRAs... and Stonewall...)

Another is that, behind the scenes, there is a lot of money in the drugs. There is an article that has floated around before about it. In particular, the drug Lupron, being used to delay puberty.

Also, the internet. The easy access to real humans doing porn. Many of the transwomen are pornsick. There are many decent transwomen who put in a lot of work to their transition and totally pass. We probably don't even notice them in our spaces. Then there are those dudes who just... are men in wigs. AGPs. Getting off on their plastic boobs and invading women's spaces.

And social media just spreads everything like a contagion. People parrot 'transwomen are women' without much critical thinking. It's a virus that has infected quite a lot of people.

And the trans stuff is a smaller section of 'identity politics', which is a huge mess of a thing

[–]Diversity_Racket 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'd attribute it to a number of factors, including post-modernism (and all the things that came with it - fragmentation of the self, etc), the rise of the hyper-individual in Western societies, overcorrection of homophobia (gay rights was really slow to pick up - and is still abhorred), Internet porn, and PC culture + cancel culture (which led to censorship), a dumb/uncritical society, topped with a good dose of misogyny.

In some ways it's unsurprising that it caught on so quickly...

[–]materialrealityplz 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

post-modernism

Another point to tack on this, is that post-modernism believes that language helps construct reality - which might help to understand why they think calling transwomen actual women, makes it true and "real".

[–]Diversity_Racket 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes!!! Very important point.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'll agree here with IridescentAnaconda. This has been a long time coming though, and VERY quickly metastasized into what it is today.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124/ "The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age"

That's worth the read. The aggression and downright destructive behavior in that particular community has been going on for years. There was another article called "Pathological Narcissism and Serial Homicide: A Case Review and Study" that looked like it would be really interesting, but there's a $40 paywall (fuck that) along with the fact that it's a little bit too blanketed of a topic.

[–]sisterinsomnia 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This doesn't explain the initial question about the age of this phenomenon, but the sudden large growth does seem to have some characteristics of a social fad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fad). Doesn't mean that it is trivial. Some earlier fads have been quite serious, such as the fear of satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s. Social contagion and what the media talks about and social approval or disapproval all affect fads.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Internet porn— I think the constant use of it and the easy access for children to get a hold of it has helped push this whole fad.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Corporations pushing the ideology because it’s a potential cash cow. Wealthy trans men in the IT world policing people online and in media to kowtow to their kinks. The explosion of pornography culture...