It's not impossible that this is part of the reason.
But the most common answer given to the question of "why does it seem like there are suddenly so many gay/trans people?" is the graph that shows the "rate of left-handedness by year of birth" that sharply spikes and plateaus after what is apparently a cultural shift in schools to accept left-handed people as they are rather than force them to write right-handed (typically https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c... from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241783005_The_histo...).
That doesn't explain why the increase in people presenting to gender identity clinics is skewed heavily towards female teenagers though. There's something else going on too.
The book Countdown talks about this and the author posits that there is a link. Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC's) cause smaller penis sizes, smaller anogenital distance, and homosexual behaviors in reptiles and other animals. Lower sperm counts, lower sperm motility, smaller penis size, and smaller anogenital distance (the most important indicator, oddly) are all also linked in humans, via TONS of studies, to the same chemicals.
She treats the subject very delicately, rightly so, because many people will probably call you a bigot for even asking the question.
From chapter 4 of the book: "In a 2019 article in Psychology Today, Robert Hedaya, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University of Medicine wrote, "It is nothing short of astounding that after hundreds of thousands of years of human history, the fundamental facts of human gender are becoming blurry.""
And in a later passage from the author: "One scientific theory suggests that in utero exposure to EDCs, particularly phthalates, which can lower a fetus's exposure to testosterone, may play a role; these chemicals have been associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in males. Interestingly, ASD and gender dysphoria, two seemingly unrelated conditions, occur together more often than expected"
Well a point of evidence that disputes this: homosexual men have larger penis sizes on average than heterosexual men [1].This is the opposite of what you'd expect if EDC's are decreasing testosterone and increasing homosexuality.
Isn't this Countdown the exact book explicitly called out in the article as dodgy and unreliable? Per the article, there doesn't seem to be any real data to prove any change in sperm counts, so all the other arguments go out the window as well.
Not to mention, we have 0 idea how prevalent homosexuality was historically (not to mention transgenderism), and animal studies often don't replicate in humans.
I would say the author of this article is dodgy and unreliable. Dr. Swan is a leader in her field and cites a ton of research in her book. This is just some random guy with a substack.
The book is mostly about phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals, and their effects on reproductive health. There is a ton of research on phthalates in humans, the negative correlation between exposure and sperm quantity/quality is undeniable. Do you want me to link to some studies on it? I would not mind, though it is an easy Google.
The article writer's committmemt to empiricism is so flimsy that he argues polling his buddies on Twitter is a valid form of empirical evidence: "Selection Bias Is A Fact Of Life, Not An Excuse For Rejecting Internet Surveys"
I’d say that’s more for ideological reasons than the quality of his analysis. He makes his otherwise questionable policy ideas very palatable to the educated techie class.
Are there actually more transgender people, or are people more willing to self-identify as transgender? Compared to 20 years ago, being openly transgender was far more taboo, so it follows that people were less willing to identify as transgender for these kinds of surveys.
As an aside, "transgenderism" is a relatively contentious term because while historically it had a purely medical definition, more recently certain groups have reappropriated it to refer to it as if it was an ideology, which does a huge disservice to transgender people.
That's an interesting question. I doubt we'll ever be able to answer.
I do wonder if some of the increase is a shift in how people perceive their own gender. Perhaps some in the non binary would have used different language in the past. I wasn't aware of the term 20 years ago.
I think 'non-binary' gender is most likely a result of people being told that being a man or woman is no longer related to the material reality of one's sex but instead is some mysterious inner feeling of gender identity that can't really be explained or understood except by reference to cultural gender stereotypes. It's the identity of the gap left between these exaggerations of masculinity and femininity.
That's also probably why non-binary identity is overwhelmingly the most prevalent amongst the youngest generations, as they've been brought up being taught the ideology of gender identity as if it's a fact.
> Compared to 20 years ago, being openly transgender was far more taboo, so it follows that people were less willing to identify as transgender for these kinds of surveys.
Maybe we'll know 20 years from now, because it is commonly accepted.
If the rate stays mostly flat, when it is acceptable, then we probably had no increase in the previous 20 years (from now).
If the rate of the next 20 years is trending up, then it is likely that it was trending up before it became acceptable.
Do you think being transgender is truly accepted now and there is no barrier to coming out as trans? The 20 years thing only makes sense if we are at "peak acceptance" - and it's easy to see that we are extraordinarily far from anything like that. Even for homosexuality, which has become much more accepted in the USA and many European countries in the last few years, there is still significant stigma associated with coming out in a large number of families and social groups - a minority, hopefully, but a very large one. Trans identities are nowhere near as acceptable as being gay, so any comparison will be heavily skewed by people's willingness to share, or even to accept this for themselves.
One of the reasons why those numbers seem to sharply change is that the environment became less hostile to these people. It's hardly surprising countries like Iran have seemingly low rates of homosexuality when openly gay men are being executed by the state.
It's absolutely possible there are other factors, but considering last year even Fox News produced a short positive report about a trans teenager in a conservative family[0] it's clear society has changed a bit.
There's some evidence that this happens in the western world too, though not forcibly imposed by the government, but guided by parents who would rather have a straight daughter or son than a gay son or daughter.
There is data. We can simply ask boomers if they are gay/trans. Though that doesn’t help in examining if the measurable change in the Zoomer generation is physical (nature) or social (nurture).
There’s obviously been an increase in self-identification of people as gay/trans as social acceptance has increased, but that doesn’t mean that the number of gay and trans individuals is actually greater than it was historically. We don’t know how many men worldwide were attracted to other men 1000 years ago. Period.
Many boomers grew up in places where coming out would have subjected them to forcible "conversion" practices, pariah status, criminal prosecution, or violence. To stay safe, many gay people of older generations were just people who "had a room mate" and/or "never married". Some of these people may answer differently today, but I don't imagine it is easy after living a life of being conditioned otherwise.
I also personally know boomers who are definitely bisexual, but they don't really accept or understand the concept of bisexuality, so they round themselves to straight or gay (mostly straight).
Asking boomers if they're gay/trans isn't a reliable way of getting that data. Just look at all the conservative Christian politicians who self-identify as straight, but then are caught in gay sex scandals.
We don't really know what the root cause is. There are some correlations that indicate possible environmental influences, and others that suggest it's related to other developmental conditions.
For instance, in https://archive.is/ODLZ4, a recent article on gender identity services in the UK, the author notes that:
"In 2000, the only clinical audit of patients ever carried out by Gids found that more than 25 per cent of referrals had spent time in care, compared with 0.67 per cent of the general population. Children referred to Gids were ten times more likely than the national average to have a registered sex offender as a parent, while 42 per cent had lost a parent through death or separation, and 70 per cent had more than five 'associated features' such as anxiety, depression, abuse, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders or suicide attempts."
But since so many health services switched to an 'affirmation-only' model, and transgenderism has been elevated to a supposed civil rights issue, there has been a distinct lack of curiosity in researching this further.
What increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism? And why are you commenting this about an effect that likely doesn't exist all all (decreasing sperm counts), per the article?
Who knows ?
Homosexuality and transgenderism is way too politically charged to find real answers.
No gay gene was found, the closest model they have is a cluster of hormonal influencer genes. However we know parasites like Toxoplasmosis can induce polycystic ovary syndrome in women which causes hormone dysfunction (I know because I had POCS its why I don't allow cats near my kids now). Supposedly POCS is highly correlated in lesbians (supposedly emphasized).
Even identical twin studies showed nothing conclusive, sometimes one twin was gay and the other wasn't, sometimes both.
However granted we are biological beings, I strongly suspect endocrine disrupters like microplastics aren't doing anything positive for us.
Your comment makes no sense, and to me makes you seem like a naive bigot. Firstly is there increased rates of homosexuality or transgenderism? Please show me any data on this. Second what makes you think a low sperm count makes you a homosexual or transgender?
This is a sensitive topic and I think your reply is not well thought out.
There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening (i.e. Trans-women can get prostate cancer) where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation without being silenced because it sounds similar to what bigots might say.
If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.
I have already acknowledged below, my comment was not well thought out, in that I could have caused offence to the original commenter with some words, but I absolutely stand by the rest of it.
I also do not agree with the remainder of your what you say, and a bizarre comment in brackets I won't repeat. There are plenty of times today and throughout history Science has been bigoted or naive, and as such should not be free to explore any subject uncontrolled or deemed insensitive to society.
I was criticising you but didn't mean to offend. I was sure that my bracketed comment was a real thing that doctors have to be aware of and was an example of where science and medicine need to be able to treat a person properly even if they have transitioned. You have really confused me and now I'm worried that this medical issue is taboo or I'm mistaken?
There was nothing wrong with your bracketed comment. The prostate gland does remain intact even for those males who have fully transitioned with cosmetic genital surgery. Though there is also some indication that those who take anti-androgen therapy and estrogens have a somewhat lower risk of prostate cancer. It's still an open area of research due to there not being much data.
I am really confused. Specifically regarding whether you disagree with my general points which I would 100% totally understand or the bracketed statement which would leave me doubting my understanding of any of this topic.
I'd like to say the statement I'm querying is really relevant to my career as I work on back-end systems and my understanding is that it is really important for medical databases to be expanded so that doctors can schedule the right type of medical screening for somebody based on their body. I'm also aware that in certain parts of the world people might not want information stored in databases because they fear persecution based on that stored data.
Hi also I work in software and manufacturing but like most of us on here have an appreciation for Science and its methods, as well as other topics not in our domain, it's what makes HN great. Im confused now also.
We should all be careful and sensitive to issues effecting others, and I think by your response you agree with this, well done, lets all keep it up, the world will become a better place for minorities of any kind. This post was more active for me than I expected, really due to an offensive comment I made about the original commenter so I thought I should correct where I made a mistake but also defend my general point of view in my original comment, our discussion got caught up in the rest which was unfair to your point of view.
I am going to contradict my original comment to you:
I absolutely agree with you on 'There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening ... where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation'
I do also think unless we are experts in the domain, we need to be careful in referencing an example because any issue can be complex and varied individual to individual, we can also cause offence with such, without realising it. so I agree my 'bizarre; comment was not the correct way to explain this.
I also agree broadly with 'If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.'
However I also think Science does need oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not, as history has often shown left uncontrolled bad things can happen. There's bigots in Science right, same as anywhere.
Thanks for questioning me, pleasure talking with you.
> However I also think Science does need oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not, as history has often shown left uncontrolled bad things can happen.
I'm curious as to what you mean by this. Are you talking about avoiding doing or publishing research that could have undesirable social effects? E.g. in the hypothetical world where it had been discovered in 1980 that there was a gene that made African Americans less bright than white ones this research should not be published?
Or is it that you are worried about biased scientists faking results to harm disadvantaged minorities?
Do you not think Science needs oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not?
Don't get me wrong this agreement from society is not always balanced, correct and often Science has to disagree and argue the point, but this oversight must still exist, surely?
There's a formal methodology, a social practice, a set of results, a perceived canon...
Is it the problem of lawbreaking experiment side effects you're interested in? E.g. infecting a bunch of people with syphilis to see disease progression?
Agree with you 100% now. I think I should have followed the general rule of keeping quiet in sensitive sub-threads unless you're really adding something to the topic.
Picking up a good few downvotes for this, usually that tells me something is wrong in what I said, looking at my comment, naive bigot may be a little strong, even if before it I wrote 'to me makes you seem'. I thought the comment was out of context, could cause offence to some, and not backed up by any data.
No offence intended, to nonethewiser.
I don't think the original question conveyed anything negative about homosexuality or transgenderism. Only that they were interested if chemicals could have altered human sexuality.
It was asked without the care one would normally use when approaching such a topic and perhaps that reflects badly but I find the question interesting.
What if we are so controlled by the environment around us? Are our likes and dislikes something we have control over or is it just a result of the world around?
HN has a bit of a blind spot around homophobia. If you dig through comment histories, you’ll find that a lot of the people who are “just asking questions” have a definite axe to grind when it comes to gay and trans people. As a gay person I probably have more of an instinct for these sorts of red flags. But for better or worse, anything short of explicit homophobia falls within the HN guidelines, and any criticism of superficially polite posters for repeating the talking points of anti-gay and trans activists does not. Hence this rather disgraceful subthread, where far right panic about gay and trans liberation (clothed in pseudoscientific garb) is being seriously debated without any regard for the gay and trans users of this site. Fortunately there is more to HN than this kind of thread, but it is a repeated occurrence that I am becoming throughly sick of. It’s awfully difficult to complain about this without being flagged into oblivion; but the moderation mechanisms that are supposed to stop discussion veering off in this sort of direction simply don’t work when it comes to homophobia and transphobia.
Since you seem to care strongly about this would you be able to share why discussing potential causes of homosexuality/trans should be off limits?
Unrelated, what do you think are the causes? Gene mutations in child? Womb environment disruption? Pollutants? Pathogens? God just deciding "I'm going to make this one trans"? Social pressures (wat)?
I wish I was the one who cared strongly about this. The people who care most strongly are the ones who like to bring up this topic, and endlessly debate it, even in comments on articles (such as this one) that have nothing really to do with it. You yourself seem determined to provoke a discussion on the subject, here and elsewhere, even though it’s not particularly relevant to my comment or to the article.
I agree that no topic is off limits in principle (and in fact I did not say that this topic should be off limits, contrary to what you suggest). However, some topics attract an overwhelming majority of bad faith participants in the discourse. I have already seen quite enough dispassionate debates on HN on the subject of what exactly is wrong with gay and trans people. I have no wish to fan the flames of another one.
It would be more interesting to debate the causes of heterosexuality. (It’s interesting, for example, that people tend to suggest ‘gene mutations’ as a possible cause for homosexuality but not for heterosexuality, even though any genes underlying human sexuality have presumably mutated many times over our evolutionary history.)
> It would be more interesting to debate the causes of heterosexuality.
Well the cause of heterosexuality seems obvious enough. Making males want to fertilize females will cause babies which spreads the "make male want to fertilize female" mechanism creating genes. So a mutation that makes genes that cause such a feeling will spread.
It's a fairly direct linkage so one could see how genes causing it could reach fixation (and indeed, variations of this desire reached fixation hundreds of millions of years ago).
Conversely, genes that result in, say, mice being sexually attracted to cows wouldn't reach fixation, leading to them being very rare in the mouse population. So most animals will be most attracted to things that have the highest chance they can make healthy offspring with.
That's an evolution 101 explanation of why heterosexuals are not extinct, which is fine as far as it goes. It's not a causal explanation of what makes people straight.
In fact, no-one knows what makes people straight, gay, or otherwise. So there is not much to talk about, from a purely scientific point of view.
But anyway, that was an aside. You haven't responded to the main point of either of my comments. If you really are only interested in having a debate about the causes of homosexuality, I'm not the person you're looking for (and the comments on this article aren't the place for it).
I think debate on the causes of being gay or being trans sets off alarm bells for a lot of people because it feels like medicalization of it. Sure, it might be interesting to know why in a pure intellectual curiosity way, but more often than not veers into people talking about wanting to "treat" it: many gay and trans people are proud in their identity and just want to be accepted for it.
To a libertarian like me people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, including changing it as they wish or declining other people's attempts to change it (via a "cure"), but I understand this isn't universal.
To me, a discussion on whether homosexuality has a pathogenic trigger is intellectual curiosity, to someone else it's like a Jew overhearing a couple of bald rough looking fellows talking about how there are too many Jewish movie producers and someone should do something to make there be less of them...
Its a different question, if asked; or as we're talking about the subject, my opinion is it has more to do with acceptance of such things today that in the past would not be discussed, hidden. or oppressed.
Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism), and then asks if it may be linked with something to which there is no plausible link at all, even if your assumption were true - since lower sperm count is obviously not going to increase the rate of homosexual women.
"Just asking questions" is not a plausible defense when the question is this leading. It's like asking "Is women being dumber than men possibly linked to lower testosterone?" and claiming that you are just being curious.
> Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism),
Why would this be unlikely? I'm struggling to think of a cause that would result in both a constant rate of these things AND a rate of several percent (de novo mutations aren't anywhere near common enough to get you constant rate given that gay uncles arent going to be doing 2x as much parenting as fathers and theres only like 40 mutations per generation).
There's also the evidence of people answering "yes" more to "Are you a man attracted to men? Have you had sex with men?" type questions. Yes, there are other explanations like people being more comfortable answering yes, but it's still evidence.
Because homosexuality and transgenderism are known to have been constants throughout history all over the Earth. While we don't have any kind of reliable numbers, it's a priori unlikely for such a well-trodden low level phenomenon to have suddenly started increasing.
Also, given the huge stigma associated with both until extremely recently, a significant increase in survey responses has such huge confounding factors that it's entirely irrelevant. There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay.
So you're positing that around 6% of people are gay and 1% trans (the Gen Z rates), but that this had such a small effect on reproduction rates that it didn't get selected against strongly enough to offset the new ones introduced by mutation? It just seems implausible to me that a gay man would be as motivated to court a woman as a straight one. The gene fitness reduction would have to be incredibly small (less than a thousandth of a percent) to offset the fact you're only getting a few dozen new mutations per generation in a giant genome where very few of those mutations will make you gay...
Why are you assuming that being gay or transgender would be selected against? Transgender people can have children (especially historically, when HRT wasn't available). Genes can be passed on without relying on procreation of the gay individual - if gay family members increase the overall reproductive success of a family, for example, then genes related to being gay can be passed without the gay persons ever reproducing directly.
Since gayness is prevalent through the animal kingdom, one of two things must be true: it either helps in group environments (whether you choose to interpret that as group selection or "selfish gene"-style counterintuitive effects) ; or perhaps genes related to gayness happen to be deeply tied to some other very important genes that get easily passed on.
Either way, what is your proposed alternative? Do you think 6%+1% is too large a number for historical proportions of gay+trans people?
By the way, 1% for trans people seems to match pretty well the number of Hijra people in India (10M+ out of 1.4 billion). Another piece of evidence that suggests these rates are relatively constant across the world in vastly different cultures.
> There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay.
This indeed is something that every gay man knows through experience but I suspect that many straight people may not. In many parts of the world (including many parts of the US and Europe) the majority of men available for gay sex do not identify as gay and are not open about their same sex attraction.
Investigating the possibility that environment factors such as plastics and pollution led to a rise in homosexuality/transgenderism doesn’t invalidate the living experiences of these people. Thinking that they need to be corrected because of this is where the bigoted lies. There isn’t really much to be squeamish about environmental factors interfering with sexuality (although I understand this often becomes fodder for right-wingers with an agenda).
But I think a more fundamental issue lies under this squeamishness: the thought of dividing “gender” and “sex” (or more broadly “culture” and “nature”, or even the Cartesian notion of “mind” and “body”), whereas the two cannot be separated in reality. And I think this monism is probably something that trans people would actually understand by intuition far better than me, because changing your sex requires a lot of physical and hormonal changes inside your body that interferes with every other social aspect of their lives (and the social pressures in return create substantial changes in their bodies). Sex isn’t just socially constructed, they’re also biologically formed, it’s just that the dynamics surrounding them are just far more complex than what typical right-wingers think of (a clean separation between man and woman).
It’s worth noting that a trans person is just someone whose gender identity doesn’t match the identity they were assigned at birth. Not all trans people have gone through (or plan to go through) any kind of medical ‘transitioning’ or ‘sex change’ procedure.
Yup I’m obviously not talking about the full range of trans experiences here, but most of the people I’ve heard anecdotes so far have done some kind of medical decision (usually hormonal therapy) because of gender dystopia. I was just saying that in general trans people would be the ones who would understand the physical/biological mechanics of gender in its full capacity.
