upvote
1st, as I said, this is an unproven hypothesis. 2nd, the dominant impact on reported prevalence rates are 1) social acceptance of those identities, and 2) the relative risk in revealing those identities.

If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.

reply
> social acceptance of those identities

Why would it not work the other way too? Maybe the Western society is hell bent on putting people into boxes, whereas people in third world countries are willing to look the other way for minor deviations [sic] as long as they're useful to their family / village / society?

If you didn't imbibe in your children that the only way to be a "man" is to be the jock on the football team, then maybe far less people would be suffering the dysphorias. Just like how exposure to Instagram causes body dysphoria in both young men and women.

Sexuality is so front-and-center in the Western society unlike many of the third world societies which are below in the 'hierarchy of needs'.

reply
Sexuality is front and center is every human culture, and for that matter, every sexual species. The degree that non-hetero, non cisgender diversity gets accepted in human cultures depends on a lot of factors that is not easily put into categories like Western and non-Western. In general, experience with diversity of thought and opinions leads to more acceptance of that diversity. Cultures that have trended toward enforced conformity have also tended towards villifying non-conformity. This is something that can differ depending on security of 'hiearchy of needs' but in different direction depending on other factors that really make simple boxes the wrong way to make sense of these things.

I agree that hard gender-norms expectation cause gender dysphoria, which in large art explains greater anxiety and depression in gender diverse people's. It's a terrible thing, and causes a ton of hurt and death.

I helped analyze data from perhaps the first longitudinal study of long-term outcomes after wanting and receiving gender-affirming care [1]. Although preliminary in the scientific sense, it is an absolute travesty how it is getting demonized. The people I have interacted with who provide such care, despite how they get misrepresented, largely are very concerned providing such care only when appropriate and desired, and learning how to know before-hand which outcome is most likely. Gender diversity is real, and has real biological origins. Understanding and acting on that has negatively impacted my career via a canceled grant from the current administration's D EI policies, but I am still glad that I did, and hope to in the future.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40917741/

reply