A lot of gender identity surveys, llike the ones mentioned in the article, focus on college students. Does anyone ask 18-to-22-year olds in trade schools or who stack shelves at Krogers about their gender identity? Probably not. If that population were surveyed, the results might be quite different.
College students have been the primary research subjects for generations, because most research is done at universities. When I was working in one, students got extra credits for serving as research subjects for grad students' theses and dissertations. This actually violates the principle of random selection, since college students are not typical of the general populations in their age range.
"A masculine girl or feminine boy may now be labeled as 'trans.'" proving, should further proof be needed, that " trans" and the associated suite of ill-defined terms including" gender" are part of a deeply anti-gay sentiment.
Of course, it’s a social contagion! What a great post Colin. I wish to repeat that your previous post ‘Why there are Exactly two sexes,’ must be studied in high school!
Gametes determine sex. No amount of hormones or surgical procedures can change this. Comparing it to the left hand trait has no basis, as one does not need a surgery or medication to have the left hand dominance, it is innate . Some people think that if one takes cross-sex hormones one can become an opposite sex - ‘trans-men are men, trans-women are women’ . False!
But the danger of drugs and other treatments cannot be overstated: brain, cardio-vascular system, bone development, endocrine system, detoxification system ( liver, kidneys, lymphatic), sexual function - this is not a complete list of detrimental impact of medicalization.
The question is how to make the current executive order the law of the land?<
Of couse it is social contagion. "Hey, look at me, I am special!" This is an attraction for kids feeling unattractive or unappealing. It is also a way for them to join a cool group of progressive identity that includes victim protection. Many people claiming the trans identity are aggressive turds of terrible social behavior. Vulnerable narcissism seems to go with people identifying as trans.
This is a sharp analysis, Colin, and I appreciate how you separate the descriptive claim from the moral panic surrounding it. What your piece gestures toward is something I keep coming back to in my own work on cognitive diversity and collective behavior: human identity is not formed in isolation. It is shaped inside social ecologies.
The real mistake in this debate is treating “innate” and “socially influenced” as mutually exclusive categories. Identity is always both. Humans are porous. We imitate, absorb, and reflect one another. Every large spike in any identity category (religious, political, ideological, aesthetic) has always been driven by social contagion dynamics. That isn’t a moral judgment, it is a systems reality.
From that perspective, the interesting question isn’t “Is this innate?” but “What does this pattern reveal about the social environment young people are navigating?” Because in a hyper-networked world, identity formation moves at the speed of narrative, not biology.
Your essay hints at something deeper: when institutions collapse into polarization, young people reach for identities that give them coherence, belonging, or escape. The phenomenon you’re describing may be less about gender per se, and more about the broader crisis of meaning-making in a society that no longer gives adolescents stable mirrors.
If we want to understand what’s happening and actually support young people we have to look beyond individual traits and examine the entire informational organism we’re all inside of.
Brenden, you listed all social categories: religion, political, ideological, aestethic. None of these are immutable, race and sex are. Behavior is also changeable, customs are changeable. I can dress as man, according to a prevalent fashion, but I am still a woman. How long ago women did not play soccer? And now they do. They did not become men by playing it or working in not stereotypically women professions.
I sometimes think that the reason trans identification hasn't declined significantly is that there's no real cost to identifying that way.
Trans people have gender dysphoria, or not. They use different names, or not. They use different pronouns, or not. They dress differently, or not. They take hormones, or not. They have surgery, or not. You can call yourself trans without changing a damned thing about how you appear, talk, date, or interact with the world. The identification brings status in certain contexts, but doesn't have to inconvenience you in any way. So why not say you're trans? It's a win-win...assuming you don't mind associating yourself with the creepy gender cult.
Totally agree with you that sex is immutable. Nothing I wrote contradicts that. My point wasn’t about biological sex changing, it was about how the mind constructs identity, which is a different domain entirely.
Race and sex are body-based categories.
Religious, political, ideological, and gender identities are mind-based categories.
Mind-based identities shift in response to social context, culture, peer influence, stress, technology, and environment. That doesn’t mean they’re “fake,” it just means they operate under different laws than biological sex.
So when we see rapid changes in gender identity (or political identity, or aesthetic identity, or religious identity), the explanation isn’t “these people suddenly changed sex” — it’s “the psychological and social environment shifted.”
You’re making the exact point I am:
Behavior and identity expression can change without changing someone’s biological sex.
That’s why these phenomena must be understood through the lens of psychology, culture, and environment, not biology alone.
My comment was simply arguing that if we want to understand mind-based identity shifts, we should study the informational ecosystem shaping those minds. We should not assume all identity categories behave like fixed biological traits.
People medicalize their bodies to presumably change their sex. This is called ‘gender-affirming care’. You cannot change your sex. Medicalization create irreversible damage as I provided incomplete list of potentially harmed systems. And gender identity is a misnomer. It would be much more precise to call it gender expression.
I hear you, but it feels like we’re discussing two different things.
You’re talking about sex and about medical practices aimed at altering secondary sex characteristics. That’s a valid debate, but it’s not the one I was engaging.
I was talking about identity formation… how people come to understand themselves, psychologically and socially, and why those patterns shift across generations.
Also, the term “gender-affirming care” comes from a modern convention that links “masculine” with male sex and “feminine” with female sex. In that colloquial framing, “affirming” someone’s gender means affirming a mental model tied to those categories.
If your point is that society misuses the word “gender” in ways that confuse biology with psychology, that’s a legitimate critique, just a different conversation than the one I was trying to have.
My question to you is:
What’s the value of trying to separate gender identity from gender expression when both refer to mind-based phenomena, not biological sex?
To me, they’re the same domain — the inner experience of self and how it’s communicated outwardly — and neither one alters a person’s biological sex.
My whole point was simply that sex is fixed and identity is fluid, because identity is shaped by both innate psychology and social context. That’s why we see shifts over time.
Everything else — medicalization, terminology, cultural norms — is a separate layer on top of that.
I find it particularly ironic/predictable that the blank-slate left is all in on innate characteristics if they serve the ideology. Intelligence & criminalism are caused by environment factors, but gender presentation preferences are innate. Also it beggars belief that a 1500% increase is due to greater acceptance. Especially if most of that is "nonbinary".
2. There is chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, gametal sex, hormonal sex, bodily sex, brain sex, and legal sex.
3. Trans people have a brain sex that is not aligned with their other sexes.
4. What they try to do is align their body and hormones with their brain.
5. They do not intend to change their sex.
6. Brain sex is fixed and immutable.
7. Some people detransition because they were not actually trans.
8. Others detransition due to complications with hormones or surgeries.
9. Others do so because they are discriminated against.
10. The percentage of trans people is between 10 and 20 percent of the university population.
11. Among the non-university population, trans people remain closeted due to discrimination. 12. Trans people have always existed; they just didn't come out of the closet like university students are doing now.
There's also the issue of gender, but that will be covered in another installment of "The Fantastic Trans and Non-Binary World."
A lot of gender identity surveys, llike the ones mentioned in the article, focus on college students. Does anyone ask 18-to-22-year olds in trade schools or who stack shelves at Krogers about their gender identity? Probably not. If that population were surveyed, the results might be quite different.
Or kids in the Grange (rural society) or 4H. When you take care of animals, the biological status of male and female is not confusing.
Good point. Thank you.
That is a great point!
College students have been the primary research subjects for generations, because most research is done at universities. When I was working in one, students got extra credits for serving as research subjects for grad students' theses and dissertations. This actually violates the principle of random selection, since college students are not typical of the general populations in their age range.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/05/weird
Yep, they are a “WEIRD” sample: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic
"A masculine girl or feminine boy may now be labeled as 'trans.'" proving, should further proof be needed, that " trans" and the associated suite of ill-defined terms including" gender" are part of a deeply anti-gay sentiment.
Of course, it’s a social contagion! What a great post Colin. I wish to repeat that your previous post ‘Why there are Exactly two sexes,’ must be studied in high school!
Gametes determine sex. No amount of hormones or surgical procedures can change this. Comparing it to the left hand trait has no basis, as one does not need a surgery or medication to have the left hand dominance, it is innate . Some people think that if one takes cross-sex hormones one can become an opposite sex - ‘trans-men are men, trans-women are women’ . False!
But the danger of drugs and other treatments cannot be overstated: brain, cardio-vascular system, bone development, endocrine system, detoxification system ( liver, kidneys, lymphatic), sexual function - this is not a complete list of detrimental impact of medicalization.
The question is how to make the current executive order the law of the land?<
Of couse it is social contagion. "Hey, look at me, I am special!" This is an attraction for kids feeling unattractive or unappealing. It is also a way for them to join a cool group of progressive identity that includes victim protection. Many people claiming the trans identity are aggressive turds of terrible social behavior. Vulnerable narcissism seems to go with people identifying as trans.
This is a sharp analysis, Colin, and I appreciate how you separate the descriptive claim from the moral panic surrounding it. What your piece gestures toward is something I keep coming back to in my own work on cognitive diversity and collective behavior: human identity is not formed in isolation. It is shaped inside social ecologies.
The real mistake in this debate is treating “innate” and “socially influenced” as mutually exclusive categories. Identity is always both. Humans are porous. We imitate, absorb, and reflect one another. Every large spike in any identity category (religious, political, ideological, aesthetic) has always been driven by social contagion dynamics. That isn’t a moral judgment, it is a systems reality.
From that perspective, the interesting question isn’t “Is this innate?” but “What does this pattern reveal about the social environment young people are navigating?” Because in a hyper-networked world, identity formation moves at the speed of narrative, not biology.
Your essay hints at something deeper: when institutions collapse into polarization, young people reach for identities that give them coherence, belonging, or escape. The phenomenon you’re describing may be less about gender per se, and more about the broader crisis of meaning-making in a society that no longer gives adolescents stable mirrors.
If we want to understand what’s happening and actually support young people we have to look beyond individual traits and examine the entire informational organism we’re all inside of.
Brenden, you listed all social categories: religion, political, ideological, aestethic. None of these are immutable, race and sex are. Behavior is also changeable, customs are changeable. I can dress as man, according to a prevalent fashion, but I am still a woman. How long ago women did not play soccer? And now they do. They did not become men by playing it or working in not stereotypically women professions.
I sometimes think that the reason trans identification hasn't declined significantly is that there's no real cost to identifying that way.
Trans people have gender dysphoria, or not. They use different names, or not. They use different pronouns, or not. They dress differently, or not. They take hormones, or not. They have surgery, or not. You can call yourself trans without changing a damned thing about how you appear, talk, date, or interact with the world. The identification brings status in certain contexts, but doesn't have to inconvenience you in any way. So why not say you're trans? It's a win-win...assuming you don't mind associating yourself with the creepy gender cult.
And the institutional capture of doctors, lawyers and teachers is also a social contagion, not based on biology either... This article says it so clearly: https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/quackery-in-a-hurry
Totally agree with you that sex is immutable. Nothing I wrote contradicts that. My point wasn’t about biological sex changing, it was about how the mind constructs identity, which is a different domain entirely.
Race and sex are body-based categories.
Religious, political, ideological, and gender identities are mind-based categories.
Mind-based identities shift in response to social context, culture, peer influence, stress, technology, and environment. That doesn’t mean they’re “fake,” it just means they operate under different laws than biological sex.
So when we see rapid changes in gender identity (or political identity, or aesthetic identity, or religious identity), the explanation isn’t “these people suddenly changed sex” — it’s “the psychological and social environment shifted.”
You’re making the exact point I am:
Behavior and identity expression can change without changing someone’s biological sex.
That’s why these phenomena must be understood through the lens of psychology, culture, and environment, not biology alone.
My comment was simply arguing that if we want to understand mind-based identity shifts, we should study the informational ecosystem shaping those minds. We should not assume all identity categories behave like fixed biological traits.
People medicalize their bodies to presumably change their sex. This is called ‘gender-affirming care’. You cannot change your sex. Medicalization create irreversible damage as I provided incomplete list of potentially harmed systems. And gender identity is a misnomer. It would be much more precise to call it gender expression.
I hear you, but it feels like we’re discussing two different things.
You’re talking about sex and about medical practices aimed at altering secondary sex characteristics. That’s a valid debate, but it’s not the one I was engaging.
I was talking about identity formation… how people come to understand themselves, psychologically and socially, and why those patterns shift across generations.
Also, the term “gender-affirming care” comes from a modern convention that links “masculine” with male sex and “feminine” with female sex. In that colloquial framing, “affirming” someone’s gender means affirming a mental model tied to those categories.
If your point is that society misuses the word “gender” in ways that confuse biology with psychology, that’s a legitimate critique, just a different conversation than the one I was trying to have.
My question to you is:
What’s the value of trying to separate gender identity from gender expression when both refer to mind-based phenomena, not biological sex?
To me, they’re the same domain — the inner experience of self and how it’s communicated outwardly — and neither one alters a person’s biological sex.
My whole point was simply that sex is fixed and identity is fluid, because identity is shaped by both innate psychology and social context. That’s why we see shifts over time.
Everything else — medicalization, terminology, cultural norms — is a separate layer on top of that.
A good point, or question, about gender identity and gender expression and inner experience of self.
I find it particularly ironic/predictable that the blank-slate left is all in on innate characteristics if they serve the ideology. Intelligence & criminalism are caused by environment factors, but gender presentation preferences are innate. Also it beggars belief that a 1500% increase is due to greater acceptance. Especially if most of that is "nonbinary".
THE TRANS DOTEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Sex is fixed; it cannot be changed at will.
2. There is chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, gametal sex, hormonal sex, bodily sex, brain sex, and legal sex.
3. Trans people have a brain sex that is not aligned with their other sexes.
4. What they try to do is align their body and hormones with their brain.
5. They do not intend to change their sex.
6. Brain sex is fixed and immutable.
7. Some people detransition because they were not actually trans.
8. Others detransition due to complications with hormones or surgeries.
9. Others do so because they are discriminated against.
10. The percentage of trans people is between 10 and 20 percent of the university population.
11. Among the non-university population, trans people remain closeted due to discrimination. 12. Trans people have always existed; they just didn't come out of the closet like university students are doing now.
There's also the issue of gender, but that will be covered in another installment of "The Fantastic Trans and Non-Binary World."