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This reminds me of people back in the day saying that homosexuality is a "disease" which is being spread by homosexuality. I'm not a scientist, but isn't it ju

by 4ggr0 6y ago

This reminds me of people back in the day saying that homosexuality is a "disease" which is being spread by homosexuality. I'm not a scientist, but isn't it just the fact of being educated that such exist? If I don't know about transgenderism, or I know about it but people view it as a negative thing, I would never get the idea of being it myself, right? I just live my whole life with a strange feeling of not really knowing who I am. If, on the other hand, I know about it and the culture is accepting of it, I can finally know who I am because I feel like I found myself. I really doubt that people start hormone-therapy just because they heard about transgenderism and were somehow brainwashed into thinking that they are trans as well...It actually sounds like a disgusting theory to me, could come from a certain german group in the 1930's. If I was born 100 years prior, I probably never would've known that I have ADHD or am Bi-Sexual. Now with the internet all the information is available to me and I suddenly get to know myself. I doubt that the internet or the culture made me bi or ADHD. I just found out thanks to those things :) People back in the day were labeled as dumb people because they couldn't read, now we know that there's a thing called dyslexia. Anyways, sorry for going on a tangent, just what I thought when reading this discussion.

auganov 6y ago
> This reminds me of people back in the day saying that homosexuality is a "disease" which is being spread by homosexuality. You're just assuming that the hypothesis of contagion necessarily carries some negative connotation. I generally tend to believe there's a strong contagion element to all kinds of behaviors. But that doesn't inherently make them wrong. A lot of the born-this-way arguments for all kinds of phenomena arose simply in response to negativity. The point being "if I can't change it, you cannot judge me for it". Almost implying that it is indeed a bad thing.
ALittleLight 6y ago
The basic idea of the paper is investigating teens who did not show symptoms of gender dysphoria in their youth, who had what the author calls "Sudden onset gender dysphoria" after being exposed to trans-friendly content (youtubers, tumblr blogs, etc), and who have one or more friends in their social group who become trans at the same time as they did. You can read more here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... I agree with you that I am not likely to transition if one my peers did. That's not really what the author is saying. The author is saying that some people (specifically teenage girls) seem to be transitioning together, without prior symptoms of gender dysphoria, after being exposed to content about trans people. This research may be right or wrong. Trans-identification may or may not be a social contagion. I lack the expertise and evidence to judge. However, I can tell that the idea that this is a "completely unscientific" question is wrong by evidence of their being scientific research about it. "Social contagion" doesn't mean the author thinks of trans-identification as "a disease". Social contagion means that it is spread through social interactions, which is why multiple individuals in friend-groups will sometimes develop sudden onset gender dysphoria together.

by 4ggr0 6y ago

auganov 6y ago

> This reminds me of people back in the day saying that homosexuality is a "disease" which is being spread by homosexuality. You're just assuming that the hypothesis of contagion necessarily carries some negative connotation. I generally tend to believe there's a strong contagion element to all kinds of behaviors. But that doesn't inherently make them wrong. A lot of the born-this-way arguments for all kinds of phenomena arose simply in response to negativity. The point being "if I can't change it, you cannot judge me for it". Almost implying that it is indeed a bad thing.

ALittleLight 6y ago

The basic idea of the paper is investigating teens who did not show symptoms of gender dysphoria in their youth, who had what the author calls "Sudden onset gender dysphoria" after being exposed to trans-friendly content (youtubers, tumblr blogs, etc), and who have one or more friends in their social group who become trans at the same time as they did. You can read more here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... I agree with you that I am not likely to transition if one my peers did. That's not really what the author is saying. The author is saying that some people (specifically teenage girls) seem to be transitioning together, without prior symptoms of gender dysphoria, after being exposed to content about trans people. This research may be right or wrong. Trans-identification may or may not be a social contagion. I lack the expertise and evidence to judge. However, I can tell that the idea that this is a "completely unscientific" question is wrong by evidence of their being scientific research about it. "Social contagion" doesn't mean the author thinks of trans-identification as "a disease". Social contagion means that it is spread through social interactions, which is why multiple individuals in friend-groups will sometimes develop sudden onset gender dysphoria together.