I am happy that trans people can be who they want to be, even if there is still a long way to go. But I am thrown by how statistics, that consistently give numbers of <1% to 3% for transsexual people in the general population, don’t match the number of transitioning stories I read online. I get why that is, safe space, confirmation bias and all, but it’s such a major disconnect between experience and actual numbers that it constantly trips me up. From what I read online, the percentage of trans people feels like it’s around 20-30%. Or, in this case, 50%.
My dad was one of the people who sincerely believed that “the queers are going to make everyone transition”, in part because trans people are able to be openly trans. But thankfully he died and is no longer able to spew his teansphobic hateful rhetoric.
There’s another phenomenon that interacts here - there is an observed higher prevalence of LGBTQ in autism (discussed here https://sparkforautism.org/discover_article/autism-lgbtq-identity/ and various research papers). Niche forums such as Lemmy, Fediverse, even Reddit all feel like they also have a higher autism spectrum prevalence than a general population. So I would guess there’s a double whammy on representation happening here - extra representation via safe space and shared interest on LGBTQ, extra representation ij autism spectrum, and an extra overlap between these two populations.
Percentages get crazy when you start talking about 8 billion people. 1% is 80 million. If 1% of that found lemmy the active user base would be almost half Trans. (I found around 1.2 million active lemmy users on some website, and 800,000 is 1% of 80,000,000)
There’s no way that’s true. I’d guess there are ~30000 active users on the entire threadiverse. 1.2 million is total registered users ever, across all servers, including spambots and such.
I’ve noticed that a lot of nerdy stuff has been drawing a queer audience with increasing frequency, probably because for whatever reason in the last few years a lot of nerds just seem to have decided to be more queer-welcoming. So it may be mainly correlation at work here
I got into a nerd friend group before realizing I was queer though and a lot of my queer nerd friends say the same. Dunno what’s up with that
Yeah the sub-culture that had star trek as one of it’s major contributors is surprisingly welcome to diversity. I wonder why that is? \j
I think it’s simply the case of the media that nerd culture grew out of was very welcoming to diversity, setting the standard for the entire sub-culture. I mean DS9 had a same-sex kiss in the 90s, with Dax a gender-swapping alien. I doubt that’s a coincidence.
![Auto-Balancing [Dungeons & Dragons]](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/570b86d5-4bbd-44f9-bdcc-aa799ceabb00.webp){kind=link}
I am happy that trans people can be who they want to be, even if there is still a long way to go. But I am thrown by how statistics, that consistently give numbers of <1% to 3% for transsexual people in the general population, don’t match the number of transitioning stories I read online. I get why that is, safe space, confirmation bias and all, but it’s such a major disconnect between experience and actual numbers that it constantly trips me up. From what I read online, the percentage of trans people feels like it’s around 20-30%. Or, in this case, 50%.
on top of what others have said, cis people don’t really tell the stories of their non-transition, do they
no one will be like “my DnD group was all men. it’s still all men no one transitioned”, even if it’s probably the most common experience lol
My dad was one of the people who sincerely believed that “the queers are going to make everyone transition”, in part because trans people are able to be openly trans. But thankfully he died and is no longer able to spew his teansphobic hateful rhetoric.
There’s another phenomenon that interacts here - there is an observed higher prevalence of LGBTQ in autism (discussed here https://sparkforautism.org/discover_article/autism-lgbtq-identity/ and various research papers). Niche forums such as Lemmy, Fediverse, even Reddit all feel like they also have a higher autism spectrum prevalence than a general population. So I would guess there’s a double whammy on representation happening here - extra representation via safe space and shared interest on LGBTQ, extra representation ij autism spectrum, and an extra overlap between these two populations.
Percentages get crazy when you start talking about 8 billion people. 1% is 80 million. If 1% of that found lemmy the
activeuser base would be almost half Trans. (I found around 1.2 millionactivelemmy users on some website, and 800,000 is 1% of 80,000,000)There’s no way that’s true. I’d guess there are ~30000 active users on the entire threadiverse. 1.2 million is total registered users ever, across all servers, including spambots and such.
I’ve noticed that a lot of nerdy stuff has been drawing a queer audience with increasing frequency, probably because for whatever reason in the last few years a lot of nerds just seem to have decided to be more queer-welcoming. So it may be mainly correlation at work here
I got into a nerd friend group before realizing I was queer though and a lot of my queer nerd friends say the same. Dunno what’s up with that
Yeah the sub-culture that had star trek as one of it’s major contributors is surprisingly welcome to diversity. I wonder why that is? \j
I think it’s simply the case of the media that nerd culture grew out of was very welcoming to diversity, setting the standard for the entire sub-culture. I mean DS9 had a same-sex kiss in the 90s, with Dax a gender-swapping alien. I doubt that’s a coincidence.