While these are endocrine disrupting chemicals, people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance. If these chemicals were making people trans, baseline blood tests, which you need to take when you start HRT, would tell different stories than they tell. N1, mine were normal, and this aligns with what others I know have experienced.
My guess is that there is an appearance of a greater number of gender diverse people today because culturally we've reached a point where we don't feel like we need to die with the secret of being transgender, rather than because there were proportionally that many fewer transgender people before.
Not so sure, it could have to do with their hormones. I recall experiencing mild gender dysphoria during a period when my testosterone was recorded as below normal. When it returned to normal the dysphoria went away. It could be that some choose to say, "Since I think I'm a girl, perhaps I should swing the hormones even further in that direction."
I'm just one data point though, would be curious to hear other's experiences with dysphoria and what their blood work shows.
EDIT: And think about it, it's a logical contradiction to say that "hormones have nothing to do with it but write me an Rx to mess with my hormones so that I'm more of a girl."
Doing HRT carries massive life long side effects, which doctors are required to inform patients about. In some places, it requires months of therapy and a doctor's signoff. While I'm sure there are people who have hormonal imbalances, and some of them have perceived gender dysphoria because of it, I find it very unlikely (or at least extremely uncommon) those people would then start taking hormones, given that you have to be _pretty sure_ you're trans before getting near hormones. It seems very unlikely that in the course of a dip in hormone levels where dysphoria was sudden the course of action would be to transition rather than to seek an endocrinologist for answers. If this were common, I would think detransition rates, which many studies have shown to be very low, would be far higher than they are.
Even with 15 years of gender dysphoria, it took me six months post coming out to feel ready to start the hormone conversation, and an additional three months with the prescription sitting in my cabinet before I was ready to actually start taking it. Like I said, my hormonal level baselines were normal for a male.
Edit, RE your edit:
> "hormones have nothing to do with it but write me an Rx to mess with my hormones so that I'm more of a girl."
"Mess with my hormones" is a flippant and inaccurate way to describe a very difficult conversation trans people have with their doctors. You don't start hormones for fun and you don't start them because you're high on estrogen or testosterone. Hormones also don't make you "more of a girl." If you are a trans woman, you are a woman, regardless of whether you are on hormones, have had any kind of sex altering surgery, or have socially transitioned. You take hormones to bring your inward sense of identity outward and reduce the pain that comes from your sense of self not aligning with your appearance and and the societal demands and expectations of your behavior.
1. who buys USA's milk? USA, largely. Doesn't export enough because doesn't pass standards in most other places.
2. Sex and gender diversity is proven both global and historical.
Therefor, something else is the motivator. Perhaps a drop in colonization-enforced repression? (Historical Europe had more diverse gender identities before the spread of Christianity ... and colonization.... no I don't pair them quite together, but they definitely travelled together)
Edit: don't forget that lactose tolerance is not a majority feature of humans.
If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.
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'.
Just like people are easy to scare about autism being some kind of epidemic when many people (like me) have a diagnosis of only a mild, borderline, or provisional form of it. That never would have been diagnosed until recently or would have been diagnosed as something else.
Very few places are doing any just-the-facts reporting.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414251/
I don't think we are biologically far enough removed from "Oh my god, run, bear/snake/lion!"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/
And we may not be built (biologically) for the level of comfort that the majority of us (more so here on hacker news) live in.
I think the doom and gloom serves a purpose for a lot of people.
If they were that significantly harmful it would be massively obvious at that level of prevalence.