The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect.
A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.
While I agree there is no statistical proof in the article, it's a very strong hypothesis: we somehow only 'listen' to the mental problems of female teens, who see geometric increases in self harm, suicide and various disorders, twice or three times the pre-social media levels. Yet other categories see linear or token increases.
Could it be just a coincidence that young females are exactly the demographic that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets? And those are exactly the type of things that social networks exploited, monetized and massively gamified in the last decade?
What's more likely: a rapid change of the cultural norms and roles associated with growing up as a woman or of those related to recognizing and treating mental health issues (all in a single decade!); OR: a purely technical revolution that put interactive screens in the hands of each kid and made the former much more effective in harming their development and leading to the latter?
At least for the young female demographic, I think there is a massive burden of proof for anyone claiming the epidemics is not social-media induced.
"that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets?"
In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline as gender norms and roles continue to become less segregating.
"Yet other categories see linear or token increases."
Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs more than intentional self-harm (almost the inverse of young women). That doesn't mean it's not the problem, just that it's not such a great proof.
In my opinion it seems like there is more institutionalize going on, but that's only a subset of restrictions that are being rolled back. Eg. If 25 states roll back restrictions (or implement protections) and the other 25 reinforce those restrictions, then you still have a 50% reduction. On the corporate side, I've seen a ton of protections/benefits being increased which didn't exist anywhere even 10 years ago.
> A significant part of the trans movement is a reactionary reinforcement of rigid gender roles
This is an anti-trans talking point and not remotely representative of actual trans communities.
Source: am trans and nonbinary, and I have never heard another trans person complain about me not fitting into specific gender roles. The only people who complain are cis people who think my gender or lack thereof is either a ruse or a mental illness.
> I have never heard another trans person complain about me not fitting into specific gender roles
That is a straw-man of my position. A large part of the trans community believes hormone blockers should be liberally administered to teenagers and children, for example. That is by definition an attempt to steer healthy biological development into pre-established expectations of body conformity. The entire "transwomen are women" mantra is a vehement call for binarity: transwomen can't simply be transwomen, i.e. free people living their lives how they see fit, they must be externally recognized and validated as this social defined thing called a woman, which they were born into.
So while, of course, a community member would never comment or object to another's degree of conformity, popular variants of trangederism exhibit a strong conceptual agreement that gender objectively exists, as opposed to being an entirely made up thing used to pigeonhole people into social roles according to their biology.
This is in perfect opposition to traditional feminism, which seeks to dismantle oppressive gendered institutions. And in fact, in perfect opposition with the liberal tradition that pursues individual sovereignty and de-marginalization; just imagine using the same discourse of "being born in the wrong body" and "getting the treatment they need" for any other social class that is discriminated against for minor biological variance, such as skin color, height or weight.
Hmm, I was going to write something that disagreed, but I do see a point there. Although you left out some of the connections and it's not specifically what we're talking about. I'm not sure that it was this article, but a different one mentioned that the self harm and suicides were 2x-3x higher for LGBTQ teens. Basically, we're seeing a much higher rate in one subgroup which could account for the bulk of the increase as their representation in the overall group rises.
So I can see the pressures associated with acceptance or challenges of LGBTQ teens as a possible increase as they make up an increasing part of that demographic. However, I don't think that gender roles specifically play a part since more things are continuously becoming available and accepted regardless of gender.
> And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role: social media tells them "they were born in the wrong bodies".
Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.
> Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.
I think it is somewhat more common for people who are AFAB to identify as non-binary than for people who are AMAB to do so, which if you consider it part of the same broad class of things might be sufficient to tip the balance back to that side.
Not that I endorse the “social contagion” theory GP is spouting, in the least.
In the old days trans people weren't shooting up christian schools out of frustration. I wonder if perhaps society made a mistake by so many members giving them the false impression that society should accept them for who they identify as. In the old days they pretty much had to learn to accept themselves for who they were and not worry about what other people thought, both because no one was encouraging them they deserved acceptance and because few would have budged.
Young white progressive teens in general seem to be following a path that advances the idea society should be progressing towards acceptance, inclusion and mutual progress. Sadly lip service doesn't overturn human nature. Boomers for better or worse seem to take an attitude of "fuck you, on your own" and at some point perhaps it's lower stress just to not be thinking at all times you can control the thoughts of others.
re: minortom
Not an advocate against those able to consent doing whatever want with their bodies. Don't think my argument works against that. Although it would be a fallacy to suggest anything other than the current medical standard results in more deaths and thus advocating otherwise is advocation for suffering; the medical studies never claim it's impossible to achieve less suffering some other way.
I'm hopefully wrong but it seems like you may have made some assumptions that I want to control treatment options for trans people. It feels like I've wrongly been presumed as wanting suffering for trans people; in fact my whole premise was to find out why they are frustrated this way indeed with the hopes they can find new coping strategies.
To note, I don't see why justification is even needed for transition surgery. The (hopefully) wrong assumption I made here is that you stated it like it was relevant in the decision as to whether I should be in favor of it being an option. Even if it made them worse off, they shouldn't be stopped. It's a bit terrifying one even has to include efficacy to justify whether a consenting adult is allowed to modify their body, and worrying comment you've made IMO that presents exactly the kind of problems we have with hyper concern over the opinion of others on what we do with our bodies.
This narrative about trans shooters is disconnected from reality. If you take every trans shooter in the last decade, you get less than 10… out of thousands. For context, last year America has nearly 700 mass shootings. Trans people are actually under represented in mass shootings. Estimates put trans people at up to 1% of the population. We would naively expect 7 shooters last year to be trans, but none were. Saying that the recent shooter is part of a trend of transgender shooters requires outright ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
The desperation to argue against a straw man is real. If trans people went from no school shootings to one in 2020 and one in 2023 there may or may not be a "trend" but it's still worth finding out why that is happening.
Edit:
re pupptailwags: Yes we should be examining whenever people are engaging in violence, factors behind that happening. I'm quite certain, unlike assertion made below, that people indeed have studied the qualities of males in particular engaging in this kind of violence.
rethelopa: I was replying to a comment talking about why something (male disposition to this kind of violence) hadn't been studied; it has.
[note I'm rate limited, which is reason for replying this way]
I’m assuming I’m the “assertion made below”. I made no such claim. Let me rephrase it.
There have been 8 mass shootings in America in the last 7 days. No one was running to twitter to speculate about their causes. No politicians were raising concerns about troubling trends. The shootings were going completely unremarked on in national politics… until a shooter happened to be trans.
If you want to speculate that commentators and politicians are giving the other incidents the same attention, we would literally never hear the end of it. On average, almost 2 mass shootings happen per day. But, for some reason, those incidents weren’t given national attention. Curious.
We didn't apply this standard to all men when we went from no school shootings to one school shooting in 1840. I don't see a reason why we should apply it to another gender.
You optimize for the common case, not the uncommon one. Shouldn’t we figure out why shootings in general are happening rather than fixating on a specific case because it involved an unpopular minority group?
I think searching for a general common solution is precisely why we are getting nowhere. It may be there are some "unpopular" opinions that turn out to be factors. Many small pieces make a large one, and important hints often come in unexpected places.
But, again, why are you focusing on a group that is statistically less likely to commit mass shootings compared to the average person? Even if you find some root cause for trans shooters, you’d be, at best, eliminating what amounts to about 0.1% of cases. Why not look at groups that are over represented?
One day I'm in a coal mine and 1 canary dies, the next day 100 canaries die. I probably think the coal or some mineral in the mine just kills canaries.
Eventually a dog dies. Now I start wondering "Well dogs are only 1% of the dead animals, may as well not focus on that..." I may miss out on an important observation.
If your presumption is true, that trans are more robust against these kind of acts, now I'm wondering. Maybe unhinged poorly socialized young males are the canaries and trans are yet something new. What's wrong in the coal mine and what can I learn by focusing on the newest subjects.
(I'm not trying to convince you of anything, just making this clear for anyone else reading. also: comment talks about suicide)
> In the old days they pretty much had to learn to accept themselves for who they were and not worry about what other people thought, both because no one was encouraging them they deserved acceptance and because few would have budged.
According to scientific research, around 1/3 of patients with gender dysphoria have attempted suicide in the past. The only medically accepted treatment for gender dysphoria is transition. If you're advocating against that then you're advocating in favor of preventable suffering & deaths.
Also, using human nature as an argument is fallacious.
I understood your comment to be against social acceptance of trans people, (and honestly still do. Admittedly this isn't a best-faith interpretation of your comment, but it made sense in the context I read it in. )
Therefore, my comment wasn't intended to be only about available medical treatment options (including surgical), but also about social acceptance of trans people, which is a kinda important part of all of this.
If that's not how you intended to mean your comment, that's great, because I agree with you on the medial/surgical side of things.
I've replied above (due to rate-limiting timeout, had to capture my thoughts there earlier).
I have no interest in stopping consenting adult trans or any other person from any surgery/treatment, regardless of how efficacious or not it is. But do not make the mistake of believing because it is the only medically accepted treatment of gender dysphoria (which is curiously a treatment for something that is not even a disorder or illness), that it must be the path to least suffering and death.
(I wrote this reply as a comment edit originally, but I'm making this it's own comment.)
I understood your comment to be against social acceptance of trans people, (and honestly still do. Admittedly this isn't a best-faith interpretation of your comment, but it made sense in the context I read it in. )
Therefore, my comment wasn't intended to be only about available medical treatment options (including surgical), but also about social acceptance of trans people, which is a kinda important part of all of this.
If that's not how you intended to mean your comment, that's great, because I agree with you on the medial/surgical side of things.
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(Reply to the parent comment:)
It is the best-currently-known-path for least suffering and death. And a lot better than the currently-known alternatives. I'm not trying to say that no better treatment might become available in the future.
(Aside: gender dysphoria is listed in the DSM-5, which is important for health insurance purposes, amongst other reasons. It was previously named gender identity disorder, but was renamed due to the stigma associated with the term disorder. There was also the diagnosis of "transsexualism" (which included homosexuality, amongst others) and the inclusion of these issues in the DSM remains a topic of debate.)
I have to admit I've had to try really hard to not get sucked into this side debate on the efficacy of transition. I've found conflicting data here, I'm willing to acknowledge it may be true that it leads to better outcomes for many individuals. In any case, as I've said, there's little I can act on there as I have no right to impose that kind of control on others.
I am intrigued by the intersectionality of transition and social acceptance. You seem to have been following some research here, what have you found regarding the social acceptance of trans persons before and after transition? Are they finding more social acceptance after treatment?
That's not what I meant, exactly. I'm just trying to argue that we should allow people to transition (from a social perspective, not just a medical one) and respect them and their new gender.
(I don't think they're finding more social acceptance after transition, with some light exceptions as the realization and acceptance of their dysphoria allowes them to find more accepting social circles, and some probably are less accepted by their environment after.)
(I'm also not an expert at this, I've just been parroting some well-known takes but I've looked at research to back them up, as "Source: Reddit" isn't the most convincing)
I actually don't think it's wise to make a claim that more than one trans person has shot up more than one christian school at this point, or even to attribute the terrorist act by a single trans person to the acceptance of transgender people more broadly.
I've specifically said they weren't shooting up christian schools in the old days, with no commentary on the (non-zero) number of schools shot in modern days, so I have no idea what you're even arguing against. Your whole comment is a side-step strawman.
Although for the record it doesn't even make sense to say "trans person wasn't shooting school in the old days." Pluralization is an appropriate use of English here.
My comment is that I don't think its reasonable to attribute a terrorist action to the lessening of oppression that that demographic has received overall.
It's funny when they bring up that Simone de Beauvoir quote "one is not born a woman, but becomes one", as the rest of the passage it is from completely undermines what they assume it's about - Beauvoir talks about "the figure that the human female presents in society" and then goes on to critique this:
« On ne naît pas femme : on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, économique ne définit la figure que revêt au sein de la société la femelle humaine ; c'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui élabore ce produit intermédiaire entre le mâle et le castrat qu'on qualifie de féminin. Seule la médiation d'autrui peut constituer un individu comme un Autre. En tant qu'il existe pour soi, l'enfant ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement différencié. »
To Beauvoir, "woman" is a harmful social construct that is forced upon all females, so this doesn't apply to males who call themselves women, because firstly, they are not female, and secondly, they are not forced into womanhood. It's comical how so fundamentally they've misunderstood her point.
The argument appears to be "wanting to change your gender posits that gender is part of objective reality and not a social construct, which is sexist", which is analogous to "trying to create racial equality implies the races are unequal now which is racist".
If you ignore realities of present society and pretend that things like gender roles and racial discrimination don't exist today, you can make it look like people are fighting to create those things instead of to reduce them.
The analogy is deeply flawed since nobody is changing their race to fight racist social roles. Just imagine going to a classroom and telling the audience that some children are born in the wrong body that does not align to their real, deep race.
Rather, we fight racism by rejecting racialized social roles. There is nothing racist in acknowledging current racial inequality, but it's deeply racist to suggest there exist a "real", inner race that influences our behaviors, and if society pushes us into racialized roles, it's because they don't afirm our "true race".
Similarly, we fight sexism by rejecting gendered social roles, biological sex is a minor anatomical detail that - aside from well specified domains, such as reproduction and raw physical strength - should have no bearing on someone's ability and right to perform any social role they desire.
To do anything else for pragmatic reasons is as if the suffragettes would have dressed up as men on election day and attempt to vote that way; ie, recognize and reafirm the restriction instead of attacking the fundamental inequity of the male-only vote.
Your first sentence suggests you're trying to argue, but I don't see where the contradiction is. Even the transmeds would agree with what you've written.¹
Trans people don't be trans in order to fight sexist gender roles. They're trans, and (often) fight sexist gender roles.
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Some pedantic notes that may or may not be relevant:
• The two different domains you list are influenced by different dimensions of biological sex, which can vary independently.
• A social gender, while culturally-influenced, seems to represent something fundamental about human experience.² Many societies' social gender categories do not align 1-to-1 with biological sex classifications, but 'most all of them have them. Meanwhile, race isn't seen outside racists and those influenced by racism: it is a recent³ invention.
• Some people's brains, for whatever reason, do care about the sexual characteristics of the rest of the body. This isn't much of a problem if that "preference" matches what the body is, but it can cause people significant distress when they don't.⁴ ⁵
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¹: Though transmeds would dispute the (perfectly valid) implication in your second sentence. "Born in the wrong body" isn't an entirely accurate explanation: it's more of a lie-to-adults, only required if you've got a stodgy old binarist model in your head that can just about conceptualise the existence of gay people. It's up there with "lesbian relationships are butch/femme": not something we need to be teaching children, though probably better than acting like LGBT people don't exist.
²: Disclaimer: I'm not speaking from experience. My intuition is that gendering is bad. From observing other people actually liking, and gaining value from, gendering themselves, I suspect there might be value in keeping gender around, for their sakes; however I have not really taken the time to square this with the clear and obvious harm caused by our society's obsessive gender-all-the-things-and-people tendencies.
³: Dating back at most 1400 years, with its European-coloniser incarnation probably not much more than 400 years old, and the modern eugenicist version less than 200 years old.
⁴: This doesn't necessarily even line up with gender! I know a cis guy who went on feminising HRT, and he says it made him a lot happier. (I don't have access to the inside of his head, but I'd be inclined to believe him.)
⁵: Personally, I don't see why someone should need to have a medical condition to get to choose what their body is like. I get the rationale, seeing as these are semi-permanent choices that one's future self might disagree with – but we could apply the same logic to tattoos, nose rings, or earlobe stretching. (Perhaps we should!)
Regardless, the fact remains that many people do have such a medical condition.
> A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously
I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the past. All this to say that things were tough.
Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing together.
Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17). Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.
Is it at least partly a case of getting what you incentivize?
I was a teen in the 1980s, never knew of anyone who harmed himself other than accidentally. But we also didn't have doctors and counselors incessantly asking if we were depressed, or thinking of hurting ourselves. A kid today who says "yes" to either of those questions is going to find he's getting heaps of attention all of a sudden.
I have been thinking about this because I was at an orthopedist this week for an orthopedic isssue and I had to answer their "depression screening" questions. Trying to decide if these are being pushed by big pharma to get more people on antidepression meds or where else this might be coming from. The whole time I'm jsut thinking "you people aren't mental health specialists, or even general practioners, why are you asking me these irrelevant questions"
One possible contributing explaination that I don't see addressed is that our lifestyles and opportunities have peaked in prior generations and are backsliding. Technology and politics are so invasive that you can't necessarily get a fresh start somewhere else. Young people realize this and figure "why even try". The difference in boys and girls with the graphs are that boys tend to act out and girls tend to self harm.
Who knows if this is a possibile contributor or not. Would be interesting to look into.
Statistics like that don't always make sense.
Prior to the 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report because society wasn't ready to talk about it.
To me that seems like a purely post-hoc argument with no evidence to justify it.
For instance, imagine that the data were showing the opposite effect, that is, adults having a significantly greater increase in depression and anxiety than teenagers.
If that were the case, one could just as easily argue that it fits with the "our societies are so advanced that we can listen to mental illnesses" hypothesis quite well, because adults have the autonomy, resources, and maturity to get the attention they need to tackle their issues and symptoms. Teenagers don't, on the other hand, as they depend on their teachers and guardians and older adults often dismiss kids' symptoms as “not real illness” and just angst and moodiness.
I can only speak to my own experience but I suspect there is some generational component to the increased awareness of mental health issues.
I was in high school during late 90's and early 00's. I was not diagnosed with anything until 2009 (around the articles timeline) looking back in hindsight I struggled with issues for years, lack of energy (some days just dragging myself out of bed was chore), lack of motivation to do anything, I avoided socializing with people I had no energy to stay in touch with friends I would make excuses to avoid hanging out with people all of the time because I never felt up to it.
If I spoke up to family members etc I was told what I was going through was normal, everyone feels tired, in essence to suck it up and stop being a wimp. It got to the point I just assumed everyone felt the way I did all of the time.
It wasn't until by chance I saw a different and younger doctor one day for an unrelated health issue I mentioned (again) how tired I felt all the time lack of energy I had it was explained to me that what I was experiencing very much not normal. That was the first time anyone took what I was saying seriously. My life drastically improved afterwards. I was 24 at the time.
When I was a teenager no one talked about mental health it just wasn't done. So I would not be surprised if some component of the statistics is an increased willingness among medical personnel to notice and diagnose the issues.
That being the case, the point remains that a dismissive adult is much more likely to get in the way of a teenager from getting a diagnosis than that of another adult. Furthermore, the fact that doctors are more likely to take men seriously than they do women would explain why the increase in diagnoses is so much higher in male adults than in female adults, even though the base rate of women suffering from mental health issues is actually the same as that of men.
Obviously, the part in italics is fiction. It is referring to the alternate world I mentioned in my comment above where the effect was the the opposite of what we're seeing (with the added extra of adult men appearing to be seeing a greater increase than adult women) and how it's so easy to come up with post-hoc explanations using what seem like reasonable and factual premises.
Would a decrease in such dismissal would also explain the increase in hospitalisation rates for self harm? I personally doubt it.
(Edit: and whoever downvoted me would help a great deal by explaining how exactly an increase in hospitalisation rates are an indication that we take this stuff more seriously. A wound remains a wound.)
I think it might. I firmly believe that mental issues can be compounded by too much empathy and care. Too much 'awareness'.
Sometimes sucking it up is, psychologically, the right answer, and results in a more resilient individual. (Not all the time, perhaps not most of the time. But sometimes.)
Your argument also applies to toddlers (1-10), Young students & workers (20-30), established workers (30-40)… pretty much any decade actually.
So no. It might not. Not for the reason you say at least. Improvements in diagnosis, self awareness and hospitalisation rates would have to happen specifically to teenagers, and unless someone can cite a specific reason why this is the case I just don't believe it. The increase is real.
Not necessarily; teenagers are 1) still under parental health insurance and therefore can get medical care, 2) broadly have adults looking out for them in a way adults don't look out for other adults, 3) are capable of self-introspection and increased communication capacity as well as self-identification in a way children are not, 4) have the agency to advocate for their mental health needs in a way children cannot..
Broadly if we are going to respect mental health more, the one cohort that is broadly capable of receiving mental health assessment medically, has enough agency to introspect to their own mental health, and still generally have adults responsible for their wellbeing, aka teenagers, are most likely to reveal this.
I guess it makes sense… the difference in how much other people are affected however is so stark that this does suggest a generational thing.
And then there are the hospitalisation rates. Did we lower the seriousness threshold to get our kids to the hospital? Unless they were talking about psychiatry hospitals that doesn't seem likely.
Frankly it might just be that children's desire to kill themselves wasn't considered something to hospitalize for in the past. I knew when I was a teenager I participated in all sorts of nonsense and said all sorts of shit to adults around me, and most of the adults just told me to man up and stop being a pussy about it. Now that I'm an adult, I can see times where I definitely should've been considered to evaluation as a suicide risk.
Everything has changed. You can’t look at one thing in isolation. Todays teens are not the teens of the Boomer generation. Was t that long enough that many were married by the time they hit 20.
Just like divorce rates in some ways. It’s because it wasn’t really an option for many (typically women) until recently. The social and financial repercussions were too severe.
To some extent just functioning no matter what is protective against certain mental illnesses. Exhibiting the overt symptoms of a mental illness can sometimes cause the illness to become more severe in a feedback loop. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective in treating many mental illnesses and works in part by giving patients the mental tools they need to just function.
I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function" instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called growing up.
A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.