It was only as recently as the 1990’s that the term transgender (with no hyphen between trans and gender) attained its modern meaning. The estimated number of transgender people within the population at that time was extremely small. A large European study1 using data gathered between 1968 and 2014 found the overall rate of transgenderism to be 0.0046% (about 1 in every 22,000 people). However, this study was completed using data collected before the recent surge in visibility and awareness of the transgender community. Current studies2 indicate a much higher rate of 0.5% – more than a 100-fold increase. Broken down into age groups, the percentage among young people (< 21 years) is higher still.
Even the higher percentage measured in recent years is still a very low proportion of the population. Of course, you would never know that, seeing and hearing all the media attention devoted to this topic. A recent YouGov poll found that when asked, Americans believe 21% of the population is transgender. That’s more than 1 out of 5 people!
The excessive amount of media attention on this group is clearly warping the demographic facts. Much worse is what we believe is happening to many people’s attitudes toward the transgender community.
25 years ago, there was not a media and political juggernaut obsessed with transgenderism like there is now. Also, there was not a cult of transgender activists and supporters, the vast majority of whom are not themselves transgender. This group has convinced the media/political juggernaut they are a significant liberal voting bloc.
The activists explain the meteoric “growth” in the transgender population as a social awakening in our culture that is newly “accepting”. That awakening has permitted a preexisting (but silent) large cohort of transgender individuals to reveal themselves in safety. In other words, they opine, the demographers and survey professionals were all being fooled for many years not realizing that the transgender population was far larger than they were measuring.
Along with this acceptance came the exploitative acts of some who saw an opportunity for fame and, in some cases, fortune. There has been no better example of this than in women’s sports. All of a sudden, we were told that it is perfectly fair for a transgender woman to enter and dominate woman’s sporting events. This has lately occurred at all levels – high school, college, Olympic, and professional. We are not going to rehash the biological debate for and against transgender women playing women’s sports. But we do think it is important to look at this from the standpoint of mathematical probabilities. Could the sporting dominance of transgender women that we have been observing with our own eyes genuinely be an accurate representation of exceptional athletic prowess within the transgender population?
Let’s take swimming, since Lia Thomas has exemplified this situation so perfectly. Thomas won the NCAA national championship in the 500-yard freestyle by recording the fastest time in the nation and defeating 3 Olympians in the process. By any measure, hers was an “Olympic level” performance. To place that in context, 53 swimmers from the USA were good enough to go to the most recent summer Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo. The US population in 2020 was 331,450,00. That means the probability of anyone in the US being an Olympic level swimmer is 0.00000016. Now, even if we accept that the percentage of transgender people in the general population is 0.5% (which translates to a probability of 0.005) we need to take half of that number since we are talking only about “transwomen” in this example. Therefore, to find the probability of a transgender female being an Olympic level swimmer, you must multiply their independent probabilities together. That works out like this: 0.00000016 * 0.0025 = 0.0000000004. This equates to roughly 1 in 2.5 billion people. But wait, there are only 331 million people in the US, far less than 2.5 billion. So, from a mathematical point of view, the number of transgender women in the US who are also capable of swimming at the Olympic level is statistically zero (by a long shot).
While these numbers will be slightly different for other sports (cycling, weightlifting, track, etc.) the overall probabilities are on the same scale. So, what are we to believe about the likes of Lia Thomas (swimming), Rachel McKinnon (woman’s world cycling champion), Austin Killips (cycling), Vicki Piper (US national weightlifting champion), Laurel Hubbard (Olympic weightlifter), Nikki Hiltz (finished 2nd for the US in the 1500m indoor world track championships) and others. This list goes on and on and also includes several transgender female high school track champions. How is it that these events are now happening on a semi-regular basis when they have an infinitesimal probability of occurring?
It’s because at least one of the factors in the math equation is not valid. We know the athletic performances are real because they are objectively measured at professionally run competitions. The only other factor in the equation is the question of male vs. female. The obvious answer is that these are men’s bodies, with all their attendant physical advantages, competing against women’s bodies. The brain inside those men’s bodies is fully aware of their unfair advantage and has chosen to unfairly use those advantages for their own selfish aims. These sporting outcomes are not an innocent byproduct of transgender inclusion. The individuals dominating these events are self-serving, opportunistic cheaters, pure and simple.
The transgender stain on fair athletic competition is just the tip of the iceberg. Much worse has been the psychological effect of the transgender movement on young impressionable children who are being falsely led to believe they may be “in the wrong body”. If that wasn’t bad enough on its own, some equally impressionable (and ignorant) parents of these children are making horrific irreversible medical decisions on their behalf.
Several studies now put the rate of transgenderism among young people in the US at 5% or higher. If true, this would mean that transgenderism among children and young adults is more than 10 times the already inflated rate of the general population. And since children eventually turn into adults, we would expect the general population to become 5% transgender in just one or two more generations.
How did we go from 1 out of 22,000 people being gender dysphoric, to 1 out of 20 (for young people) in such a short time? The answer is, we didn’t. There is no viral contagion, or agent in the drinking water, that has caused this hundred-fold increase. It is a combination of hype, misplaced social acceptance, trendiness, victimhood glorification, greed, and opportunism. All of that is aided and abetted by the media, far left activists, progressive educators, and manipulative politicians. In a word, it is hateful.
The Transgender “movement”, which we believe started out with the noble intent of raising awareness, educating, and helping has now morphed into an aggressive, distasteful, militant movement. We are reasonably sure the people the movement was originally trying to help are not all happy with what that “help” has evolved into today.
1Systematic review and meta-analysis of prevalence studies in transsexualism – PubMed (nih.gov)
2Transgender Demographics: A Household Probability Sample of US Adults, 2014 – PMC (nih.gov), What Percentage of the Population is Transgender in 2024? (worldpopulationreview.com)