Once upon the time the earth was flat because “they said so” and transgender represented another sex, “because they said so” neither stood up to scientific inquiry.
From Ace of Spades
How Many Transgenders In America? 0.006% = About 20,000. Total. [CBD]
—Open Blogger
A comment from Golfman provided this very interesting link: Interactive map: Census estimates for transgender population by state. A quick perusal of both the high and low estimates gives me a very rough calculation of about 6 transgenders/100,000 Americans. Following the link to the Census Bureau paper yields about the same number. And yes, that is a very small number. Assuming a population of about 320,000,000, that means that you will probably never meet a transgender, and if you don’t live in a particularly dense area you might not ever be within 50 feet of one.
Just to put it in perspective:
Albinism runs at about 1/17,000 worldwide.
Achondroplasia, the most common form of Dwarfism, occurs in 1 in 15,000 to 40,000 newborns.
Male breast cancer represents 1% of all breast cancers, 2,600 new cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year. That’s at least 6-8 times the number of transgenders born each year.
According to Wikipedia, 6,500 U.S. Military veterans committed suicide in 2012.
That’s at least 20 times the number of new transgenders.
And shall we look at the anorexia rate? “Anorexia is estimated to occur in 0.9% to 4.3% of women and 0.2% to 0.3% of men in Western countries at some point in their life.” Why Anorexia? Because it is the most similar example of “Body Dysmorphia” I can think of. Transgenders look in the mirror and see something that isn’t there, or they obsessively wish that the image was different. How does that differ from Anorexia?
Yet Transgenderism is celebrated and protected, but Anorexia is treated aggressively, because when left untreated, anorexics die! Of course Transgenders die too, mostly by suicide (41% attempt or succeed).
But by all means, let us celebrate and enable these profoundly disturbed Americans, instead of providing comprehensive psychiatric and medical treatment to overcome their significant, life-threatening illness.