https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-transgender
"A couple weeks ago, the
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an op-ed
entitled
Evidence Backs the Transgender Social-Contagion Hypothesis. The
author, Colin Wright, has been affiliated with not one, but two Southern
Poverty Law Center designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups: SEGM and Genspect. He is
also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank. If you
search for Wright online, you’ll find scores of his videos (some on far-right
outlets like PragerU) and writings (some published on his bombastically titled
blog “Reality’s Last Stand” which, I kid you not, to opt out of subscribing,
you have to click a button that says “I don’t care about the truth”), the
majority of which claim that trans people do not exist biologically speaking.
(For evidence to the contrary, please consult my
Biology, Sex, and Transgender
People resource page.)
There are numerous problems with Wright’s op-ed, which I will address
momentarily. But one major flaw is that it largely rests on a recent report
published by another anti-“woke” researcher, Eric Kaufmann. In a thread on X
(formerly Twitter), Kaufmann summarized his report by proclaiming that “trans
identification is in free fall among the young.” Unsurprisingly, anti-trans
activists (most prominently Matt Walsh and Elon Musk) celebrated this
pronouncement. However, Kaufmann’s methodology quickly came under scrutiny.
Even Wright’s own SEGM disputed Kaufmann’s findings.
For those interested, I have chronicled debates about the Kaufmann report in
the October 10, 2025 entry of my recently updated Origins of “Social Contagion”
& “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” timeline, but I will not be discussing them
further here. From my perspective, the most pertinent issue is not whether the
number of young people who identify as trans or LGBTQ+ happens to be rising (as
the Williams Institute and Gallup, respectively, recently reported) or falling
(as Kaufmann claims), but rather that anti-trans activists will inevitably
shoehorn any statistics (both increases or decreases!) into their “social
contagion” narrative.
The rest of this essay will be organized into three sections. First, I will
discuss the history of the “transgender social contagion” narrative: who
invented it, what purpose it serves, and why it’s nothing more than wild
speculation. Second, with that necessary context in tow, I will highlight the
numerous flaws in Colin Wright’s
WSJ op-ed and revisit the popular
“left-handedness” analogy, which he misrepresents in his piece. Third, I will
end with a list of over a dozen studies that contradict the “social
contagion”/“rapid onset gender dysphoria” hypothesis.
This is admittedly a longer-than-usual essay, in part, because of all the
studies tacked onto the end (which you can delve into, skim over, or skip
entirely, depending upon your preference). But the main reason is that I wanted
to thoroughly address the many claims associated with “transgender social
contagion” and highlight the many ways in which statistics regarding
transgender prevalence (whether sound or specious) are often twisted by bad
actors in order to promote anti-trans talking points. Hence the title of this
essay, referencing the adage that Mark Twain popularized: “There are three
kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
