
Why We Don’t Know the Size of the Transgender Population - ryan_j_naughton
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-dont-know-the-size-of-the-transgender-population/
======
jensnockert
I think it's a really hard question, I would change gender if a magician could
do it with no ill effects. But I wouldn't consider myself transgender, and I
think it would be unfair to count me or John as part of that group.

On the topic of gender I'm basically like John, just more open about it. But
at some point in my life realized that I don't care enough about my gender
that there's any point for me to put in any effort into this. There's just so
many things that I would rather put energy into, like building nice things for
people.

When there's a free text field for gender I fill in whimsical things like
programmer or mathematician depending on context.

~~~
ebiester
How about if the medical procedure and preparation was better and the social
consequences ere nil?

How is that different than saying "If I could have sex exclusively with men
without being disowned by my family, I would, but it's just not that important
to me?"

You're not alone.

~~~
jensnockert
To the first question, any sufficiently advanced technology/society is
indistinguishable from magic.

To the second, not that much really. If there were no social consequences, my
choices might have been different.

------
Mz
The opening caught my eye:

 _In 2001, Kerith Conron was working on LGBT issues in Boston’s health
department. She discovered that homeless transgender people were sleeping on
benches because the shelters, which were segregated by gender, didn’t know
what to do with them. As a result, transgender people weren’t included in the
city’s assessment of who needed shelter._

Years ago, I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I don't recall
this coming up as an issue at all. But apparently this is a very serious
issue, so serious it can bar you from access to basic services when things are
at their very worst.

------
sarahj
I am not a fan of GLAAD definition. I think it does more harm than good.
Gender Dysphoria, the condition associated with transgender individuals, is
most likely neurological in nature - that is to say, there are plenty of
studies correlating sex-atypical differences in the brain with gender
dysphoria. ([http://transcience-
project.org/brain_sex.html](http://transcience-project.org/brain_sex.html))

Lumping in cross-dressers and run-of-the-mill gender variance denies this very
real condition the attention it deserves, it reduces it to a choice. There is
nothing wrong with the choice, and people should have the right to express
their gender however they choose, I just think that we need to be careful
about maintaining a separation between gender dysphoria and gender variance.

On the actual question at hand, clinical intake studies have been pretty
consistent in this regard. The number of people who have gender dysphoria that
becomes severe enough to prompt treatment (in western European countries) is
about 1:10000 (for transgender women) and 1:27000 (for transgender men).
(Judge, Ciaran, Claire O'Donovan, and Donal O'Shea. "Gender dysphoria-
prevalence and co-morbidities in an Irish adult population." Neuroendocrine
Science 5 (2014): 87)

That being said it is difficult to estimate the number of individuals with
gender dysphoria who choose not to seek treatment (or those who choose to self
medicate). People like John are unfortunate, and a hopefully the bi-product of
an age we are on our way out of. That being said, John is clearly not
transgender, they may suffer from gender dysphoria, but they are not
transgender.

Today we have a much better understanding of gender dysphoria and have a
number of long term studies which show hormonal and surgical transitioning to
be an effective treatment (e.g Gorin-Lazard, A., Baumstarck, K., Boyer, L.,
Maquigneau, A., Gebleux, S., Penochet, J.-C., Pringuey, D., Albarel, F.,
Morange, I., Loundou, A., Berbis, J., Auquier, P., Lançon, C. and Bonierbale,
M. (2012), Is Hormonal Therapy Associated with Better Quality of Life in
Transsexuals? A Cross-Sectional Study. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 9: 531–541.
doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02564.x). I

“First you ask about what sex is on your birth certificate. Then later in the
survey you ask, ‘What is your gender?’? - This, of course, doesn't work in
first-world countries where gender dysphoria is treated like an intersex
condition and the individuals are free to amend their birth certificates.

~~~
tjradcliffe
Those incidence numbers strike me as implausibly low. I happen to know two
transpeople fairly well by completely random chance. One is good friend of my
(now adult) kids, whose parents are also friends of mine who I met through
work, the other is an adult child of my girlfriend.

Unless you hypothesize that for some reason I befriend people who have a
vastly increased probability of having trans offspring, numbers like 1:10E4
give me a 1:200000 of being in this position. I would generously assume I know
25 people as well as I know these people, so the probability of finding two in
that group who are trans would be 1E-4 _25_ 1E-4*24 = 0.000006. Tiny.

Now, in a world with a few billion adults in it there are going to be a few
tens of thousands of people like me, who know more then one transperson from
completely unrelated means, but it would be interesting to know if anyone else
here does. I'm pretty sure people in my situation are not as rare as those
numbers would indicate.

~~~
Kalium
I think it's worth considering that people with non-traditional sexual
identities tend to concentrate in certain geographic areas. So perhaps your
random selection is taking place over a highly self-sorted population.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Yeah, in general I think the HN commentariat is not remotely representative of
society as a whole. Especially when it comes to the intersection of tech and
sexuality.

------
Renaud
The issues raised by the fuzzy region between the well-defined genders is a
complex one.

We tend, maybe especially us in the software world, to build systems that
cater for definitions that neatly fit into specific boxes (M/F), or that rely
on simplified models ("sex at birth is all you'll ever be").

Despite the fact that transgenders people have always existed, we are only
starting to acknowledge their existence and recognise that they are citizen
that have the same rights and duties as anyone else and that they should be
treated with the same respect and consideration as anyone else.

I think we, as creators of systems that model the world, should be more
knowledgeable and have more consideration for the complexities of dealing with
sex and gender.

We can ask ourselves whether asking someone's M/F status is really necessary
(what do we need it for?), whether we can allow at least a third option where
neither are selected or present a perfectly valid "Prefer not to say/I don't
fit in a box" option.

This also affects how we choose to address people with Mr/Mrs/Ms/etc. Allowing
no title to be selected (or a title of the user's choosing) should also be
possible, as well as selecting a title that doesn't traditionally fit with the
selected sex (like choosing Mr even if the user selected F as their sex).

We then have to assume that these attributes can change over time and allow
users to redefine them at will, without hindrance.

There is a lot more to be done but these simple steps, all fairly easy to
implement, are a start in the right direction.

~~~
tomp
I really don't get most of these kinds of questions on web forms - sex, name,
title. I think that except for legal purposes, where it's necessary to provide
your legal name/sex/whatever, you should only have a field called "how should
we address you" and nothing else.

------
gizmo686
A related problem (from an academic standpoint) is what to do with the size of
the transgender population. If it is .3% of the entire population, then there
is a temptation to say that the other 99.7% is cisgender (which, depending on
definitions, may be accurate). However, this does not consider the questions
of what percent of those 99.7% would also be cisgender if they suddenly
changed genders.

~~~
danieltillett
This is an interesting question to consider. Would you want to change back to
your former gender if by magic you woke up tomorrow the oposite gender to who
you are today? I am male and have no desire to be female, but if I were to
wake up tomorrow in a female body I am not sure I would go to the effort to
change to male.

~~~
CmonDev
"...wake up tomorrow in a female body..." \- a proper one or a fake one
(reproduction, gender features, psychology etc.)?

~~~
danieltillett
Since this is just a thought experiment a real one. Of course this is rather
hard to know what I would really think if I was suddenly female.

~~~
CmonDev
I wouldn't bother with the operation: unusual experience is interesting and
superbugs made operations an uncertain adventure anyway. Hopefully in future
choosing full biological gender could be a day-to-day fashion-like decision.

------
ddingus
I'm pleased to see ongoing efforts to get data on these kinds of things.

@brighteyes: Indeed! Just treat people nicely goes a long, long way. Well
said.

@jensnockert: IMHO, there are a lot more people not fitting exactly into the
boxes than any of us realize. As I get to know more people well in my life,
and they come to understand I'm not discriminatory in any way on these things,
they say stuff. If the "no ill effects" path were reality, I sometimes wonder
just what people would do and how many of them would do it.

And millenials appear to be past a lot of this, notably valuing people
presenting as who they are honestly to a much higher degree than we've seen in
the past.

------
learc83
If John selects male on the census check box, dresses as a male, and tells
everyone publicly that he is a male, there is just no way to know that he
really wishes he were female.

He flat out said he'll check male unless it's an anonymous survey--and even if
the survey is anonymous, he said he'd check male as long as anyone else is in
the room with him.

------
fiatmoney
I would not be surprised if the "transgender community", to the extent it can
have a group preference, prefers to remain basically uncounted. They are a
miniscule percentage, and "man on the street" estimates of the size of small
groups tend to wildly overshoot. This gives them more influence than they
would have were their true numbers known.

~~~
cyorir
On the other hand, there is a chance that the estimates may undershoot.
Identifying as transgender is difficult for many people because of the stigma
involved. There are also costs; costs for HRT and surgery if you go that
route,the cost of replacing old clothes with new clothes, the possibility of
emotional costs if friends or relatives do not support. Also, there is
anxiety, and one might have fears like, "what if I don't pass?" I think a lot
of transgender individuals may not come out or delay coming out for these
reasons.

Then there is also the challenge of lack of information. I grew up in a
Christian, conservative environment. I attended a catholic school where
genders were rigidly segregated. So the idea of "biological sex = gender" was
ingrained in me. I did not even hear the term "transgender" for the first time
until 1.5 years ago.

------
davidtanner
I don't think I've seen anyone post this estimate of the transgender
population yet:

[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html](http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html)

The takeaway is that about 1 in 1000 people medically transition without SRS.

Notice this is written by Lynn Conway - very accomplished chip
designer/electrical engineer/systems engineer

[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html#Memoirs](http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html#Memoirs)

I know a lot of trans people in my local community - but I'm trans myself so
that's only logical. Still, intuitively, it can't be anywhere near as rare as
1:10,000

~~~
gwern
> Notice this is written by Lynn Conway - very accomplished chip
> designer/electrical engineer/systems engineer

And also an outrageously biased and partisan activist whose claims, when
writing on anything but chip design, should be checked with a microscope and
then promptly thrown out as cherry-picked or misleading in some way you
weren't competent to figure out.

~~~
davidtanner
You should figure out exactly where she went wrong in her estimate and email
her - I'm sure she'd be more than happy to correct her article.

------
danieltillett
Why do we expect that anything as complex as gender to break out into nice
neat categories? We really should move on from the obsession of putting labels
on people and get on with helping everyone to feel happy with who they are.

~~~
peteretep
Is gender really that complex? Article suggests somewhere over 1 in 1,000
don't have a simple personal view of their gender, and also most transgender
people are trans - changing from one to the other - rather than inter-gender.
If people don't want to be male or female, or biologically aren't, or just
don't want to identify as either, fine. But to say gender is complex as a
result seems like a reach.

------
yarou
I was really surprised by the article's premise and conclusion. I'm pretty
sure the likes of Google and Facebook have extensive datasets that can be
mined which provide useful insights. It seems to me that since the definition
is so unclear, perhaps we should do away entirely with categorizations like
this.

Rather than have homeless shelters for specific categories, why can't we just
have homeless shelters for human beings, no questions asked? From a public
policy and economic standpoint, $1 spent on a homeless shelter for men is
equivalent to one for women. There is a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
[0], and I'm surprised there aren't more entrepreneurs tackling social issues
such as these.

[0]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid)

~~~
learc83
>Rather than have homeless shelters for specific categories, why can't we just
have homeless shelters for human beings, no questions asked?

Even if you have a shelter for men and women, the dorms are still separated by
gender so it's not that easy.

Unisex dorms don't work for obvious reasons--Many homeless women aren't going
to be comfortable sharing bunk beads with men, especially at women's shelters
that are set up to provide support for women with small children.

I'm sure there's a solution (a 3rd gender neutral sleeping area?), but it's
not as easy as just building one big "human shelter".

