Rising numbers reflect language and acceptance, not contagion
Dr Helen Webberley on GB News: puberty blockers, with Lucy Johnston, GBNews
The rise in young people identifying as trans is a modern phenomenon, driven by social pressure, online influence, or something spreading through peer groups. If the numbers are going up, something must be causing it, and that something is probably contagion.
What's risen isn't the number of trans people. It's the number of trans people who have the words to say so, and the support around them when they do. This has always been part of human experience. What changed over the last decade or so is that language caught up, medicine caught up, and for a while, so did acceptance. Children who would once have spent years confused and alone are now understanding themselves earlier, and that is a good thing. The social contagion theory has been looked at seriously and it hasn't held up. What we're seeing is visibility, not an epidemic.
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