WThe role that personal beliefs should play in gender has been the subject of intense debate for years. In many countries it is recognized that some people cannot identify with their birth sex. The view prevailed that gender identity does not depend exclusively on physical characteristics, i.e. on biological sex (“sex”), but also on self-ascriptions and those of others – social sex (“gender”). People who see themselves as “transgender” still face hostility, but they are more present in public life than ever. In 2014, the American “Time” magazine headlined the thesis that the increasing visibility means a “transgender tipping point”: The success of the transgender movement is reflected in the naturalness with which its cause is supported by the younger generation.
What role does society play?
It remains unclear whether the increasing social acceptance can actually be attributed to a generational change: surveys show that among the currently around 0.4 to 0.6 percent of the American population who classify themselves as transgender, there are more younger people, but also older ones people are located. In a recently published study, sociologist Danya Lagos, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, investigates whether and why this has changed. She assumes that the change has to do with the “biographical availability” of a transgender gender identity, i.e. with low (and reduced over time) social risks and costs. Evidence of this, however, can be found well before the putative tipping point, for example in the 1950s, when coverage of a World War II veteran’s sex reassignment received widespread attention. And, of course, the sexual revolution of the 1960s also challenged the classic gender order. The author analyzes the extent to which such events and long-term trends have influenced self-identification as transgender using a population survey on health issues with more than one million participants born between 1935 and 2001. The study shows the expected increase in the transgender population, but this was by no means linear : Up to the birth cohort of 1984, the number of those who classified themselves as transgender or belonging to no gender category remained roughly the same, only to then increase significantly.