Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist, notes:
California now has one of the highest rates of trans identifying youth in the US, with 1.93 percent of those between ages 13 and 17 identifying as transgender—almost 38 percent higher than the national average.
Wright reports on one mother in Davis, Calif., who after noticing how trans-identification in her local community seemed to be appearing in groups disproportionate to national statistics, e.g., “five students in one 6th-grade elementary classroom, a third of kids in one music program,” etc., submitted a public-record request to the Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD). The results were remarkable.
Pooled together, [there is] an absolute floor estimate of 6 percent for surveyed DJUSD students who can be considered transgender for the 2020-2021 sample, as this does not even include students with cross-sex identities. This floor estimate is nearly 4.3 times the national average, and 3 times California’s average. [Davis’s emphasis]
One theory is that it is only in progressive, trans-friendly environments that the “true” transgender child feels able to identify as such. But what is the “true” transgender child? Certainly, there are children and teenagers confused or unhappy about their sexed bodies. But telling such young people that their bodies may be wrong — and in need of an urgent overhaul — risks causing more unhappiness in the long run.
Of course, the more plausible explanation as to why there is a regional disparity is that certain environmental factors predict social contagion. For instance, the mainstreaming of transgenderism in popular culture, the introduction of it in schools as early as kindergarten, and the way, among adolescent peer groups, it has become a fast track to popularity.
The comedian Bill Maher observed as much in his controversial LGBT monologue. It’s a social contagion.
