"Why Are There So Many Trans Teens" Is the Wrong Question

In October, the CDC released a comprehensive study which highlighted differences between transgender and non-transgender (cisgender) high school students' mental health. In that study, 3.3% of high school students identify as transgender, with another 2.2% of high school students questioning their gender identity. These numbers are up considerably from where they were just a decade ago, where less than 1% of high school students declared that they were transgender. Over the same period, the number of folks identifying as transgender in the 45-54 age cohort has been flat, at about 0.4%.

With at least some of those questioning folks likely to also be trans, let's simplify these numbers. About one in twenty-five high school kids identify as transgender (4% - this is likely a low estimate, with the math being that I only classified one in three questioning high school teens as trans). For my age cohort, the number of folks who identify as trans is one in two hundred fifty people (0.4%). That's a massive difference. What's the reason for the difference by age? Have you seen the graph for left handedness that was made popular by trans advocate Julia Serano?

Graph of left handed people from Julia Serano’s article: “Transgender Agendas, Social Contagion, Peer Pressure, and Prevalence“

The graph shows a dramatic increase in the number of left handed people over time. The article linked above makes the case that people declaring that they are left handed WAS being suppressed in 1900. As time progressed, there was less and less stigma associated with being left handed, so fewer people conformed to the societal standard of being right handed. The current level of left handed people is the percentage of left handed people there has always been. In much the same way, it's very likely that the percentage of trans people today is the low water mark for the number of trans people that there have always been, with a significant chance that we have yet to reach the peak plateau point yet.

With folks who are trans, so often the focus is on why so many young people are coming out as trans now. The left says it's social acceptance, which is partially true. The right says it's social contagion, which is patently false. But I think the question itself isn't the right question. The question I ask is:

What happened to all of my transgender peers?

This question absolutely haunts me. I volunteer with youth and teens and I see a robust environment where they are more free to express themselves that my generation ever was in their gender expression. It certainly helps that I live in a blue state where local laws continue to be moving in a direction of validating trans existence. But then I look around at my age cohort and it’s so hard to find people like me. I’ve been out for about a year, and offline I’ve met two openly trans people older than me that I know of and one openly trans person about my age. Every other trans or gender nonconforming person I’ve met offline has been younger than I am.

Can you imagine what it’s like to have only met three people in your lifetime offline that are as old or older than you that matches your gender experience?

I’ll try to give this perspective. Have you seen “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”? The movie, starring Harrison Ford, came out in 1989. In the climax of the movie, Indiana has to pass multiple tests to get to the holy grail. One of them is called “Leap of Faith”.

The chasm in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

It appears that there is a chasm that he needs to leap across. It’s an impossible distance to go across. Indiana, knowing that he needs to get across, and seeing that leaping across looks impossible, does the only thing he can and steps into the void.

His foot connects with the ground and a path that was not visible to him previously emerges.

Once he sees the path, he not only walks across it, but he scatters stones onto the path so that the next person who comes behind him can see that there is a path and knows that it’s not so scary.

Now, take that feeling from a one-time event in the climax of a beloved Hollywood classic and imagine needing to do this multiple times a day just to go through your day to day life. It’s so exhausting not having true peers my age to confide in, to get advice from, to learn from, and to bond with, let alone the examples of people like me who are older than me. This is my every day existence. So let me ask again:

“What happened to all my transgender peers.”

Content warning: some of these answers are grim and painful and I'll be discussing it in frank terms

This is an incredibly difficult question to pose and a painful question for me to answer. It’s been about a month between posts that I’ve authored, and the painful nature of these answers is a big reason for the delay, as I needed to caretake my mental health while navigating a challenging external political climate. Additionally, as I'm writing this article, I'm also writing one called "Why Did I Think Transitioning Was Impossible" and hope to have it out pretty soon. I've started that article four times already and keep having to walk away because of how awful things used to be. The world is really hard for trans folks today, with people like me splashed across political campaign ads as the root of all of America's problems. But the problems of today are different than the problems a quarter century ago. At least today I can face the ridiculous challenges that society is throwing at me as myself. I know that many people today can't do that, and I am incredibly fortunate to be able to be my authentic self. That would not have been possible for me a quarter century ago. I wasn't able to truly be myself back then and nothing could truly make me comfortable in my own skin like being myself.

So, what happened to my transgender peers? If today's high schoolers are where the data levels off (4%), there are ten trans folks in high school for every trans person in the 45-54 age bracket. So we need to go on a hunt for nine trans people for every trans person that is in my age group. Let me restate that number for a moment. For every one of me we are missing nine people. Damn. It's no wonder that so many people think being trans is new when most of my peer group isn't here.

So where are they? There are three primary places. If you can think of others, please let me know in the comments. I'll note upfront that detransitioners don't make up a statistically significant percentage of who is missing as they are less than 1% of those missing people. Let's go through the top three places where folks are.

One - One place that people in my peer group are is that their egg hasn't cracked. That means, they haven't realized they are trans. For many years I thought transitioning was not possible, so I didn't think I was trans. As I mentioned above, today's definition of being trans was not the same as it was years ago. Folks who have already thought through their identity often don't think it through again. This is especially true of those 45 or older, especially if they don't have a life event triggering these thoughts. Additionally, I don’t think many people in my age bracket have ever thought through their gender identity. So, some are living their lives, not realizing that they aren't truly pursuing happiness. I plan on going into this in that other article and I'll link it here when I publish it.

Two - The second area is that many may know or at least suspect they are trans, but they have not come out. I just featured an article from one of these people at the start of transgender awareness week. There are many reasons for this, but I'd certainly put employment at the top of the list. Yes, we now have the Bostock Supreme Court decision that clarifies someone can't be fired for being trans, which in practice actually means companies have restrictions about how blatant they can be in firing someone because they are trans. We know that people get passed over every day - for the job that's the next step in their career progression or for the lateral move with more responsibility that allows them to develop additional skills. Trans women are the most marginalized demographic, earning only sixty cents to the dollar to cis white men. As one of my trans friends recently put it to me: "I remember when I was allowed to make those kinds of decisions" when she was referring to the management role she had that went up in smoke shortly after she transitioned. Of course, there are all kinds of reasons that someone chooses to stay in the closet, not just career. They may not want to risk their relationship with their partner, they may stay in the closet so they can see their kids, to not ruffle feathers with family members, because they are afraid of society or laws, and many other reasons. My heart goes out to these folks who know they are trans and are not public in their identity.

Three - This is the one that truly guts me. Many of my trans peers are gone and no longer walking this earth. There are a slew of reasons why. Let's start with one area that I was only recently educated about - AIDS. AIDS is still a significant issue today. But the late ‘80’s and early 90's, right when many of my trans peers were coming of age, was an even more terrifying time for AIDS in the US. That time is rightly remembered as a time when gay men were being decimated by AIDS, and rightly so because they WERE being decimated. But trans women were also decimated by the AIDS crisis. Trans women were mostly being recorded as an incorrect gender in official statistics and were counted in the numbers for men, so it's difficult to get accurate data about the amount of trans women impacted. We know today that trans women are sixty-six times more likely to have AIDS than the background rate with trans men seven times more likely. That accounts for a lot of the missing folks in and of itself and the decimation the trans community has had from AIDS is largely ignored

Then, there's the disproportionate rate of violence that's committed against the transgender community. Transgender individuals were found to be four times as likely to have instances of violent victimization committed against them including rape, sexual assault, and assault. Deadly violence is so common that every November 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). TDOR is a solemn day for the trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming community. Over 350 trans people were claimed by violent acts in 2024 and more than 1/7 of those people were in the United States. We know that these numbers are a massive undercount with how often trans people are misgendered in death. It is such a horrible sign of our world in how many trans people face violent acts every year, and this is especially true for Black and POC trans women.

Unfortunately, we're not done with why trans folks are not here. Trans people have a much higher rate of self-harm. Two in five trans adults have survived a suicide attempt. Four in five transgender adults report that they have had suicidal ideation. I’m part of this group, and I wrote about this from when I was a teen earlier this year. Fifty-six percent of trans adults have engaged in non-suicidal self-harm. Those stats are sobering. These stats are again an undercount because they only measure the trans folks who are still here. So many of my peers are not here because of this.

Lastly, with so many trans people living at the margins of society, including housing challenges, wealth inequity, and lack of access to health insurance, more of these folks aren’t here than with the rest of society. Trans people are marginalized everywhere and that impacts their ability to still be here.

So ninety percent (NINETY!) of trans people in my Gen X age group of 45-54 are not able to be public and not able to speak. As someone who is generally open and out, I feel the weight of speaking not only for myself, but for those who have been forced into silence. Those nine additional people for every one of me who live in such a bigoted world they can’t ask themselves if they are trans and those that are not out. I speak for those who are no longer here to speak. It's overwhelming at times. I’m still finding my way to have balance where I know these facts and that my life needs to have a purpose to destigmatize an entire category of people. In addition to the nine additional Gen X trans people that can't speak, who else do I speak for? Trans teens that so many won't listen to because of their age. There's ten trans teens for every one of me. Who else? I have a stable job in management in corporate America, which gives me a level of stability to write on this site. So many other trans adults don't have a platform to speak. Trans women earn only sixty cents on the dollar to white men. Trans people have obscenely high rates of housing insecurity. Trans people, so many of whom need access to medical care for life saving treatments, have much higher rates of health insurance challenges, where trans health is specifically excluded for health coverage or not having insurance at all. BIPOC trans folks face these challenges in much higher percentages and have additional headwinds they have to battle just to attempt to be heard. Much of the financial resources these folks have to use, who have much less to begin with, is in an attempt to access lifesaving medical care and make it to tomorrow. How many of them am I also speaking for? Five? Ten? Twenty? It's so fucking unfair that the world vilifies trans people and so many of us are on the margins. That I’m not as marginalized as most other trans people, I have to speak for so fucking many of them. It's so unreasonable that most of us have been erased from public life, and that erasure is being used against trans teens, young people, and trans adults just like so many of my Gen X trans peers were erased. How many people am I speaking for? At least twenty (myself, nine missing in Gen X, and ten teens that won’t be listened too), and it’s likely so many more. Thirty? Fifty? One Hundred? However many I need to speak for, I’ll still speak for them. Someone has to.