Actually pretty interesting. I think we’re starting to creep up on the actual numbers, as far as you can measure such a thing. I think comphet keeps a lot of people who would otherwise fall somewhere on the bi/pan spectrum from ever experimenting and realizing it about themelves, and I bet that population is actually quite large. As far as transness goes, I would be willing to believe a number within the realm of ~3% to even 5%. I think further complicating this whole thing is that human sexuality and gender identity is a lot more nebulous than the very rigid, medically-originated terminology we use implies. A lot of the identity labels we use (homosexual, transsexual/transgender, etc) were originally medical diagnoses that were later transposed onto cultural identities, which carries a lot of baggage that I think has been left unaddressed, such as the rigidity of their definition, but that’s probably for a post for another time. Anyway, just thought it was neat neat, especially the state queerness leaderboards.
Heterosexuality was never the norm it was just enforced
I’m not a big fan of this study, I wish they didn’t conglomerate everything into a gender minority stat
I think further complicating this whole thing is that human sexuality and gender identity is a lot more nebulous than the very rigid, medically-originated terminology we use implies. A lot of the identity labels we use (homosexual, transsexual/transgender, etc) were originally medical diagnoses that were later transposed onto cultural identities, which carries a lot of baggage that I think has been left unaddressed, such as the rigidity of their definition
I have to step in with some historical defense here. Magnus Hirschfeld coined the terms (and initiated the modern understandings of) “transvestite”, then “transsexual” to differentiate between gender and sexual variation. Prior to that, western euro/anglo/american ideas had more nebulous concepts like “urning” (his preference) or “invert” which correspond more to modern term like “queer” (without any of the political/confrontational overtones). Even though we have reasons for also cultivating the general term, the specifics are crucial and their introduction was and remains key.
Hirschfeld took great pains to avoid creating the ideas of any false dichotomies. Below I have a few paragraphs to demonstrate this. They are from Homosexuality of Men & Women (published in German in 1920, finally translated to English in 2000 by Michael Lombardi-Nash). The whole thing is about diagnosing, categorizing, but more importantly conceptualizing sex and gender variation. There are some wacky specific ideas in there; a lot of the more general concepts were very strong and have quite a modern flavor to them but you need to read through the language to see what he is trying to say. I hope these make sense out of context, I didn’t want to paste pages and pages although everything before and after is interesting especially to think it was published over a century ago and was well-known about contemporaneously. This was not obscure ivory tower gender theory, in fact efforts were made in the production and distribution to include broad sections of society. For example Hirschfeld entered into agreements with trade unions and eventually all this led him to despise and reject colonialism and structural white supremacy, which is a whole other story.
In Part I, “The Homosexuality of Men and Women as Biological Occurrence”, Chapter 19, “Human Bisexuality (Hermaphroditism) as Basis for Male and Female Homosexuality (The Theory of Intermediaries)”, describing why sex and gender variation are in concurrence with Darwinian evolution and every other characteristic of life and matter (pg 413):
The knowledge of the hermaphroditic character of homosexuality adds it as a link in a series of related natural phenomena, whose absence would mean a break in an uninterrupted line. It would be very noteworthy if the sex drive were an exception to the fluid transitions that lead from one to the other sex, which can be proven in the case of every organ and every function. If all the male features, occasionally in isolation or in great numbers, can appear in the case of women and in reverse all the female ones in the case of men, of which there is not the least bit of doubt, then it would be quite extraordinary if in this case the sex drive were the sole exception.
Accordingly, the absence of homosexuality would be a greater riddle than its existence, which to many appears more disconcerting and more unnatural than, say, the occasional occurrence of a beard on a woman or milk-producing breasts on a man. Just as people deduced undiscovered elements by studying the atomic weights in the periodical table of the elements; just as the position and the orbit of Neptune w ere discovered before sighting the planet by studying the distance between the other planets; just as people described the intermediary stages between the birds and reptiles before discovering Archaeopteryx embedded in the limestone at Solenhofer. so could any thinking, educated person prove the existence of homosexuals before seeing them face to face.
Dr. Kotscher of Hubertusburg correctly states: "All our phylo- and ontogeny (evolutionary and biological development) and the observation of heredity must lead us to admit that there is no absolute female animal and no absolute male animal, but rather in each individual a mixture of both occurs to produce animals of different kinds, in our case, humans of different kinds.
Then he asks “What is a woman?” and “What is a man?”, providing a stereotypical response to each in detail. Starting with the production of ova and onward. So nobody can mistake what he says next for ignorance of quote-unquote-biology (pg 417):
According to this, a completely feminine, “absolute” woman would be one who not only produces egg cells, but would also correspond to the female type in every other respect; an “absolute” man one who produces sperm cells but at the same time also exhibits the average male type in all remaining areas. Such kinds of absolute representatives of their sex are constructed abstractions; in reality, up to now they have never been observed in such an extreme combination. More likely, people have been able to prove that there are remnants, no matter how small, of female characteristics in every male and correspondingly, remnants of the male in every female. However, let us assume that there exist people who, to express it in numbers, are 100 percent male or 100 percent female. There is still no question—and here, too, we are still adhering to simple facts taken from experience—there would often be a great number of persons who, in spite of carrying egg cells, showed features that in general approach the male sex and, on the other hand, there would be persons who, in spite of issuing sperm cells, showed features which in general are suited to the female. Because in our usage of language we usually define possessors of egg cells simply as women and the bearers of sperm cells simply as men, then it follows that there are women with male, men with female features, and these mixed forms are precisely what is understood by the expression “sexual intermediaries.”
Then he spends a few pages setting out his scheme of categorisation (four categories, mentioned below). Worth reading for historical interest, nerds, but not required here. Then comes a (relatively) famous passage where he tells you how many (basic!) categories of gender/sex there are:
page 419
Of further importance is that all these features can appear in isolation or in combination. Every conceivable blend of male and female characteristics can occur, if we take as a basis each of the four main groups as a whole for the calculation of the number of possible combinations; thus, if we imagine that first, the sex organs, second, the remaining physical features, third, the sex drive, and fourth, the other psychological characteristics can be male, female, or mixed, then simply from that, you can obtain eighty-one basic types of sexual intermediary stages.
However, the number of possible variations is much greater when we consider that, indeed, many individual attributes are combined within each of the four groups, attributes which can appear in combination with any other one you like, with as many as you like, with as many of the others as you wish, and each, in addition, of different intensity. Let us take only four different attributes in each group, for example, in group II, hair covering, larynx, chest, pelvis, etc. (in reality there are many, many more), then that already furnishes four times four, or sixteen individual characteristics, which can bear male female, or merged features, which produces three to the sixteenth power, 43,046,721 combined possibilities or intermediary types.
And this is only in consideration of a limited subset of characteristics, not the whole range. So at the very beginning, we have the most rudimentary count of genders to be 81, or a slightly more sophisticated at 40 million, and even this is understood as an almost unforgivable over-simplification which a scientifically-minded person should not succumb to. Elsewhere, by way of carefully explaining the diagnostic criteria, he is careful to make sure the reader understands that sexuality and gender are unmoored from one another and can present in any combination. He presents vignettes of gay/bi trans people, warning doctors not to allow one aspect to mislead them regarding another.
It is very important to understand that all the people who formed the non-erased history of sex and gender studies were colleges with Hirschfeld. Harry Benjamin for example, was taken on a tour of Berlin gay bars by Hirschfeld, who hoped to influence him to a friendly feeling towards gender/sexual variant people. (He also did this with the Chief of Police, which I find suggestive of the impression made by Benjamin, but that’s very speculative.) Benjamin did have access to a view of gender and transition which is remarkably in step with the more enlightened jurisdictions here in 2026, which re-frames any apologia about “being a man of his times”. In fact he chose run things the way he did, even though he had a better framework available. And Freud, fucking Freud, was a direct contemporary. Hirschfeld was a founding member of Berlin Psychoanalytic Society. They disagreed on fundamental issues = divergent conclusions. Hirschfeld wanted the largest most diverse sample size possible, and also favored conducting talk therapy outside + walking rather than in a closed room reclined on couch.
As to the original subject of the thread, a little earlier in the same chapter (pg 361), Hirschfeld answers:
----reached wordcount limit for comment + no time to edit to fit. see reply for small rest of it
His methodology is explained in Part II: “Homosexuality of Men & Women as a Social Occurrence”, Chapter 24 "The Distribution of Male and Female Homosexuality. Statistical Foundations. Worth reading, to understand the historical context of the OP, which is that this knowledge is subject to continuous questioning and replication for over a century now. Being constantly made to re-prove ourselves is a component of repression; such research is not liberatory. Particular the fascist backlash to the original research itself (this was early 20th C Germany remember), which is described. I can post it, if anyone wants, but not now as I need to get somewhere. And maybe nobody read this long ass comment.
I think about this chart a lot:
finally some good fucking news
for sure a bunch of cishet people are rounding themselves off because they’ve never introspected and don’t live in subcultures where it’s safe to talk to someone about whether “everyone has a little same-sex attraction sometimes” or whatever, like we hear sometimes from repressed boomers.
left handed ended up settling at around 11%. it wouldn’t surprise me if queerness gets up to 1/3 or higher.
As far as transness goes, I would be willing to believe a number within the realm of ~3% to even 5%
just wondering, what is the reasoning for your guess? cause i feel like mine would be way higher but it’s not really based on anything just vibes
Same here, just vibes, but I don’t live in a very queer area at all. I haven’t even had an IRL queer friend honestly. 1% seems silly low, but I do think we’re still somewhat rare, for lack of a better term, so 1 in 20 feels like a rough upper bound to me. But again, just vibes.
what else can I say? everyone is gay
As far as transness goes, I would be willing to believe a number within the realm of ~3% to even 5%.
Back in 2021 there was a study here in Brasil that concluded nearly 2% of the population is trans.
Conservatives absolutely shook rn
They’ll blame it on
cultural Bolshevismwoke propagandaUnfortunately a lot of them are pretty conservative
transgenderSelf made womanYeah there was a study posted on here a while back that showed the large jump in LGBT identification from millennials to Gen Z with a breakdown of which type of LGBT, and the lion’s share of the increase was in the B category.
Which suprises me because biphobia is still super rampant amongst Gen Z
Hexbear must be working overtime
running round the clock no time to clean
which carries a lot of baggage that I think has been left unaddressed, such as the rigidity of their definition, but that’s probably for a post for another time.
Am eagerly awaiting this post
Oh no, I shouldn’t have said anything, you might be waiting a long time because I’m lazy as hell
I also don’t feel like it’s a fully cooked up thought so I am hesitant to share but the tl;dr is basically that it’s very hard not to notice that in pretty much every other culture in human history that the people we would today call transgender were integrated into society (because some cultures rejected us, but a lot did not) were given names/roles that were grounded within their culture, typically related to religion. This has been the “natural” state of trans people for most of our history until we get to what could very broadly be described as “Western culture” and the scientific revolution. Starting in the mid/late 1800s, medical scientists began probing the concepts of human sex, sexuality, and gender identity, and began studying queer people as medical subjects. Skipping over a LOT of history here, but eventually we arrive at terms like homosexuality and transvestite (which then is replaced by transsexual, which then much later is (mostly) replaced with transgender). These originated as medical diagnoses, which come with the implication of very strict and rigid boundaries like most other scientific terminology. Because of a tremendous amount of reasons I’m sure, but chief among them the lack of organization among the queer community before this transpired, these terms became identity terms. The baggage I’m referring to is that identity is very nebulous, and even fluid, and these terms are not. There were some attempts to create culturally grounded terms (see: Uranian, Eonism, and to a lesser extent Trans-sensible for examples, I have been meaning to make a trans mega about these), but they never caught on. So we end up with terminology that feels clunky and awkward for the role they’re filling. For an example of a “culturally grounded” term, think lesbian or sapphic! If anyone passing by doesn’t know, lesbian derives from the name for the Agean island of Lesbos, where the extremely gay poet Sappho lived, from which we get the term sapphic. For genders outside man and woman, it gets real bad (in my opinion at least). Nonbinary is a fucking awful term because it’s just a negation of the binary gender system (which is made up, which is a whole other can of worms because gender was invented in an attempt to save binary sex from conceptual collapse, see Histories of the Transgender Child by Julian Gill-Peterson), and it just sound awful (though “enby” ain’t that bad). In the words of sexologist Dr. Havelock Ellis, these terms “… even if acceptable as a descriptive term, still remains one of those hybrid Greco-Latin compounds which it is best to avoid.” (I’ll give a real citation if I make this a real post but he said it in Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies, page 28.)
I guess I’ll split off from that run-on paragraph to conclude that the other problem with all this is that transgender is actually a fantastic term for the phenomenon itself, but we’re unfortunately in a situation where that is also the term for the “Western” expression of it, which makes applying that term to other cultures and times problematic to varying extents. Anyway, I guess that’s not so much of a tl;dr but it’s my unorganized, half-baked thoughts on the matter. Some day I’ll sign up for a few trans megas and yap in a much more coherent way about all this.
Oh no, I shouldn’t have said anything, you might be waiting a long time because I’m lazy as hell
eagerly yet patiently waiting on that post, all of this was fascinating
or genders outside man and woman, it gets real bad (in my opinion at least). Nonbinary is a fucking awful term because it’s just a negation of the binary gender system
we don’t have cultural associations for specific additional genders, and we may never collect enough enough people of the same kind of nonbinary to develop one. I’m not even convinced all of us agenders are sharing an interiority.
one thing we could do is balkanize the binary but the social inertia of it all would make it like how blowing up the moon would give you a pile of rubble where the moon used to be instead of giving the earth a ring.
Yeah I guess I should’ve added that I don’t really see a fix for this problem, it’s just something I’ve noticed. For better or for worse, nonbinary is the term for third and beyond genders, at least at legal level in the US. We’re kind of stuck with it unless a drastic change in the culture happens or something along those lines. The real time to have solidified other terms was roughly the period between 1870-1930 when the medical terminology and categories were being worked out. Queer people would’ve had to have organized a unified front and hammered this stuff out, but the community basically didn’t exist or was extremely fragmented at that point. Ironically these medical terms, particulary for trans people, are what helped trans people discover that there were others like them and gave them language to rally around. So I’m not saying it’s all bad, and I’ve certainly benefitted tremendously from gender affirming care. It’s just an unfortunate historical consequence that I don’t see people talk about is all.
I am also patient and willing to wait
I see, though, I see. I’m aware of the concepts you discuss, (albeit I was baffled when I first saw “Uranian” anywhere) in fact a New-York-Times-bestselling author planted in my mind long ago that “transgender” is a term coined by the american CDC and is therefore scuffed as fuck. The medicalisation does make me frown a bit, although I also realise that it’s probably at least 10% due to hormone replacement therapy as a medical thing, which is a recent development right? Not every day I see someone cite Jules Gil-Peterson though. Mostly this sounds like I have a lot (more) cool reading to do.
gender was invented in an attempt to save binary sex from conceptual collapse,
I know this but have never seen it put just like this, I think it rocks.
Alright well good halfbaked post, thank you for posting. Very chill.
[HRT] is a recent development right?
Depends on how you define recent. The earliest studies on the effects of “cross-sex” hormones happened over a century ago. I think there was some stuff done before him, but the big name in that area was an Austrian doctor named Eugen Steinach. In the early 1900s/1910s he experimented with implanting rats and guinea pigs with ovaries (into males) and testes (into females) and observed the corresponding physical and behavior changes. Sex hormones had not been isolated at this point, so it was only understood that these sex organs contained what they termed “glandular juices” which was having these effects. In 1923 he produced Der Steinachfilm (trans. The Steinach Film) which, along with a 68 page pamphlet published in 1920, popularized his discoveries to the lay public. These results were interpreted in some crank ways, like the belief among some people, including Steinach himself, that homosexuality could be “cured” by giving gay men a testicular implant to boost their “male glandular juices” (testosterone), but the trans implications were picked up by other people.[1] Apparently a trans woman read about these developments and wanted the prodecure for herself, quoting from Gay Berlin with editted pronouns,
The pamphlet was mentioned by one young [woman] who wrote [sexologist Magnus] Hirschfeld in 1920—a rare surviving letter preserved at the Kinsey Institute—explaining that [she] was “more woman than man.” This correspondent also described that [she] had just had the chance to read about “the book about artificial rejuvenation and sex change,” a clear reference to Steinach. The promise of hormone therapy inspired [her] to write Hirschfeld: “[W]ould it not perhaps be possible to remove my testicles and in their place insert an ovary, and then in this fashion I could become a complete woman. . . . I trust you completely Herr Dr., and perhaps I could serve science as an important experiment.” Included in this missive was a small photograph of [the woman in women’s clothing].[2]
There are other reports of people receiving a very primitive version of HRT around this time as well. In 1916 a 36 year old person known only as “Herr. A” in the historical record approached a Berlin doctor named Max Marcuse about an orchiectomy and hormone treatment. Marcuse denied the request for surgery on the grounds that he deemed the patient mentally ill, but gave them an unspecified “ovarian preparation” which seemed to calm their distress. One of the first surgical sex reassignments was undertaken in stages over the course of 1920-1921 on a 23 year old military officer. They received an orchiectomy, a primitive sort of vulvoplasty while keeping the penis intact, and an implanted ovary for hormone treatment. Though this person later requested the reversal of some of these surgical procedures and then lived out the rest of their life as a man.[3]
According to Julian Gill-Peterson, synthetic hormones were available in the United States by the mid-1930s, though trans people’s access to them were obviously extremely difficult, if not impossible, though not for a lack of trying. Gill-Peterson relates a story of a trans man known to us only as “Bernard” who was well read in the sexological developments of the time and attempted to convince doctors at John Hopkins Hospital that he was actually intersex and needed surgery and hormones to “correct” his supposed birth defect. Unfortunately he was ultimately unsuccessful, though he did manage to fool the first doctor he saw, but that doctor sought a second opinion and Bernard’s ploy was seen through by the second one.[4] So that all said, the most primitive forms of HRT have been around for just over a century now, and synthetic HRT has been possible but not nessicarily available since roughly the middle last century. I don’t have any citation for this but I remember hearing way back in the day that spironolactone was originally prescribed as a blood pressure medication for men in the 1950s until they all started growing breasts because of its anti-androgen effects. So the past 70 or 80 years have mostly been about increasing access moreso than novel developments in HRT.
Yeah 19th century is what I mean by “recent”, as in there weren’t people in ancient Greece or whatever doing the horse urine thing. Relatively new.
Some of this early stuff I’d heard of from looking into Lili Elbe and related things, but… damn I’d never heard about that 23yo military officer, that’s unusual lore. The story of “Bernard” is also new to me. Ty for the info, I had Gay Berlin on my TBR but not Histories of the Transgender Child.
If you want to bend the definition to include orchiectomies then gender-bendy people have been doing those in religious rituals across all sorts of cultures since the Bronze Age or even earlier. Those people must’ve been fucking gnarly to just tank that kind of pain without modern opiods or anesthesia. Our trans ancestors were of a different breed, I can’t even imagine.
Anyway, always glad to share trans history! Truly, we have always been here, and I desperately wish more people knew that.
One of my favourite ways to hold cis people at conversational gunpoint is to ask them about Elagabalus lol
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First of all, GOOD post
Second of all, the formatting of this post is the archetype of a bear site post, and I want to marvel in that aspect as well
