Do you think that perhaps the real answer lies somewhere in the middle-- and that people on both sides look to form explanations for phenomena based on whatever is easiest for them to digest? On one extreme you have people who always latch on to scientific/academic explanations, however under researched they might be... and discount other very rational sociological/psychological perspectives?
I was good friends with a female transsexual in high school, and that was several years before the term "woke" entered the public consciousness. Also when social media was in its infancy... there was no acceptance for him anywhere outside of our group of "misfits". He told me once he didn't even really like punk music very much but chose to lean into that identity as an explanation for cutting his hair short and other aesthetic choices. Before that it was playing sports and being a "tomboy" etc, but that the incongruence between body and mind had existed as long as he could remember.
So I'm not discounting the validity of this issue. I'm not going to "pin" the "problem" 100% on wokeness or social contagion. But are you saying those things aren't a factor at all?
I think it's environmental toxicity as you say, but there is another massive factor in that equation. The elephant in the room that we all know but refuse to really acknowledge. And that is stress.
Stress is the word we use to excuse the fact our entire system is not inline with what we actually are, that our culture does not honour our own biology. Certain events are naturally stressful, yes, but everyone is living in a mode of semi-permanent stress and it has been very slowly incrementing year on year for a long time, so slowly that we have conditioned ourselves to adapt mentally to it (wilful ignorance). But our bodies can not, because stress is the key indicator to the body to shut down processes down because life is not sustainable for the organism.. it's a natural mechanism we can't adapt out of, it's natures fail safe to reign things in.
We know the role stress plays on child development (post-birth) very well, but even then that is still sort of brushed under the carpet, because again it reflects very badly on the way our society is structured.. so the people up top just like to pretend and hope it will go away if no one pays attention to it. But there is also research that shows the tremendous impact the emotional state of the mother has, during pregnancy, on the outcome for the child. Which is not difficult to understand.. because if the mother is stressed, those chemicals are passed on through to the fetus in the womb too.. just like caffeine, heroin, or anything else which we know has damaging effects.
People often point to decreasing testosterone levels in men and link it to industrial chemicals, but again I think stress plays a massive role in that where men are now no longer really able to express themselves as men and must bend themselves to suit cultures expectations. Conversely, look at prison inmates. Different kind of stress, but being in that all male environment they actually gain muscle, despite poor diets, because the environment forces testosterone production.
Then to bring it around, we have children today who are massively stressed by a culture that deliberately tries to confuse them, demanding and pulling them in several directions at once. Personally though I do believe it is predominantly a mental illness, caused by other people and there that there is nothing inherently wrong with the child itself. We have far too many people involving their own beliefs and psychology, and projecting that onto the child, instead of allowing the child to just be a child and play.
It's like the scenes in South Park with Butters, the innocent child. The psychologists and psychiatrists actually traumatize and convince him into mental illness, projecting it all on to him when there was nothing wrong with him at all.
Children, of all ages, are messed up because our culture is a pile of garbage (and by extension so are many people).
A close friend of mine is trans, we grew up together and were friends during childhood (I'm male, and she was born male). We were part of a kind of geeky/nerdy group (had a Star Trek club in 5th grade, played DnD and Vampire the Masquerade in middle school) and more than a few of us would be diagnosed with ADHD at some point. My friend and I remained in contact into college, though she never finished a degree. Despite being one of the most gifted minds regarding science that I've ever met, she struggled mightily in classroom settings. I completed college, but devolved into heroin addiction by the end of my undergraduate degree.
We reconnected after about 15 years of not being in contact. No great falling out or anything, just lost touch and went in different directions. She'd gotten married and worked for Thermo Fisher Scientific, I'd married heroin and worked at stealing cheap items to return for cash. Later, I got clean, went back to school and built a career working in addictions.
When we reconnected, she'd come out as trans and was about to have bottom surgery. When we hung out the first few times, it was remarkable how
different she was as a female presenting human. Where she'd once been brilliant but very lost and angry, she was filled with a sort of vibrance that was truly remarkable. It was not the same person, but a person who seemed to be more comfortable with themself.
I don't know if it was environmental, genetic, or social factors that contributed to whatever happened with my friend - probably all three. I don't like to ascribe absolute cause to anything, I believe all things are multifactorial. There's an old public health axiom where you can't say for certain that Smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, only that it is highly correlated with lung cancer rates. If it caused it, why not in everyone? I think the same is true here, to your point
@mal3volent. I think what
@-=SS=- points out is definitely plausible - that the stress of our modern condition has exacerbated all sorts of mutative change in biological processes, psychological processes, hormonal expression, and simple awareness.
I remember when I first used OKCupid (2006/2007?) it was in its infancy. I would use it again in 2012, then again in 2015, 2017 and a few times after that even. One of the things I noticed over time was the increase in people with a variety of relationship styles (monogamy, monogamish, non-monogamy, polyamory etc.) - there was this proliferation of varying styles of dating, from the traditional to the non-conforming. There were more and more sexual identities as well - gay, straight, bi - but then new things would emerge like sapiosexual, demisexual, pansexual, aromantic, gray asexual, heteroflexible... there was like this wellspring of new gradients of who you'd like to fuck, spend time with, or both. As each year went by, more of these would spring up - I even explored dating styles outside of standard monogamy vs. 'playing the field' as being exposed to the notion that others explored these different types of relationships meant that I could be informed about them and potentially explore them.
So, what's the truth here? I'm not one to believe in any one truth or explanation about any of this stuff. I think the answer, as mal put it, is probably somewhere in the middle of a lot of intersecting influences and social trends, which has been hyper-activated by the internet. If I experience unpleasant feelings or existential dread, I can go online and find a flavor of community that provides me with an explanation or even a solution to what ails me. Unfortunately, this has also lead to the rise of popular psychology and self-identified psychopathology - something that masquerades as answers while really only giving someone a false sense of self (the people that start posts with 'As an autist' or 'As someone with BPD' (aside: WHAT BPD DO YOU FUCKING MEAN? Borderline Personality Disorder or Bi-Polar Disorder??!!... drives me nuts). This is a good example of how stress and access to information without rigor has lead to a generation of self-described experts on something that has muddied the waters for all.
www.nature.com
journals.plos.org
