Quick question. Where I am, the overwhelming majority of the very small number of trans students seem to be transitioning to male (or away from female). Is this a local phenomenon, or are others seeing it too? Most of the commentary seems to be focused on the reverse, and I'm just not seeing it on the ground.

In the ten years I’ve been teaching, I’ve met 12-15 kids who were in various stages of identifying themselves in ways other than how it was written up at their birth. Of those kids, only one was a male interested in transitioning to female, and he later discovered he was a gay male. (I taught 6th grade up until this year, so my students were still very much “figuring out” rather than knowing- for the most part. The boy I mentioned had zero support at home, which probably just added to his confusion.)

Anyway, that’s all a really long way of saying that I have noticed the exact same thing. Even the two trans adults I know (one of whom is my cousin) are female->male.

It took over 20 years for me to encounter my first “trans” student, and then several more until I heard of a second. Both were boys identifying as girls. Within the last 5 years, I've met, or at least have been aware of a dozen trans-identifying students, all of whom are girls. It's not worth taking the time to find it again, but I recall national statistics reflecting the same flip in recent years, where trans-identified people were at one point almost exclusively male, but now are majority female.

One thing I've found interesting is that in every single case of girls “identifying” as male, other than brief stints with short hair, not a single one ever made any real effort to appear masculine. In fact, within a few months, most were back to wearing skirts, dresses, feminine makeup and jewelry, long hair, what you'd call a stereotypically female appearance. On the other hand, the very few boys I've seen went overboard trying to be as feminine as possible. Me being my skeptical self, this naturally raises a few questions.

My unsolicited opinion is that yes, we’re looking at the hallmarks of a social contagion, but more importantly, we’re seeing what’s become a sort of de facto coping mechanism for adolescent girls who, as we know, are prone to self image issues. I think ever since “trans” became attractive, some girls gravitate towards these invented “identities” as a way to avoid facing their anxieties directly. It makes sense to me that many of these girls are choosing to be “non-binary” as a way to distance themselves from their female identity without having to commit to a full “transition” to male.

Almost if not every female I have know who said they were gay had a bad experience or worse from an adult male. Be that a father or someone else. For some it was being abandoned for some far worse.
This of course isn’t a scientific study but an accurate observation.

At my school of over 2,000 students, I have only known of one male who is visibly attempting to pass as a girl. I have known well over a dozen girls who are in various stages of attempting to pass as males.

Another pattern I have observed: the majority of girls identifying as trans do not conform to traditional standards of female beauty. The physical changes they make seem to be designed to utterly reject any standards of beauty.

100% social contagion.

Three decades in public education. Never seen a trans athlete.

I've seen far more trans kids born as female and identifying as male than the opposite (probably 2/3 to 1/3), but they've all been art/band type kids, not athletes.

The idea of boys claiming to be girls to dominate girls' athletics seems mostly to be a myth. But let's be honest: there's no way Republicans could get votes by appealing to people's good sense with their policy. They've got to lie to you and give you someone to hate. And sadly, it's worked.

If there’s no trans competitors in sports I assume you don’t oppose a law preventing it?

It’s been about even from my personal experience of students of who I have taught and people I see in my community. There is a lot written about how social pressures seem to affect the likelihood of a young person transitioning, so it wouldn’t surprise me if locally you see a trend in one direction or another.

I worked a t a Middle School and ALL of the trans students were female to male.

In my experiences, there has been a slight majority in the transitioning birth male category. For the birth females, it is mostly changing name, hair, and clothes. And for most birth males it has been name and some clothing choices. Ironically most of the parents still refer to the student with he/him/his pronouns. That said, I have one birth male (with a “bi-gender” name) who goes all in with clothes (including bra and high heels), hair, makeup, false breasts and presents as a very convincing female. This week a social worker told me that “she” may have a boyfriend and doesn’t think the young man knows the truth. Not in my job description, not my job, not saying anything.

I haven't seen a lot of trans kids but yes, the anecdotal has been entirely in the same direction

MHS 1
So you do or don’t oppose a law preventing biological men in women’s sport’s

I retired from teaching 6th grade a couple years ago. After 27 years, especially my last year, 4 girls trying to transition to males. I had 3 students who transitioned to females, one transitioning during her kindergarten year. She is beautiful. I was also surprised how many girls are transitioning to male. The issue I had was their parents. They absolutely forbid any teachers to call them other than their given names. At 11-12, you have to do what the parents want, period.

I'm not a teacher but a school psychologist working primarily with secondary students. I work in a small district in Texas just north of Austin. The majority of the transgender students that I work with are transitioning from female to male, however I also work with several students that were born male but identify as gender fluid. Having said that, I know several adults that have transitioned from male to female. I feel that part of the reason that I'm not seeing more teenagers transitioning from male to female is the culture of toxic masculinity that seems to (almost) be acceptable here. It's easier for the conservative culture to accept a female transitioning to male than it is to accept male to female. People seem to be much more accepting in the more metropolitan areas of the state than in the suburbs and rural agricultural areas.