It doesn’t surprise me. With how much focus there is on issues like trans athletes in the media and politics, people incorrectly assume the actual number of people “at issue” is in proportion. This is how we get state legislatures spending huge amounts of time creating legislation that will impact like three people.
Maybe they think all the trans people are in some other part of the country like New York or California, or maybe they think that trans people are so indistinguishable from cis people that anyone they meet could be secretly trans?
That could explain the paranoia that some people have about trans people. And also why people e.g. think that Daniel Radcliffe’s wife is trans because she’s taller than him (even though they have a child together, but then again, maybe these people think that transwomen can get pregnant.).
And these are the averages. Which means for every answer that accurately said 1%, someone said 39% (or two people said 30%)
Which means they think if they know two other people, one of them must be trans. Or more likely, that entire cities of “others” (that they’ve never been to) must be trans.
I feel like this is largely because if you can identify one trans woman, and are right, you think everyone who looks that way is also one. (Because sorry transmasc, you don’t exist to society as anything more than feminine gay man)
Which is why cis women, especially butch women, are frequently accused of being trans… we don’t meet the stereotype of femininity, and thus must be men, rather than just… women who aren’t hyperfeminine…
I’d like to know how large their sample size was. I mean, this was yougov, so I expect at least some level of credibility to this, but depending on how large the same size is and how biased your selection is, you can get some really weird numbers.
E.g. do the same study with some old KKK members or with a school class in a black, impoverished neighbourhood or with a group of CEOs and you will get very different results.
Definitely depends on the spaces they exist in, too. I only recently learned I was wrong about how many black people there are in the US. Turns out they’re just “overrepresented” in the media I consume and I’ve lived most of my life in very diverse neighborhoods. Similarly, trans topics overrepresent the amount of trans people in a lot of online spaces and people tend to extrapolate when they only have all the data. I can see why a terminally-online individual would feel like there’s a trans epidemic.
People think that 1/5 americans are trans? Billionaire owned media really does shit in our brains, huh?
That struck me too. 1 in 5 are trans? Who are these people they polled?
the people who answer polls
It doesn’t surprise me. With how much focus there is on issues like trans athletes in the media and politics, people incorrectly assume the actual number of people “at issue” is in proportion. This is how we get state legislatures spending huge amounts of time creating legislation that will impact like three people.
But like, do they not notice that every fifth person they meet isn’t trans?
Maybe they think all the trans people are in some other part of the country like New York or California, or maybe they think that trans people are so indistinguishable from cis people that anyone they meet could be secretly trans?
That could explain the paranoia that some people have about trans people. And also why people e.g. think that Daniel Radcliffe’s wife is trans because she’s taller than him (even though they have a child together, but then again, maybe these people think that transwomen can get pregnant.).
Yet they’ll claim “they can always tell” when it comes to yelling at a cis woman trying to use the bathroom.
And in the end they just yell at a menopausal woman who can’t afford hormone replacement therapy.
Hell, they’ll yell at cis women that are just taller than average or have a short haircut. Or, even more likely, is a PoC.
And these are the averages. Which means for every answer that accurately said 1%, someone said 39% (or two people said 30%)
Which means they think if they know two other people, one of them must be trans. Or more likely, that entire cities of “others” (that they’ve never been to) must be trans.
I feel like this is largely because if you can identify one trans woman, and are right, you think everyone who looks that way is also one. (Because sorry transmasc, you don’t exist to society as anything more than feminine gay man)
Which is why cis women, especially butch women, are frequently accused of being trans… we don’t meet the stereotype of femininity, and thus must be men, rather than just… women who aren’t hyperfeminine…
I’d like to know how large their sample size was. I mean, this was yougov, so I expect at least some level of credibility to this, but depending on how large the same size is and how biased your selection is, you can get some really weird numbers.
E.g. do the same study with some old KKK members or with a school class in a black, impoverished neighbourhood or with a group of CEOs and you will get very different results.
Definitely depends on the spaces they exist in, too. I only recently learned I was wrong about how many black people there are in the US. Turns out they’re just “overrepresented” in the media I consume and I’ve lived most of my life in very diverse neighborhoods. Similarly, trans topics overrepresent the amount of trans people in a lot of online spaces and people tend to extrapolate when they only have all the data. I can see why a terminally-online individual would feel like there’s a trans epidemic.
I mean, the way the internet talks I thought I was the only straight person left.