I think you've got the etiology of the rise in trans identities more or less backwards, but your note that there is no neutral culture rescues you from actually saying anything false. I think we're not so much seeing a result of a stronger cultural sense of being the wrong gender (that probably peaked in the 80s), as we are a weakening of our culture's ability to assign gender at all.
Sex is biologically real. Intersex people are a small, but not statistically negligible, fraction of the population, and the rest of us do fall into two categories with regard to our outward sexual characteristics. But what traits do those sexual characteristics assign?
In 21st-century America, women are less enthusiastic about sex, often unsatisfied by it; therefore, it's only natural that men initiate most sexual encounters. In ancient Athens, women, the irrational sex, were slaves to their desires, and part of the humor of the Lysistrata was the idea that the women took their protest so seriously that they could restrain their sexual appetites.
In 21st-century America, mentioning that a man writes whiny poetry is a great way to call his masculinity into question. In 12th-century England, Richard the Lionheart was the epitome of manliness, and was especially praised for being a warrior poet. Only one of his poems survives (Ja Nus Hons Pris) and it's pretty whiny.
Anthropologists who study gender find gender categories like that in every culture, with anywhere from two to five genders. America right now has two, but its ability to assign those two is breaking down.
Weak prediction (call it 40%, with a very low chance that our current systems hold and a decent chance of something I don't foresee happening instead): in 2073, American culture will have three gender categories that are pretty well respected, with most trans people born after 2048 being in the middle gender (currently called "non-binary", which isn't just one thing now but is seen as one thing then) rather than being AFAB trans men or AMAB trans women. 20%: any attempt to explain what it is to be male in 2073 seems kinda nonsensical; 90%: any such attempt remains very controversial.
(Disclosure of biases: I'm a cis man that's also comfortable with neutral pronouns.)
But isn't this the point in the second to last paragraph?
ACT states that there is no neutral culture. For example in a culture where everyone is transgender after the age of 18 there would be a culture bound condition called 'cis-gender'.
I think it's a point that could stand to be expressed from more angles, so I'm trying to provide another angle. To be clear, I am not saying that Scott is exactly wrong about anything here, but that I understand the same phenomenon in a very different way.
After re-reading I understand where you're coming from more. Even so your conclusions are very out-there. Haven't most cultures had basically two genders, Why is America destined for three?
Also
> Basically, I'm saying that transgender isn't a culture-bound condition - *gender* is.
I don't see how gender could be a culture-bound condition. Since culture is relative, a culture bound condition is definitional abnormal which having the gender you were assigned at birth isn't.
European cultures in the historic period have almost all had two genders, but anthropologists working outside Europe often find more.
I posit that America is moving toward three because, although social justice advocates often note that "non-binary" is an umbrella covering gender-fluid, agender, and a variety of other descriptions, we use one word that covers all of that most of the time, and we're moving toward standardizing on one set of pronouns (they/them/their), which seems like our language (if not yet any of our social institutions) is starting to coalesce around a new norm in which there three categories. If that trend continues (which, note, I'm guessing at more likely than any specific alternative including than status quo, but less than 50%), it won't mean there's only one way to be nonbinary any more than right now there's only one way to be a man or to be a woman, but a lot of assholes will probably insist that there is (as many assholes do about the two binary genders right now).
>but anthropologists working outside Europe often find more.
*anthropologists desperately looking for more genders.
A lot of the actual data on this is pretty underwhelming when people have given me examples. "Look there were eunuchs and tomboys in this culture, it had 4 genders!"
Eunuchs castrated by the powerful to work as borderline slaves aren't a "gender" any culture should aspire to.
And tomboys are not a gender either. There can be masculine women and feminine men, and even people recognized as such without there being new "genders". And more importantly the tomboys are pretty clearly not saying "we aren't women".
I feel like these anthropologists would go to 1800s new England and find six genders two of which would be "Spinsters" and "Priests".
Hijras are generally not forced into that role, but clearly occupy a different social role from men or women.
Fa'afine are similarly clear, in that their gender expression tends to be in between traditional male and female.
You're right that in Europe some people look for a third gender that's not unambiguously there, though the example you should think of for that is Balkan sworn virgins - AFAB people who swear to celibacy and then take on male gender expression and gender roles. This is generally something done for specific contingent reasons rather than expressing an underlying non-female identity, and the social role they step into is not distinguished from that of a man.
I think you've got the etiology of the rise in trans identities more or less backwards, but your note that there is no neutral culture rescues you from actually saying anything false. I think we're not so much seeing a result of a stronger cultural sense of being the wrong gender (that probably peaked in the 80s), as we are a weakening of our culture's ability to assign gender at all.
Sex is biologically real. Intersex people are a small, but not statistically negligible, fraction of the population, and the rest of us do fall into two categories with regard to our outward sexual characteristics. But what traits do those sexual characteristics assign?
In 21st-century America, women are less enthusiastic about sex, often unsatisfied by it; therefore, it's only natural that men initiate most sexual encounters. In ancient Athens, women, the irrational sex, were slaves to their desires, and part of the humor of the Lysistrata was the idea that the women took their protest so seriously that they could restrain their sexual appetites.
In 21st-century America, mentioning that a man writes whiny poetry is a great way to call his masculinity into question. In 12th-century England, Richard the Lionheart was the epitome of manliness, and was especially praised for being a warrior poet. Only one of his poems survives (Ja Nus Hons Pris) and it's pretty whiny.
Anthropologists who study gender find gender categories like that in every culture, with anywhere from two to five genders. America right now has two, but its ability to assign those two is breaking down.
Weak prediction (call it 40%, with a very low chance that our current systems hold and a decent chance of something I don't foresee happening instead): in 2073, American culture will have three gender categories that are pretty well respected, with most trans people born after 2048 being in the middle gender (currently called "non-binary", which isn't just one thing now but is seen as one thing then) rather than being AFAB trans men or AMAB trans women. 20%: any attempt to explain what it is to be male in 2073 seems kinda nonsensical; 90%: any such attempt remains very controversial.
(Disclosure of biases: I'm a cis man that's also comfortable with neutral pronouns.)
Basically, I'm saying that transgender isn't a culture-bound condition - *gender* is.
But isn't this the point in the second to last paragraph?
ACT states that there is no neutral culture. For example in a culture where everyone is transgender after the age of 18 there would be a culture bound condition called 'cis-gender'.
I think it's a point that could stand to be expressed from more angles, so I'm trying to provide another angle. To be clear, I am not saying that Scott is exactly wrong about anything here, but that I understand the same phenomenon in a very different way.
After re-reading I understand where you're coming from more. Even so your conclusions are very out-there. Haven't most cultures had basically two genders, Why is America destined for three?
Also
> Basically, I'm saying that transgender isn't a culture-bound condition - *gender* is.
I don't see how gender could be a culture-bound condition. Since culture is relative, a culture bound condition is definitional abnormal which having the gender you were assigned at birth isn't.
European cultures in the historic period have almost all had two genders, but anthropologists working outside Europe often find more.
I posit that America is moving toward three because, although social justice advocates often note that "non-binary" is an umbrella covering gender-fluid, agender, and a variety of other descriptions, we use one word that covers all of that most of the time, and we're moving toward standardizing on one set of pronouns (they/them/their), which seems like our language (if not yet any of our social institutions) is starting to coalesce around a new norm in which there three categories. If that trend continues (which, note, I'm guessing at more likely than any specific alternative including than status quo, but less than 50%), it won't mean there's only one way to be nonbinary any more than right now there's only one way to be a man or to be a woman, but a lot of assholes will probably insist that there is (as many assholes do about the two binary genders right now).
>but anthropologists working outside Europe often find more.
*anthropologists desperately looking for more genders.
A lot of the actual data on this is pretty underwhelming when people have given me examples. "Look there were eunuchs and tomboys in this culture, it had 4 genders!"
Eunuchs castrated by the powerful to work as borderline slaves aren't a "gender" any culture should aspire to.
And tomboys are not a gender either. There can be masculine women and feminine men, and even people recognized as such without there being new "genders". And more importantly the tomboys are pretty clearly not saying "we aren't women".
I feel like these anthropologists would go to 1800s new England and find six genders two of which would be "Spinsters" and "Priests".
Hijras are generally not forced into that role, but clearly occupy a different social role from men or women.
Fa'afine are similarly clear, in that their gender expression tends to be in between traditional male and female.
You're right that in Europe some people look for a third gender that's not unambiguously there, though the example you should think of for that is Balkan sworn virgins - AFAB people who swear to celibacy and then take on male gender expression and gender roles. This is generally something done for specific contingent reasons rather than expressing an underlying non-female identity, and the social role they step into is not distinguished from that of a man.