I RECALL LISTENING TO A THEOLOGICAL LECTURE by Luke Timothy Johnson in which he gave an estimate based in medical reporting of the number of those born with inter-sexual bodies in the Atlanta area, he was delivering the lecture at the Chandler School of Theology Emory University where he worked. I can't find the notes I made on the lecture so I don't know what figure he gave though it was rather surprisingly large - the lecture was in favor of the possibility of living a moral life as an LGBTQ+ Person. When you do the math a seemingly small percentage of a large population adds up very fast, even if the factor is 1% of it.
So in answering you I've looked up the estimates of how many biologically Intersex People there are as compared to how many People self-identify as Transgender. Certainly the biologically intersex population is relevant to any discussion of the question, though I hardly ever see it included in that discussion.
As I pointed out the other day, such estimates are of wildly varying and ultimately unknowable reliability due to the same problems that all self-reporting is liable to, though I doubt anyone would self-identify as "Transgender" unless they really thought they were transgendered given the social and, thanks to the goddamned Roberts Republican-fascist Court legal problems it brings. For that reason I'd guess it may be among the more reliable of such statistics.
You would think that the medical statistics on those born with indeterminate gender based on the genitalia they are born with is probably more reliable. You would be wrong about that, though I suspect that's probably largely due to political-professional reasons rather than it being inspecific as to what that indeterminacy is. The widely given statistic of 1.7 percent of the population who are born "Intersex" and the range often given of more than 1 to 2 percent are disputed. Though a lot of that dispute comes from psychologists and psychiatrists with a clear political-professional motive in pushing a far, almost certainly ridiculously low number for that. One of the worst of those a prolific LGBTQ+ hating shrink with a bad record of publishing nonsense far, far outside of their area of alleged expertise.
I will say that based on what I think is probably the most believable range of percentages that between more than about 3.5 and 7 million Americans are biologically intersex. Though if that number was 1000 or less that wouldn't make their own self-identification any less a matter of their right to self-determination in the face of the whipped up ignorant bigotry against them which is rampant on the Republican-fascist and in the media pushed shrink-professional hater racket. There are a number of those out there, often featured in Republican-fascist media and organizations and published by them. You can take your pick of which of them I mean as I type this. I won't give you the gender because they come in both of the standard ones, though most of those I'm seeing are male.
The UCLA Law School's Williams Institute gives an estimate that 2.8 million Americans identify as Transgender. One third identify as Transwomen, one third identify as Transmen and one third self-identify as Nonbinary. 724,000 of those Americans are between the ages of 13 and 17 who as children are the only ones that any legal consideration has any business discussing. I won't even begin to address any claims about anyone else having any business telling adults who they are or how they interpret their own bodies and minds, that's their business, not yours or the goddamned Trump regime or the fascists on the Roberts Court. I will note the hypocrisy of those who claim to figure their concern about the welfare of Transgender People below the age of adulthood is cruelly hypocritical given the known damage of Transgender hate to them. whipped up by the fascists' campaign to make a political target of them as they proclaim their concern for them. As if they and their parents and their own physicians decisions about their welfare are not more valid than those of right-wing, often professional haters who whip up hatred of them for their own profit and gain. Many of those paid millions in the media and those who have made billions of dollars, not a little of that made from selling books to Transkids.
I don't buy the validity of concern of the small percentage of anti-trans feminists whose reaction to he very small percentage of Transwomen* in the population is far, far larger than their reaction would warrant if mere principle was at stake. Most of the feminists I know of have no problem with Transwomen. But, then, most of them aren't billionaires who have way too big an idea of their own opinion and too much money to spread that around with.
The Williams Institute figures indicate that there is considerable regional variation in the percentage of those who self-identify as Transgender, though in almost every state for which a figure is given, they are well within and often far fewer than those who are medically, biologically identified as Intersex. What to make of that, I have no idea and I doubt anyone else does, either.
As I said above, if there were fewer than a thousand biologically Intersex People in the United States, their right to define their own identity is as absolute as a biologically cis-gendered, straight, white male or female to define their identity. I am 100% in favor of the right of all People to come to their own conclusions about their bodies, their minds, their lives TO THE EXTENT THAT THOSE DECISIONS DON'T IMPINGE ON THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS TO DO THE SAME. That's the basis of my thinking on this. You don't need a medical statistician or a legal theorist to come up with a percentage of the population to figure that out. You don't need to trust anyone's' self-interested, professionally advantaging claims about that to come to the conclusion on that. The self-proclaimed defenders of "biological gender" will always have the issue of those who are not assigned a "biological gender" at birth based on their "ambiguous" genitalia or other reasons will always have that as an issue either that they won't or don't address but those very real People are still there as are those who have a right to the self-knowledge of their own minds. That's something the hating cis-gender, straight, white males and females claim as their right even as they also claim it as their right to make that decision for other People. That's the difference between egalitarian democracy and the varying degrees of fascist trending tendencies apart from that.
* The Republican-fascists here in Maine were collecting signatures from the haters at the polls this month to ban Transathletes from playing sports in the state. Since their signs claimed they wanted to protect women's sports they clearly were targeting Transwomen. I asked one of them how many there were on school sports teams in Maine, they had no idea. I asked someone who knew the issue and he told me no more than two in the entire state, if that.
I told the ass that if it were up to me I'd get rid of sports in the public schools because it was dangerous in the case of many of the major school sports. I'll bet that the injuries from sports are far more of a health and life endangering for thousands of athletes to the number of Transchildren in the state. Not getting to the fact that sports take resources from the major business of schools, teaching. Phys-ed should be teaching children to exercise and eat sensibly and getting medical care, not now to play games.
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