I have a question.
If transgender ideology is correct—if sex is a spectrum rather than a binary, if one can literally change one’s biological sex via medical means—then it’s an immense scientific development. We have to re-write every textbook. We must overthrow one of the most basic foundations of the science of biology. It’s revolutionary. It’s on par with major upheavals in other scientific fields, like finding room-temperature superconductors or direct experimental evidence of dark matter.
Scientific revolutions do happen. But they’re rare, and are subject to immense scrutiny and skepticism when they’re proposed.
If critics of gender ideology are correct—if the astonishing skyrocketing rate of transgender identification among teenagers is due to social contagion, if peer influence and social media are driving the trend—then it fits in perfectly with what we already know. Social contagion among teenagers is well known and thoroughly studied. There are plenty of other cases: eating disorders, suicide, self harm, violence, bullying. All have been shown to be spread via peer influence.
Which is more likely?
An immense shift in scientific understanding?
Or yet another example of what has already been long understood?
Re-write the biology textbooks?
Or add yet another entry to the list of social contagions?
Elementary, my dear Occam.