I’ve noticed that a lot of nerdy stuff has been drawing a queer audience with increasing frequency, probably because for whatever reason in the last few years a lot of nerds just seem to have decided to be more queer-welcoming. So it may be mainly correlation at work here

I got into a nerd friend group before realizing I was queer though and a lot of my queer nerd friends say the same. Dunno what’s up with that

I would broadly agree with that, with the caveat that prejudice and bigotry can still exist in nerdy spaces, just in a more insidious manner. Specifically, I have seen some communities where they superficially seem accepting, but their position as an outgroup can make people feel uncomfortable with grappling with prejudice in their communities — they look around and notice, for example, that the vast vast majority of people there are white, and then they almost begin grappling with the implications of that (that there may be reasons why people of colour do not feel fully safe or welcome in that space), but then they retreat from that discomfort of that thought and internally insist that everything is fine. They don’t like thinking of themselves as being a part of the privileged in-group when their identity has formed around them being part of the outgroup, so they push it out of mind.

I don’t say this in a judgemental way, more just to highlight that being genuinely inclusive requires an active, ongoing effort to keep learning and challenging our understanding of things. The complacency that gives rise to bigotry in progressive spaces is understandable, but important to work to overcome

Percentages get crazy when you start talking about 8 billion people. 1% is 80 million. If 1% of that found lemmy the active user base would be almost half Trans. (I found around 1.2 million active lemmy users on some website, and 800,000 is 1% of 80,000,000)

Aren’t >95% of people online lurkers? With that in mind, is it really surprising that the amount of trans stories are many? I mean, why would someone post a story about how they’re not trans.

1.2 million active lemmy users

There’s no way that’s true. I’d guess there are ~30000 active users on the entire threadiverse. 1.2 million is total registered users ever, across all servers, including spambots and such.

1% is 1/100. So not on every bus, but every 2 or 3 busses.

Also tend to be poorer, like public transit. So maybe every bus.

Ehhh… Where’d that come from?

I am happy that trans people can be who they want to be, even if there is still a long way to go. But I am thrown by how statistics, that consistently give numbers of <1% to 3% for transsexual people in the general population, don’t match the number of transitioning stories I read online. I get why that is, safe space, confirmation bias and all, but it’s such a major disconnect between experience and actual numbers that it constantly trips me up. From what I read online, the percentage of trans people feels like it’s around 20-30%. Or, in this case, 50%.

Might just be where trans people spawn if there aren’t any trains nearby. I know straight cis people come in at the DMV sports games and starbucks

How’s this related to the gender ratio in the Dungeons & Dragons community?

I was in an all guys group but then the DM and 3 of the guys had kids so it ended.

I imagine there’s a lower percentage of trans players outside of these online spaces

I think nerdy stuff is attractive to people on the autism spectrum, and while people on the spectrum tend to like consistency, they also have trouble recognizing social norms, let alone following them. So some act that is in large part (from other people’s perspective, at least) a deviation from social norms isn’t that much of a problem to them. And why wouldn’t trans people prefer to be in spaces where people don’t care how they’re living their life? Now, add on that exposure tends to normalize social experiences, and people on the spectrum are already weird in their own way, and the neurotypical people in those nerdy spaces are already used to dealing with weird people. Adding a different flavor of weird isn’t that much of a stretch.

Or, to put it another way,

Good God, who’s manning the internet?

I am happy that trans people can be who they want to be, even if there is still a long way to go. But I am thrown by how statistics, that consistently give numbers of <1% to 3% for transsexual people in the general population, don’t match the number of transitioning stories I read online. I get why that is, safe space, confirmation bias and all, but it’s such a major disconnect between experience and actual numbers that it constantly trips me up. From what I read online, the percentage of trans people feels like it’s around 20-30%. Or, in this case, 50%.

I am happy that trans people can be who they want to be, even if there is still a long way to go. But I am thrown by how statistics, that consistently give numbers of <1% to 3% for transsexual people in the general population, don’t match the number of transitioning stories I read online. I get why that is, safe space, confirmation bias and all, but it’s such a major disconnect between experience and actual numbers that it constantly trips me up. From what I read online, the percentage of trans people feels like it’s around 20-30%. Or, in this case, 50%.