It's not a new thing. In some parts of the world at least transgendered
women
typically transitioned during their puberty, at 13 or 14. A great source for
this observation is 'Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian
Transgendered Prostitutes' by anthropologist Don Kulick, who followed a group of
trans sex workers in Salvador. Most of them transition from young boys to
teenage sex workers after a sexual encounter with an adult male. From personal
(though anecdotal) experience this is a common pattern in many cultures of the
so-called Global South, if we include in that South East Asia. Basically for
most of the 20th century, most transwomen who transitioned, transitioned in
their puberty and went straight into sex work.
What has changed recently is that many more trans women transition later in
life, after having lived for many decades as men, having married and had
children and careers well outside sex work etc. Perhaps because of a more
general shift of ideas about gender and sexuality (gay men are nowadays not
considered effeminate or feminine just because they fancy men) most transwomen
in western countries were generally of this later kind.
Then the wheel shifted again. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the
number of people transitioning later in life and in a context that had nothing
to do with underage sex and sex work, helped convince society that transition
does not have to mean sex work (although in most of the world, it still does,
by and large, so what I say applies to more western societies) and that gave
more space to younger trans women and also young trans men to express their
identity without fearing that a life of humiliation and inevitable sex work
awaited them.
In my part of the world, when I was transitioning in the late 90's a trans woman
who was not into sex work was something unheard of and indeed I had to immigrate
to be able to do anything with my life. As to concerns about giving young
children puberty blockers etc, I would have to say that this is much better than
13 year olds taking cross-sex hormones without medical supervision and then
going to the red light district to display their budding breasts with pride.
I hope all this doesn't come across as "wokeness". My concern about other trans
women has always been the limited opportunities they've had in life, in my part
of the world, and the squalid, degrading and dangerous conditions in which they
had to survive as a result (google a bit about the transgendered community in
Istanbul if you have strong nerves). I tend to think of all the outrage
about identity issues on Twitter as a pleasant change of tone from the grim
darkness that was before.
A link to that book:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo362138...