Resolves once transgenderism is no longer as controversial a subject and we can be confident that research is sound and unbiased. (Probably not for another 20 years at least.)
This is about the causes of the gender gap at the time of market creation, not at the time of resolution. In the event of multiple casues, I'll resolve to each in proportion.
There aren't: The statistics are wrong for some reason, and the actual number of people who identify as a gender other than their biological sex is about equal between the genders.
Biological factors (latent): Biological men are genetically more predisposed to have gender disphoria than biological women.
Biological factors (conscious): Having female biological traits is preferred over male due to reasons inherent to those traits, and people conciously make that choice.
Cultural factors (latent): Some aspect of American culture causes more biological men to experience gender disphoria than biological women.
Cultural factors (conscious): Some aspect of American culture causes people to prefer being percieved as female over male, and people conciously make that choice.
Related questions
@IsaacKing to me, the latent cultural factors option as written seems to invert the agency element. I don't feel comfortable making a judgement on whom feels dysphoria, but I do feel comfortable making a claim as to whom American society empowers more to feel or express dysphoria- and that is men. imo.
@Rainshadow Oh no, you're right. Hmm. I intended my options to be exhaustive but I failed to consider something like that.
Alternative position: Testosterone has more drastic and permanent effects, and trans women don’t tend to “ pass” as well on average as trans men, trans AFABs hoping for androgynity become non binary while those looking to become Men become trans men, while for trans AMABs both types just push as far as they can into feminity into transwomenhood.
@JoshuaBartlett I'll serve as a personal counterpoint, I'm AMAB and am nonbinary/trans. Once I got some secure with my gender ID vs expression I grew a beard the same time I started going out in dresses and heels.
Certainly women are given more leeway and free stuff overall; whether observing this fact and taking action is "conscious" or not is a dumb unverifiable distinction.
In the programming/FOSS community i've observed probably over a hundred of trans women but no trans men for some reason. If there were about the equal number of trans men and women, trans men are really good at hiding it, and trans women are really good at showing off.
Or there's some other selection bias.
According to the Williams Center (pg. 2, bullet 3), about 38.5 percent of trans people are trans women while 35.9 are trans men. Does this qualify as a gap?
Likewise, the 2015 US Transgender Survey (pg. 48, table 4.1) says the share of survey respondents who answered trans women was 32 percent while the share that answered trans man was 31 percent.
@IsaacKing I'm sorry for being so dense, I'm just really trying to understand the meaning of the word about in "is about equal between the genders." The Canadian census seems to suggest that 27.68% of trans people are trans men while 31.3% are trans women. Is that not about equal in your opinion?
@IsaacKing I'm not sure! It is your market, and if that is what qualifies as significant then I am happy to respect that.
But my leaning is to say the difference is not significant. For the following two reasons:
1) The plurality of gender diverse participants in the Canadian Census are non-binary. I think this complicates simple assessments of the latent traits. We do not know that "people who were assigned male at birth are more likely to experience gender dysphoria than people who were assigned female at birth," because more non-binary people could be assigned female at birth than assigned male at birth. Likewise, gender is fuzzy and complicated, and people may choose to identify in ways which do not clearly represent their gender identity based on circumstance. I do identify as a woman, but I do think the underlying reality is more complicated. It also complicates things, because some non-binary people lean more femme or masc, which results in different perceptions by non-gender-diverse people who make assumptions.
2) Other Census data (UK, 2021) shows that the percentage of trans men and trans women are about equal. I'm hesitant to put too much stock in one Census. I do think this is a weaker argument because most population surveys I'm aware of find that there are slightly more trans women than trans me., But I'm not entirely sure, especially given 1.)
But that is just my leaning. I'm not confident. I do think the answers in this market assume a little too much about the cause, and that there are plenty of other explanations which are not considered based on the simple definition. That definitely leads me more toward saying they are about equal.