Why are so many techies dysphoric?It must be said that some people in tech are closeted or unaware trans people, and it's probably significantly more of the population than we might think given that a lot of trans people wind up drawn towards tech as a field. In these cases, the dysphoria makes a considerable amount of sense. However, even at the outer limit, that would account for no more than a quarter of tech people, which isn't enough to explain the general prevalence of dysphoria that we observe in the tech community. This means that we need an explanation for why our tech industry is so dead-eyed and void of emotion or motivation that isn't just that they need estrogen.

Looking at tech culture through this framing, it's hard not to see a lot of the same patterns at play. The depersonalisation, the idea that people can somehow be pure mind rather than being embodied and the lack of desire and motivation of your own and willingness to go along with whatever you're told by society is good are all very much patterns that we see in tech.

In this kind of situation, you quickly wind up suppressing your actual desires, emotions and motivations, even to yourself, and instead try and act on the basis of what society tells you that you should want, should feel and should be trying to do. Consequently, it becomes very easy for you to simply fall in with whatever everyone else is doing, to neglect yourself and your body and to see yourself and others almost as depersonalised minds without any real physical needs or wants.

While a lot of dysphoria is about the physical body (how could it not be), much of the ill-feeling in practice is to do with emotions and with desire.

n that kind of state, it's very easy to fall in with basically anything that tells you how you should live your life, what the path to happiness and feeling OK is or whatever: when you don't much desire or value anything, rejecting propaganda on the basis that it conflicts with your desires or values isn't a thing that really happens.

Without knowing that it's gender-related, dysphoria often presents precisely as this kind of directionlessness, not having desires or not knowing what you want. You often wind up kind of sleepwalking through life, trying to pursue the things that you think that you should want or the desires that society tells you are appropriate for someone in your supposed social position. Nothing ever quite works though, and often enough, until you figure out the problem, you kinda just... stop wanting things and stop trying entirely.

this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria

The participants in both the 2018 and the retracted 2023 studies were recruited from online communities that were explicitly critical about many aspects of gender-affirming care for transgender kids.

As legislation targeting trans people has reached an all-time high in the U.S., ROGD’s alleged social contagion has been invoked by lawmakers in states such as Missouri, Utah and Arkansas to justify banning or restricting gender-affirming care for young people.