We Let A Social Contagion Rewrite Womanhood
A Gold’s Gym location in Los Angeles is recently under fire after it was revealed that the staff kicked out a woman who made a scene about the fact that there was a man in the ladies’ locker room, pretending as if he belonged there with a group of naked females.
“Grown men with big d*cks in the women’s locker room!” a woman named Tish Hyman shouted in the middle of the facility to let everyone know that the Gold’s Gym staff was siding with the mentally ill man who just whipped out his male genitalia in a women’s locker room. “And that’s why I’m getting kicked out, and I want to make sure the girls know!” she concluded. “Everyone saw that f*cking man in the locker room. No one’s saying sh*t! Me, naked in front of a man without my permission.”
It’s disturbing how everyone is standing around and ignoring the situation as if she is the crazy one. In this backwards world, Gold’s Gym isn’t kicking out the man pretending to be a woman. They’re revoking the membership of the woman who dared to say anything about it. When we ask ourselves how on earth we got here, there are many different elements to consider. Firstly, we have to consider the cowardice of both men and women who have allowed the transgender ideology to take such a strong hold on our society. But there is also the question of how many people are suddenly identifying as transgender, and how this rapidly rising number is resulting in more and more women’s spaces being invaded by men pretending to be women.
There is the question of how many people are suddenly identifying as transgender, and how this rapidly rising number is resulting in more and more women’s spaces being invaded by men pretending to be women.
Those of us on the side of common sense have been saying for years that the transgender explosion over the last decade has been largely due to a social contagion. We could see this even before the data was released; anyone who steps foot on a college campus regularly, lives in a major city, or even scrolls through TikTok has seen a visible uptick in people who call themselves transgender (or non-binary). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that transgenderism was becoming a popular trend, and that young adults, especially college students, were figuring out that you can garner a whole lot of attention, followers, and praise for “coming out as transgender.”
The trans trend was getting so noticeable that Matt Walsh’s documentary What Is a Woman? turned into a massive hit that was enjoyed by people across the political aisle. Even classical liberals like Joe Rogan were talking about how much they enjoyed the film, citing its devastatingly accurate yet hilarious portrayal of how insane the social contagion had become. And yet, the backlash was vicious. Anyone who had the audacity to call the rise of the transgender ideology the result of social contagion was called a bigoted transphobe who didn’t care about saving disenfranchised people’s lives. How dare we point out the data showing an inexplicably rapid rise in “transgender” identification amongst young people that couldn’t be explained by biology or science. People were threatened, harassed, and doxxed for calling out this social contagion. The brave celebrities like J.K. Rowling who had the guts to stand up for women were bombarded by the rabid mob. Legacy media publications went on full offense, constantly finding creative ways to accuse people of transphobia and oppression.
But all the while, we knew. We knew that young people, especially women, were being influenced by their peers and social media to suddenly “come out” as trans. We knew that it became a form of social currency to join the ranks of the trans coalition. We knew that universities, many public schools, and Hollywood did everything in their power to feed this trend and enable these ever-expanding delusions. It never mattered to us how many “phobic” names we were called. We knew.
Now that a few years have passed since the peak of the trans trend and now that there seems to be a growing exhaustion of the transgender ideology being thrown in our faces everywhere we turn, The Wall Street Journal is publishing an article called “Evidence Backs the Transgender Social Contagion Hypothesis.” The opinion piece was written by Colin Wright, who was working as a scientist at Penn State in February 2020. He faced severe backlash after tweeting a comment suggesting “social contagion” as a factor in rising gender dysphoria rates among teen girls. The post sparked widespread denunciation, professional harassment, and online attacks that ultimately destroyed his academic career. But Wright explains that his comment was never meant to be an insult, but rather meant to reference Dr. Lisa Littman’s 2018 research on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” which suggested that some adolescent girls may identify as transgender due to peer influence. She clarifies that “social contagion” is a recognized sociological concept describing how ideas and behaviors can spread within groups.
Wright highlights recent research that presents conflicting data about transgender identification among young people. Analyses by Eric Kaufmann and Jean Twenge both show significant declines, nearly 50%, in the number of college students and young adults identifying as transgender between 2022 and 2025. Twenge concluded that the “peak of trans identification is in the past.” However, a report from the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, using data from the National College Health Assessment, found that transgender and nonbinary identification among U.S. college students is currently at a record high of 4.7% to 6.7%, though growth may be leveling off. Some say this data is conflicting and that it’s not enough to fully support the social contagion theory. Wright also points out that the phenomenon may continue to persist because activist, academic, and medical institutions have expanded the definition of “transgender” to include almost any form of deviation from traditional gender norms. So even if the trend of transgenderism is on the decline on apps like TikTok or in the hallways of high schools, many mainstream machines have taken steps that continue to recognize and support the transgender ideology.
"The surge in transgender identification in recent years wasn’t the revelation of a hidden biological truth. It was a social phenomenon shaped by imitation, ideology and institutional reinforcement."
“The social-contagion hypothesis was never hateful. It was purely descriptive: a recognition that social and cultural factors shape human behavior,” Wright writes. “For years, even hinting that such factors influenced transgender identities could end a career. Now, as data accumulate, this is becoming harder for anyone to deny. The surge in transgender identification in recent years wasn’t the revelation of a hidden biological truth. It was a social phenomenon shaped by imitation, ideology and institutional reinforcement.”
The fact that the WSJ even published this shows what a turning point we are experiencing right now. More and more people are growing tired of transgenderism being shoved in our faces, whether it’s in advertisements, in academia, or in movies. They can sense our fatigue, and it seems as though they are taking baby steps to acknowledge that fatigue. Wright would have never been permitted to write this piece for WSJ a couple years ago, and Tish Hyman never would have gained so much support and so many followers for publicly refusing to accept men in the women’s locker room at Gold’s Gym. Something has shifted in our culture. It might be wishful thinking, but it seems as though it’s only a matter of time before this nightmarish social contagion starts to die down.