The Buddha famously said life is suffering. The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck began his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, with the words “Life is difficult.” More poetically, Seamus Heaney said there are tears at the heart of things.

I have been writing a lot lately about the tears at the heart of things. I cannot read the newspaper any given morning without being overwhelmed by the heartless machinations of the current administration. Sadness gives birth to anger, and anger works, but only until sunset. Then your anger must be replaced by a receptive spirit, an open mind, and a curious soul.

I have been trying to bring a receptive spirit, open mind, and curious soul to understanding the anti-transgender agenda of the far right.

Before 2016, gender dysphoria was hardly a major political issue. Up until that time it was little more than the quiet stepchild of the LGBTQ movement. In 2016, the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School did a survey based on responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 19 states. They estimated that about 0.6 percent of the American population identified as transgender. The numbers fluctuated between 0.8 percent in Hawaii and 0.3 percent in North Dakota.

The margin of error suggested that somewhere between 0.36 percent to 0.95 percent of the population identified as transgender. In that 2016 study, the term transgender was used as a binary term, indicating that a transgender person was someone who felt they were the opposite gender from that listed on their birth certificate.

In the 2016 study 0 .7 percent of those between ages 18 and 24 identified as trans. A total of 0.6 percent of those between 25 and 64 identified as trans, and 0.5 percent over 65 identified as transgender. Those numbers are consistent with many other studies done before that time.

In their follow-up study in 2022, the Williams Institute found significant changes. A total of 1.3 percent of those between 18 and 24, and 1.4 percent of those between 13 and 17 identified as transgender, while the rest of the population (those over 24) remained at between 0.5 and 0.6 percent, the same percentage as in 2016.

That means that while the number of transgender adults remained steady, the number of transgender teens doubled. That is a statistically massive shift in just six years, a 100 percent increase in teens and early twenty-somethings identifying as transgender.

A Pew Research Study in 2022 found even higher numbers of young people who identified as transgender. Their surveys showed that 5.1 percent of those under 25 years of age identified as transgender or non-binary. About 2 percent identified as transgender, while 3 percent identified as non-binary (an option not presented in the Williams Institute 2016 study.)

I presented that information at a university several months ago and a number of people left the auditorium. Two confronted me in the hallway after the presentation and told me they had been traumatized by my presentation. At the point at which they chose to leave, all I had done was present the information above, without commentary.

When the right blasts the transgender community, this is part of what they are frustrated by – the wholesale refusal of the trans community to listen to any information that could call into question their understanding of gender dysphoria.

Whether these students liked it or not, a major university found a 100 percent increase in teens who identified as transgender. If we accept the Pew Research number, it was a 300 percent increase. That is information that should give one pause and be approached with an open mind.

Why have the numbers risen so dramatically? If the percentage of those over 25 who identify as transgender has remained steady at 0.5 percent, does that mean when those under 25 get older, between half and two-thirds of them will no longer identify as transgender? That is a really important question to answer.

It is of less importance if these young people are exploring their gender identity and not taking medications that have long term side effects. Let their individuation and differentiation continue unabated. They will figure things out on their own. Young people have been doing that for millennia.

If, on the other hand, they are taking testosterone or anti-androgens and estrogen that have life-long effects, what happens if they decide they are not transgender after all? The data would indicate it is possible that fully half of them might find themselves in that position.

These questions are not right or left. They are legitimate data-based queries. If a person storms out of the room because this data exists and these questions are being asked, are they any more fair-minded than those who blindly and arrogantly say, “God created only two genders, and the gender you were at birth is the gender you are.” Both are positions of passion rather than thoughtful conclusions based on the best scientific evidence. The Cass Report in England asked similar questions. It has been excoriated by most in the trans community.

During the Biden presidency I was twice invited to the White House for their Pride Celebration. I did not get there either time. The first time my flight was cancelled, but the second time was different. I was aware that most of those in attendance were not people who would appreciate my nuanced approach to gender dysphoria. Just mentioning the Cass report in that environment would have created a firestorm. I decided not to go.

My lifelong friend, David, and I started using a term in the 1980s that we still use today – the radical middle. The middle is radical because culture trumps truth every single time,  and culture demands that you take one side or the other. The middle is not an option. But what if the radical middle is where the truth lies?

Whether it comes from the right or the left, I’ve grown weary of the rhetoric on transgender issues. I want to take the radical middle, looking at the data and watching with great curiosity as the future unfolds. What percentage of the population is and shall remain transgender? Will it be a half percent, as it has historically been, or will today’s higher numbers remain? The truth is that we don’t know. And yes, the truth matters.