I mean the difference is likely not based out of a difference in the number of trans people but in the cultural risk one has in living out of the closet. Destigmatizing left handedness saw a sudden generation jump in people who were left handed. If you don’t think you are likely to be accepted you struggle in darkness.
The covid bump has another possible explanation. My trans nature long existed in the shadow. My industry is such where it’s all short term employment and causing your team any friction could mean falling to the bottom of the employment pool. I didn’t try to be out because it came with drawbacks. Coming out to people is also the process of onboarding everyone and that transition period where people know but are still fucking up your name and pronouns takes a lot of your mental energy. It some ways it sucks less when people don’t know they are hurting you. Then it’s just not their fault. Once they know the struggle to switch how they think of you is plain. It’s obvious they don’t think of you as your gender, they just are faking it until they do and that disparity draws more attention to your own body and presentation and the uphill battle of true acceptance even if they are theoretically on board with trans issues. My Mom STILL fucks up my name and pronouns and even though she loves me it’s like an admission that she will NEVER actually see me as I see myself. It’s difficult to do that and work a soul crushing job at the same time so it was something I did one person at a time and I was a fucking hot mess in the process.
Then Covid happened and I was isolated in my cohort of friends and family to whom I was spottily out to. I had the time to DO the work and have the conversation and be the hot mess. I figured out I was trans back when I was 21 but there was a fifteen year gap before I came out to people outside because it seemed like a monumental task where I would risk losing a huge chunk of my relationships, risk my career and still have to juggle going to work every day even when I felt like dying. But since people started talking about it and showing trans issue support it gave me hope that there would be light on the other side. So by the time covid came around I was half-out.
But then during covid I got to live as myself full time. It’s like having an allergy you are exposed to all the time. You don’t realize exactly how shitty you feel until you stop being exposed to it and you realize that your capacity to feel generally more energetic and healthy is actually way higher than you thought… And returning to exposure makes it hit that much harder.
Returning to work I realized how bad I actually felt and felt more compelled to do something about it. Having the time to actually do the work, not on myself but on the people around me, gave me a taste of what it feels like to be healthy and it’s hard to forget being actually happy and then willingly just go back to being miserable. From the outside it might look like being cooped up caused me to be trans but it’s the opposite. Being cooped up gave me time to properly socially transition where the risks were lowered.