Transgender and Family Research

Photo taken from here.

Roughly 1.4 million adults who live in the United States are transgender, or about 0.6 percent of the population, according to a new report by UCLA's Williams Institute, the country's leading researcher on LGBT demographics. That's double the institute's previous population estimates, released in 2011.

In the context of my interest in family history and health:

1. I wonder how one would research this in the future? I mean, how would you know when someone changed their gender based on legal documents? In the past, I am sure it was rather hush-hush. As I write this, I wonder what happens in India (the Hijra) and Albania (Balkan Sworn Virgins), for example, when there is a culture of people either being a third gender or the women who, for economic reasons for example, change genders, though not actually changing genders, just living culturally as the other gender. My mother-in-law was given a truly masculine name upon her birth and changed it legally to a cute woman's name either when she changed to her married name, or perhaps before. I should imagine her name will baffle any cousins doing the research in the future who do not know one of us to ask.
2. Does American, with it's Standard American Diet, have proportionally more people who identify as transgender than we did throughout history? Is it our food? American air? Does the West have more than the East - or did Western culture make people hide it more than India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh did, obviously? What are the percentages in the rest of the world?

I don't mean to disrespect third gender or transgender people. People should live the way that does not contradict their soul. I just wonder if food choices and the chemicals and antibiotics Westerners (or maybe just North Americans, as Europeans do have more laws) put into the food, is changing the sex hormones in the human body so that babies are born with a gender that contradicts their soul.

Original blurb above taken from the July 15th edition of The Week Magazine.