Posted for discussion and interest value.
Out of curiosity, I plunked the word “transgender” into Google Trends. It’s not my terminology of choice, but it’s what most people use and what the general public is most likely to search for. Here’s what I got:
The numbers aren’t an exact value of something, but a comparative value versus the highest peak on record, which is apparently right now. Or as Google Trends puts it:
Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart. If at most 10% of searches for the given region and time frame were for “pizza,” we’d consider this 100. This doesn’t convey absolute search volume. Learn more
I don’t know if there were other stories that occurred during the same months of those peaks and contributing to the results — it’s possible, I’ve only noted what Google flagged as the top search item.
A few more charts:
and
Presented without commentary, in case anyone is curious.
Dented Blue Mercedes 
When i first learned i had a transgender child, i was eager to read anything and everything i could on the subject. I set up a google news alert to email me whenever the term “transgender” showed up in the news. At first, i only got those emails once every few days, and there would be maybe two or three articles in each email. Now, i get an email every single day, and most days there are so many articles that the message is clipped and i have to open it into a new window to view the entire list of news links. The downside to this is that i see all of the ugly stuff, too — fortunately that is by far outnumbered by the positive news. There is definitely more awareness, and it feels like it has happened very quickly.
What’s more is that the tenor of the coverage has continued to shift from sensationalist to positive. Things are getting better. 🙂