However I do believe that this massive uptick in people claiming to be trans is a fad, a social contagion. They are no longer required to go through rigorous counseling in order to acquire hormones, as physicians and therapists are afraid to deny them or else they'd be vilified and lose their jobs (see http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/02/fight-over-trans-kids-got-a-researcher-fired.html ). Any professional who expresses a view that conflicts with the accepted dogma can expect to be threatened, can expect their children to be threatened, can expect to be shunned by their colleagues.
The uptick likely comes from the internet and its various benefits; it's not unique to trans people, you can find whole communities of people who went online, came into contact with people they might not otherwise run into, or read pages, and just had a moment of "Oh, so that's what that is." You can never really compare your own experiences with others because you're not in their heads. Typically, people becoming aware of what being trans actually is is bound to lead to more people realizing that they're trans.
As far as fetishes go, it's very rare for a sexual fetish to lead to someone permanently changing their lives, with hormone treatments etc. Sure, there are some guys who get off on it (though I wouldn't be surprised if there's an overlap between them and trans people; a decent part of sex is being comfortable with yourself, and for trans women who're more comfortable in women's clothing then it would be possible to mistake that for a fetish). But men who just have a crossdressing fetish aren't exactly going to uproot their entire life for an orgasm. The number of full-time fetishists is
tiny.
It's the truly bizarre ones, like Stefonknee Wolscht, or Danielle Muscato who have made all this shit a problem. "Stefonknee" is a fetishist ("she" is a 6yr old girl too). "Danielle" has been active in the atheist thing for awhile, "she" has decided to be a woman. Hasn't done anything to transition, claims to be unsafe in men's bathrooms, recently took a space in a women's and children's emergency shelter.
Stefonkee's a pretty clear extreme case and hardly representative. To be honest, I expect she's trans, the six-year-old aspect is the fetish, little-girl's hardly a unique kink. The trans community is going to be just as diverse and/or creepy as the cis community. I'm sure there's a disturbing corner of the internet out there where cis women talk about doing something similar, I've seen some of the fringes.
As far as Danielle goes, that's easy. If you think about what's required in transitioning, it's huge, particularly for trans women who get treated like fetishists or just men in dresses. People are going to be ready to come out before they can transition, and even then there's a lot to do when it comes to transitioning, and in the mean time it's best to at least be
safe. Presenting as one gender rather than somewhere between male and female is just safer. Being trans isn't a decision, as you paint it, and transitioning is a big deal.
If you think about the end result of a transition for a trans woman, leaving aside things like surgery (a can of worms of its own; there's a fair bit of risk) you'll need an entirely new wardrobe, hormone replacement (changing curves, growing breasts...), buying and learning make-up... and you'll need to carry on your life while going though that.
Someone at the halfway stage however won't be able to pass as male and female, guess how they'll be treated?
It's not exactly a surprise that some people are wary about going through it.
And you're left with a pretty clear situation. Should bathrooms only allow entry based on appearance? Well, clearly not, women can look all kinds of ways, and wear all kinds of clothes. Should it be based on genitals? Well, intersex community outside, that would still lead to people who pass one way going into the wrong bathroom (and I think trans men are less likely to alter that, so you're stuck with men in women's bathrooms).
People aren't going to come out as trans for fun. It's
not fun. And those with the fetish are more likely to be in the men's room anyway because they don't actually identify as women, and usually part of the fetish is seducing guys because most of the crossdressing kink comes from stereotypes.
A women's emergency shelter is trickier, though again there is an issue of drawing the line as to what point in transition. It's worth pointing out that part of the definition of being trans is not seeing yourself the same way others do, so it's understandable. And trans people do need shelters.
I don't know what kind of shelter it was, so I can't say much more. Trans women and cis women do face different issues, and trans women were often socialized differently, so there is a divide to a certain point, but most of that is really just irrelevant.
Your sex, on the other hand, is innate. There is no amount of surgery or hormone treatment that can change it.
How often do you really need to know someone's chromosomes?
For that matter, do you even know your own? I don't. There's plenty more than just xx and xy, and a lot aren't noticeable. Seriously, there is literally no context in which your chromosomes matter, save to medical professionals.
I think the medical diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria is a huge issue that is just being glossed over without any significant scientific investigation in to it. This is a huge problem, because it may turn out that indulging this health issue may be detrimental, or it may turn out to be the correct course, but we have no fucking idea. Current treatments do not appear to have a meaningful impact on the mental health of those transitioning, and to allow children, whose brains will undergo massive changes to be diagnosed with this seems unethical to say the least. I am open to the trans community, but doctors have to be able to do their jobs.
In the meantime, people should not worry about bathrooms so much.
Most of the mental health difficulties come from how they're treated. As far as children go, usually they're given hormones to stave off puberty until they're sure, and that's entirely ethical because it's perfectly reversible, and the physical changes someone goes through in puberty make transition immeasurably harder than it would be otherwise.
Generally studies do seem to show transition helps, it's just very murky because it's hard to isolate the effects of that from the effects of how they're treated. There's a study by Dr Cecilia Dhejne (a Swedish study, if memory serves) that's become almost a cliche to quote saying transition doesn't help (or, on a note related to something Space Cowgirl brought up, that trans women are as criminal as cis men) but it actually doesn't show anything of the kind, and the writer of said study says as much, most of the issues can clearly be noted to reduce when there's more social support (and in the criminal case, they only measured conviction rate, not conviction type, so tax fraud to get money to afford hormones wouldn't be distinguishable from assault, for example).
Easy example is:
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/25690443But, yeah, trans advocacy is basically in its infancy so there's a lot that can be worked on.