Definitely anecdata but I can +1 that all sorts of people outside the mainstream enjoy safety in online communities because of the anonymity. This has always been a draw since the early internet up through now. You can rise through the ranks of open source using only your words and your code.

There are statistical studies that find Autism Spectrum Disorder is over represented in both trans and computer programmers.

It is likely that this is more than anecdata.

And trans are also over represented because of this connection.

If you just look at women and not men then it could be possible. Among the competitive female gamers the top spots with most overall money winnings are all trans, you have to go down a few spots to find a born female. Of course there are hundreds of men with similar winnings as those trans women, but point is that among extreme successes there can actually be way more trans women than other women.

I am to take your handful as 5 and hundreds as say 200, that is 2.5%. Which is far more than 0.5% for the general population so it appears on that point we agree.

My cohort is the category theorists / functional programming crowd which indeed has a higher percentage of trans people in it than even other programming cohorts. But this is not due to a hiring ring, they lack the numbers.