It was all about sports until a couple of pages ago and the science got dragged back into the discussion.
Now you want to go back and rehash the discussion about age of consent for treatments?
Lia Thomas exposed 'male genitalia' in women's locker room after meeting
- Thread starter AndrewX
- Start date
Now you want to go back and rehash the discussion about age of consent for treatments?
<i>Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?</i>
Following the closure of the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic for children, I have been receiving requests for what the science says. Do kids g...
Brian Monarch on Instagram: "@schwarzenegger in his homeland, Austria - voice by @iamjoegaudet #deepfake by me #reel #reels #thesoundofmusic #julieandrews #musical #voiceover #funnyvideos #funny #funnymemes #instagood #austria #soundofmusic @julieandrews"
323K likes, 11K comments - brianmonarch on April 2, 2023: "@schwarzenegger in his homeland, Austria - voice by @iamjoegaudet #deepfake by me #reel #reels #thesoundofmusic #julieandrews #musical #voiceover #funnyvideos #funny #funnymemes #instagood #austria #soundofmusic @julieandrews".
www.instagram.com
A critical commentary on follow-up studies and “desistance” theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children
<i>Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?</i>
Following the closure of the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic for children, I have been receiving requests for what the science says. Do kids g...www.sexologytoday.org
Last edited:
Now post about the people such as yourself who have sex with trans children once they turn 18. Do you have a mental illness ?
<i>Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?</i>
Following the closure of the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic for children, I have been receiving requests for what the science says. Do kids g...
I wonder if JC thinks that any of the things he posted are research.
One is a summary from a group that supports gender affirming care that admits that some people de-transition. the other is possibly some kind of list of research that doesn't give any info about what the studies found.
More interesting than your usual stuff.
<i>Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?</i>
Following the closure of the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic for children, I have been receiving requests for what the science says. Do kids g...
OTOH Gender HQ appears to cite Ben Shapiro's "Daily Wire", which isn't something a reputable science site should be doing. So that's a little dubious.
These are the sources that I found on detransitioning and political manipulation of the question by the right wing:
<i>Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?</i>
Following the closure of the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic for children, I have been receiving requests for what the science says. Do kids g...
Detransition Facts: Debunking Well Funded Misinformation
Anti-Gender Movements Received $186M from the Russian Federation. Detransition is complicated. How many people regret it?
www.gendergp.com
How gender affirming care is changing the pathways to desistance
Desistance rates of 85% are typically cited for children who experience gender dysphoria and end up being comfortable in their natal sex, without the need for medical interventions. This desistance rate is based on data
genderreport.ca
Detransition - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Biased Science in Texas & Alabama
On February 18, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an interpretation of Texas state law (the “AG Opinion”), taking the position that certain medical
medicine.yale.edu
Detransition Facts and Statistics 2022
For instance, in the UK a survey of 3398 attendees of a gender identity clinic found that just sixteen – about 0.47% – experienced transition-related regret. Of these, even fewer went on to actually detransition and become detransitioners.
In the US, a survey of nearly 28,000 people found that 8% of respondents reported some kind of detransition. Of this 8%, 62% per cent only did so temporarily due to societal, financial, or family pressures..
In Sweden, a fifty-year longitudinal study on a cohort of 767 transgender people found that around 2% of participants expressed regret following gender-affirming surgery, although it is unclear how many of these participants were detransitioning as a consequence.
In the Netherlands, a study of transgender young people found that only 1.9% of young people on puberty blockers did not want to continue with the medical transition.
Read more from GenderGP:
For instance, in the UK a survey of 3398 attendees of a gender identity clinic found that just sixteen – about 0.47% – experienced transition-related regret. Of these, even fewer went on to actually detransition and become detransitioners.
In the US, a survey of nearly 28,000 people found that 8% of respondents reported some kind of detransition. Of this 8%, 62% per cent only did so temporarily due to societal, financial, or family pressures..
In Sweden, a fifty-year longitudinal study on a cohort of 767 transgender people found that around 2% of participants expressed regret following gender-affirming surgery, although it is unclear how many of these participants were detransitioning as a consequence.
In the Netherlands, a study of transgender young people found that only 1.9% of young people on puberty blockers did not want to continue with the medical transition.
Read more from GenderGP:
Detransition - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The quick and easy novice's guide to "detransitioning" appears to suggest that a minority of pre pubescent gender dysphorics actually continue to be that way in adulthood. However, those who transition in adulthood tend to have microscopic rates of detransitioning.
This appears to be the root of the "social contagion" / "grooming" theory of gender dysphoria.
en.wikipedia.org
Controversy surrounds the concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), proposed as a subtype of gender dysphoria and said to be caused by peer influence and social contagion.[1] ROGD has not been recognized by any major professional association as a valid mental health diagnosis, and use of the term has been discouraged by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and other medical organizations due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence, major methodological issues in existing research, and likelihood to cause harm by stigmatizing gender-affirming care.[2][3][4][5]
Lisa Littman, at the time an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, coined the term rapid-onset gender dysphoria in a 2018 study based on an online survey of parents on three anti-trans websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group.[1][6][7] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders.[8]
In August 2018, Littman (then an assistant professor of the practice at the Brown University School of Public Health) published a descriptive study in PLOS One.[8] Criticism of the study's methodology and conclusions was voiced by some clinicians, researchers, and transgender activists, and two weeks after publication, PLOS One responded by announcing a post-publication review of the paper.[9][10] On the same day as PLOS One announced its post-publication review, Brown University retracted its press release promoting the study.[9] Controversy surrounding the paper grew as articles and opinion pieces, both critical and supportive, were published in mainstream media discussing concerns about the study's methodology and the validity of its hypotheses,[10][11][12] as well as issues of academic freedom.[9] Conservative media outlets heavily publicized the article and criticized Brown recalling its initial press release concerning the paper.[13][14][15] In March 2019, the journal concluded its review and republished Littman's revised and corrected version.[16] In 2022, Littman stood by the core claims she made in her study, adding that ROGD "does not apply to all cases of gender dysphoria" and "doesn't imply that nobody benefits from transition".[17]
ROGD has been criticized as "anti-trans propaganda and bad science".[18] Medical and other journals have published results of individual research studies that did not support claims that ROGD is identifiable as a distinct phenomenon, or that the onset of transgender identity among young people is influenced by social contacts online or in their real lives. Other critiques called it "methodologically flawed", said that it represented a "moral panic", or questioned whether self-reported transgender identity was, in fact, increasing.[citation needed] In 2021, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association cosigned a statement with 120 other medical organizations in the evidence-based Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science, calling for ROGD and other "anti-trans theories" not to be used in diagnostic or clinical settings, due to their lack of reputable scientific evidence. The statement also criticized the proliferation of misinformation supporting the concept of ROGD targeted at parents and clinicians and the concept's use to justify laws limiting the rights of transgender youth in the United States.[5]
Original publication
Lisa Littman, an American physician and researcher, coined the term "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" at the outset of her research for a descriptive study originally titled "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports".[19] Littman's medical specialties are in preventive medicine and public health, as well as obstetrics and gynecology.[20] Her research interests relate to reproductive health, gender dysphoria, detransition, and maternal and child health including prematurity and the use of substances in pregnancy.[20] Littman joined the faculty of the Brown University School of Public Health in 2018 as assistant professor of the Practice in Behavioral and Social Sciences.[20]
Littman, then an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, became interested in the possible role of social contagion in gender dysphoria among young people after noticing that, in her small town in Rhode Island, a few teenagers in the same friend group began identifying as transgender. She conducted a study by collecting 256 responses from an online survey, which was not randomly distributed, but rather targeted at parents recruited from three anti-transgender websites where she had seen parents describe what they believed were sudden gender transitions in their adolescents: 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth TransCritical Professionals. The transgender youth themselves had no say in the study.[1][6][10][17] Littman said she encouraged wide distribution of the survey beyond these three sites,[10] but the study states that participants were encouraged to distribute the study only to "individuals or communities that they thought might include eligible participants", which the study defined as parents who believed "their child had a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria", thus using another nonprobability sampling method known as snowball sampling.[8][21] Of the three websites, an article published in Science described the first two as "gathering places for parents concerned by their children's exploration of a transgender identity", with the third being closed to non-members.[10] Bioethicist Florence Ashley described the first as "dedicated to opposing gender-affirmative care for trans youth", and the latter two as dedicated to opposing what they call "trans ideology".[1]
More than three-quarters of the parents surveyed had rejected their child's transgender identity. Arjee Restar, a behavioral health researcher then also at the Brown School of Public Health, wrote that the three sites were frequented by parents who already specifically promoted the concept of ROGD and that the websites were "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender".[22]
Littman's study described what the surveyed parents believed to be a rapid onset of gender dysphoria among their children,[10] along with information the parents reported about their children's peer group dynamics, social media use, and prior mental health issues.[23] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders, such as depression and anxiety caused by adolescent trauma.[8] Littman presented preliminary results at a 2017 conference, and the descriptive study was initially published in PLOS One in August 2018.[8][10]
According to MIT Technology Review, "while theories and rumors about something like ROGD had quietly percolated online before the paper was published, Littman's descriptive study gave legitimacy to the concept. ... The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. But it arrived at exactly the time people with bad intentions were looking for science to buoy their opinions."[17]
Correction
The paper was met with criticism from health researchers, transgender activists, and others, who stated that it had already been politicized, and that there was self-selection bias of the subjects that Littman surveyed, as she only surveyed parents and not the young people themselves nor the health professionals caring for them.[10][12][22] Responding to negative comments, PLOS One announced two weeks after publication that it would open a post-publication review of the study's methodologies and analyses.[9][10][22][24]
In March 2019, PLOS One completed its post-publication review, and Littman's corrected version of the paper was published on March 19, 2019.[25] In the journal's blog, PLOS One editor Joerg Heber apologized "to the trans and gender variant community" for the previous review and publication, saying "the study, including its goals, methodology, and conclusions, were not adequately framed in the published version, and that these needed to be corrected."[26] Heber noted that the hypothesized condition of ROGD had "not yet been clinically validated".[26]
In a notice of correction prefacing her updated version of the study, Littman stated:
Littman responded in 2022 to what she described as mistaken assumptions about the study's goals, describing it as a "very good-faith attempt" to "find out what's going on" and adding, "As a person I am liberal; I'm pro-LGBT. I saw a phenomenon with my own eyes and I investigated, found that it was different than what was in the scientific literature." Littman has also stated that her paper "does not apply to all cases of gender dysphoria" and "doesn't imply that nobody benefits from transition". Littman stood by the core claims she made in her study, including its conclusion that more research needs to be conducted.[17]
Terminology
The term "rapid-onset gender dysphoria", coined by Littman, first appeared in a July 2016 notice that was posted on four websites, recruiting parents to respond to a research survey that Littman described as "Rapid onset gender dysphoria, social media, and peer groups".[27] In the title of Littman's poster abstract for the study, published in February 2017, the phrase appeared as "Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria".[28]
In 2019, Littman noted that "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this time."[16] She wrote:
Reactions
Institutional
On the same day that PLOS One announced its review, Brown University took down a press release it had earlier posted about the paper.[9][30] Responding to critics, Brown University president Christina Paxson and Provost Richard M. Locke said they had not infringed on academic freedom and stated that Brown's commitment to only "publicize research that unassailably meets the highest standards of excellence" required Brown to retract the press release after PLOS One opened an investigation on the paper in question.[31] They said that "given the concerns raised about research design and methods, the most responsible course of action was to stop publicizing the work published in this particular instance. We would have done this regardless of the topic of the article."[32]
Academic
Several critiques of the study have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In a 2020 paper published in The Sociological Review, bioethicist Florence Ashley described the study as an attempt to circumvent existing research supporting gender-affirming care.[1] Sociologists Natacha Kennedy and Victoria Pitts-Taylor, in two separate 2020 publications in the Journal of LGBT Youth and Sexualities, described ROGD as a moral panic and argued that trans youth are often aware of their identity long before coming out to their parents.[33][7]
Shortly after PLOS One published the corrected study, a critique of the original study's methodology appeared in Archives of Sexual Behavior.[22] The author, Arjee Restar, argued that Littman's study was fatally methodologically flawed, beginning with the choice to sample exclusively from users of three websites "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender", with the result that three-quarters of those surveyed had rejected their child's gender identity; 91 percent of respondents were white, 82 percent were women, and 66 percent were between the ages of 46 and 60. She wrote that the study was mostly composed of "white mothers who have strong oppositional beliefs about their children’s trans identification" and that there was very little evidence that Littman's survey responses were representative of trans youth and young adults as a whole.[22]
In a letter to the editor, Littman responded that her methodologies were consistent with those that had been used, without controversy, in widely cited studies supporting gender identity affirmation health care.[34]
In 2022, the eighth edition of WPATH's Standards of Care (SOC-8)—a publication providing clinical guidance for healthcare professionals working with transgender and gender diverse individuals—criticized the study due to its methodological flaws. The study's focus on parents of transgender youth recruited from communities with skepticism towards gender affirming care presents difficulty in establishing social influence as a possible factor in development of gender dysphoria. According to the SOC-8, the study's results also have not been replicated by other researchers.[35]
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies describes ROGD as "an anti-trans theory" that "violates principles of research methods by using a pathologizing framework and language", using terminology that compares gender dysphoria and transgender identification to a contagious disease, in opposition to organizations such as WPATH, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Health Organization who state that being trans is not a mental disorder. The encyclopedia further states that bias appears to be present at every stage of the study, including its basic premise, the absence of random sampling, self-selection bias in the recruitment process, and the data collection procedure, which was described as "fundamentally flawed in a number of critical ways". Additionally, the encyclopedia entry notes that, although the parents may have believed the development of their child's gender identity to have been abrupt, the data were not collected from the youths themselves, and so Littman's study cannot ascertain whether these individuals had simply chosen not to reveal their gender identity at an earlier time.[18]
Anti-LGBTQ groups
The Southern Poverty Law Center stated "The rise of anti-trans sentiment among anti-LGBTQ groups has fueled a cottage industry of anti-trans research that in turn is promoted by anti-LGBTQ groups, including ACPeds, which has become a go-to for expertise in anti-trans pseudoscience", listing the original study as an example, further stating "anti-LGBTQ media circulated the study widely, and ACPeds' Cretella touted the study at the 2018 Values Voter gathering (sponsored by anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council)."[36]
The Human Rights Campaign stated "anti-LGBTQ+ activists often use concerns about internet safety in order to spread harmful rumors about the LGBTQ+ community. You may see opponents of trans people specifically use junk science by Lisa Littman at Brown University to falsely claim that access to social media and the internet has created a 'contagion' that causes many youth to mistakenly identify as transgender."[37]
Popular press
Scholars writing in The Conversation and journalists in Slate columns have condemned what they saw as politicization of science by social conservatives.[12][38] Madeleine Kearns, a contributing writer at National Review, called for further study into the proposed phenomenon.[39] Writer and transgender advocate Liz Duck-Chong described the hypothesized condition as "a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people" in an op-ed published in The Guardian,[11] while Abigail Shrier, who later published the controversial book Irreversible Damage about the concept, called it an explanation for the experiences of parents in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal.[23][40][41][42]
In a Psychology Today opinion piece, Rutgers University psychology professor Lee Jussim described the PLOS-requested rewrite of the paper as an "Orwellian correction" involving additions and minor changes where no errors had existed.[43] Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, called Brown University's failure to defend Littman "an indictment of the integrity of their academic and administrative leadership", and described Brown's explanation of the retraction as "anti-intellectual" and "completely antithetical to academic freedom".[10]
Conservative media outlets such as Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, Breitbart, and Quillette heavily publicized the article and criticized Brown recalling its initial press release concerning the paper. Conservative outlets cite the paper to claim that transgender identity is a "trend, phase, or disease".[13][14][15]
Professional commentary
Rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Controversy surrounds the concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), proposed as a subtype of gender dysphoria and said to be caused by peer influence and social contagion.[1] ROGD has not been recognized by any major professional association as a valid mental health diagnosis, and use of the term has been discouraged by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and other medical organizations due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence, major methodological issues in existing research, and likelihood to cause harm by stigmatizing gender-affirming care.[2][3][4][5]
Lisa Littman, at the time an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, coined the term rapid-onset gender dysphoria in a 2018 study based on an online survey of parents on three anti-trans websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group.[1][6][7] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders.[8]
In August 2018, Littman (then an assistant professor of the practice at the Brown University School of Public Health) published a descriptive study in PLOS One.[8] Criticism of the study's methodology and conclusions was voiced by some clinicians, researchers, and transgender activists, and two weeks after publication, PLOS One responded by announcing a post-publication review of the paper.[9][10] On the same day as PLOS One announced its post-publication review, Brown University retracted its press release promoting the study.[9] Controversy surrounding the paper grew as articles and opinion pieces, both critical and supportive, were published in mainstream media discussing concerns about the study's methodology and the validity of its hypotheses,[10][11][12] as well as issues of academic freedom.[9] Conservative media outlets heavily publicized the article and criticized Brown recalling its initial press release concerning the paper.[13][14][15] In March 2019, the journal concluded its review and republished Littman's revised and corrected version.[16] In 2022, Littman stood by the core claims she made in her study, adding that ROGD "does not apply to all cases of gender dysphoria" and "doesn't imply that nobody benefits from transition".[17]
ROGD has been criticized as "anti-trans propaganda and bad science".[18] Medical and other journals have published results of individual research studies that did not support claims that ROGD is identifiable as a distinct phenomenon, or that the onset of transgender identity among young people is influenced by social contacts online or in their real lives. Other critiques called it "methodologically flawed", said that it represented a "moral panic", or questioned whether self-reported transgender identity was, in fact, increasing.[citation needed] In 2021, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association cosigned a statement with 120 other medical organizations in the evidence-based Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science, calling for ROGD and other "anti-trans theories" not to be used in diagnostic or clinical settings, due to their lack of reputable scientific evidence. The statement also criticized the proliferation of misinformation supporting the concept of ROGD targeted at parents and clinicians and the concept's use to justify laws limiting the rights of transgender youth in the United States.[5]
Original publication
Lisa Littman, an American physician and researcher, coined the term "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" at the outset of her research for a descriptive study originally titled "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports".[19] Littman's medical specialties are in preventive medicine and public health, as well as obstetrics and gynecology.[20] Her research interests relate to reproductive health, gender dysphoria, detransition, and maternal and child health including prematurity and the use of substances in pregnancy.[20] Littman joined the faculty of the Brown University School of Public Health in 2018 as assistant professor of the Practice in Behavioral and Social Sciences.[20]
Littman, then an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, became interested in the possible role of social contagion in gender dysphoria among young people after noticing that, in her small town in Rhode Island, a few teenagers in the same friend group began identifying as transgender. She conducted a study by collecting 256 responses from an online survey, which was not randomly distributed, but rather targeted at parents recruited from three anti-transgender websites where she had seen parents describe what they believed were sudden gender transitions in their adolescents: 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth TransCritical Professionals. The transgender youth themselves had no say in the study.[1][6][10][17] Littman said she encouraged wide distribution of the survey beyond these three sites,[10] but the study states that participants were encouraged to distribute the study only to "individuals or communities that they thought might include eligible participants", which the study defined as parents who believed "their child had a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria", thus using another nonprobability sampling method known as snowball sampling.[8][21] Of the three websites, an article published in Science described the first two as "gathering places for parents concerned by their children's exploration of a transgender identity", with the third being closed to non-members.[10] Bioethicist Florence Ashley described the first as "dedicated to opposing gender-affirmative care for trans youth", and the latter two as dedicated to opposing what they call "trans ideology".[1]
More than three-quarters of the parents surveyed had rejected their child's transgender identity. Arjee Restar, a behavioral health researcher then also at the Brown School of Public Health, wrote that the three sites were frequented by parents who already specifically promoted the concept of ROGD and that the websites were "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender".[22]
Littman's study described what the surveyed parents believed to be a rapid onset of gender dysphoria among their children,[10] along with information the parents reported about their children's peer group dynamics, social media use, and prior mental health issues.[23] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders, such as depression and anxiety caused by adolescent trauma.[8] Littman presented preliminary results at a 2017 conference, and the descriptive study was initially published in PLOS One in August 2018.[8][10]
According to MIT Technology Review, "while theories and rumors about something like ROGD had quietly percolated online before the paper was published, Littman's descriptive study gave legitimacy to the concept. ... The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. But it arrived at exactly the time people with bad intentions were looking for science to buoy their opinions."[17]
Correction
The paper was met with criticism from health researchers, transgender activists, and others, who stated that it had already been politicized, and that there was self-selection bias of the subjects that Littman surveyed, as she only surveyed parents and not the young people themselves nor the health professionals caring for them.[10][12][22] Responding to negative comments, PLOS One announced two weeks after publication that it would open a post-publication review of the study's methodologies and analyses.[9][10][22][24]
In March 2019, PLOS One completed its post-publication review, and Littman's corrected version of the paper was published on March 19, 2019.[25] In the journal's blog, PLOS One editor Joerg Heber apologized "to the trans and gender variant community" for the previous review and publication, saying "the study, including its goals, methodology, and conclusions, were not adequately framed in the published version, and that these needed to be corrected."[26] Heber noted that the hypothesized condition of ROGD had "not yet been clinically validated".[26]
In a notice of correction prefacing her updated version of the study, Littman stated:
PLOS One's editor wrote that "the corrected article now provides a better context of the work, as a report of parental observations, but not a clinically validated phenomenon or a diagnostic guideline".[26] On behalf of the journal, Heber wrote: "Correcting the scientific record in this manner and in such circumstances is a sign of responsible publishing", where further scrutiny was called for to "clarify whether the conclusions presented are indeed backed up by the analysis and data of that original study".[26] Heber later stated, "At its core, the survey of the parents stands as it is... We let the original results stand."[25]
Littman responded in 2022 to what she described as mistaken assumptions about the study's goals, describing it as a "very good-faith attempt" to "find out what's going on" and adding, "As a person I am liberal; I'm pro-LGBT. I saw a phenomenon with my own eyes and I investigated, found that it was different than what was in the scientific literature." Littman has also stated that her paper "does not apply to all cases of gender dysphoria" and "doesn't imply that nobody benefits from transition". Littman stood by the core claims she made in her study, including its conclusion that more research needs to be conducted.[17]
Terminology
The term "rapid-onset gender dysphoria", coined by Littman, first appeared in a July 2016 notice that was posted on four websites, recruiting parents to respond to a research survey that Littman described as "Rapid onset gender dysphoria, social media, and peer groups".[27] In the title of Littman's poster abstract for the study, published in February 2017, the phrase appeared as "Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria".[28]
In 2019, Littman noted that "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this time."[16] She wrote:
In a formal comment published by PLOS One at the conclusion of its review, academic editor and Professor of Social Psychology Angelo Brandelli Costa wrote, "the level of evidence produced by the Dr. Littman's study cannot generate a new diagnostic criterion relative to the time of presentation of the demands of medical and social gender affirmation."[29] Costa suggested, "Several procedures still need to be adopted to generate a potential new subcategory of gender dysphoria that has not yet been clinically validated. One of these procedures is the assessment of mental health professionals trained according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines, interviewing not just the family, but the youth (longitudinally)."[29]
Reactions
Institutional
On the same day that PLOS One announced its review, Brown University took down a press release it had earlier posted about the paper.[9][30] Responding to critics, Brown University president Christina Paxson and Provost Richard M. Locke said they had not infringed on academic freedom and stated that Brown's commitment to only "publicize research that unassailably meets the highest standards of excellence" required Brown to retract the press release after PLOS One opened an investigation on the paper in question.[31] They said that "given the concerns raised about research design and methods, the most responsible course of action was to stop publicizing the work published in this particular instance. We would have done this regardless of the topic of the article."[32]
Academic
Several critiques of the study have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In a 2020 paper published in The Sociological Review, bioethicist Florence Ashley described the study as an attempt to circumvent existing research supporting gender-affirming care.[1] Sociologists Natacha Kennedy and Victoria Pitts-Taylor, in two separate 2020 publications in the Journal of LGBT Youth and Sexualities, described ROGD as a moral panic and argued that trans youth are often aware of their identity long before coming out to their parents.[33][7]
Shortly after PLOS One published the corrected study, a critique of the original study's methodology appeared in Archives of Sexual Behavior.[22] The author, Arjee Restar, argued that Littman's study was fatally methodologically flawed, beginning with the choice to sample exclusively from users of three websites "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender", with the result that three-quarters of those surveyed had rejected their child's gender identity; 91 percent of respondents were white, 82 percent were women, and 66 percent were between the ages of 46 and 60. She wrote that the study was mostly composed of "white mothers who have strong oppositional beliefs about their children’s trans identification" and that there was very little evidence that Littman's survey responses were representative of trans youth and young adults as a whole.[22]
In a letter to the editor, Littman responded that her methodologies were consistent with those that had been used, without controversy, in widely cited studies supporting gender identity affirmation health care.[34]
In 2022, the eighth edition of WPATH's Standards of Care (SOC-8)—a publication providing clinical guidance for healthcare professionals working with transgender and gender diverse individuals—criticized the study due to its methodological flaws. The study's focus on parents of transgender youth recruited from communities with skepticism towards gender affirming care presents difficulty in establishing social influence as a possible factor in development of gender dysphoria. According to the SOC-8, the study's results also have not been replicated by other researchers.[35]
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies describes ROGD as "an anti-trans theory" that "violates principles of research methods by using a pathologizing framework and language", using terminology that compares gender dysphoria and transgender identification to a contagious disease, in opposition to organizations such as WPATH, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Health Organization who state that being trans is not a mental disorder. The encyclopedia further states that bias appears to be present at every stage of the study, including its basic premise, the absence of random sampling, self-selection bias in the recruitment process, and the data collection procedure, which was described as "fundamentally flawed in a number of critical ways". Additionally, the encyclopedia entry notes that, although the parents may have believed the development of their child's gender identity to have been abrupt, the data were not collected from the youths themselves, and so Littman's study cannot ascertain whether these individuals had simply chosen not to reveal their gender identity at an earlier time.[18]
Anti-LGBTQ groups
The Southern Poverty Law Center stated "The rise of anti-trans sentiment among anti-LGBTQ groups has fueled a cottage industry of anti-trans research that in turn is promoted by anti-LGBTQ groups, including ACPeds, which has become a go-to for expertise in anti-trans pseudoscience", listing the original study as an example, further stating "anti-LGBTQ media circulated the study widely, and ACPeds' Cretella touted the study at the 2018 Values Voter gathering (sponsored by anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council)."[36]
The Human Rights Campaign stated "anti-LGBTQ+ activists often use concerns about internet safety in order to spread harmful rumors about the LGBTQ+ community. You may see opponents of trans people specifically use junk science by Lisa Littman at Brown University to falsely claim that access to social media and the internet has created a 'contagion' that causes many youth to mistakenly identify as transgender."[37]
Popular press
Scholars writing in The Conversation and journalists in Slate columns have condemned what they saw as politicization of science by social conservatives.[12][38] Madeleine Kearns, a contributing writer at National Review, called for further study into the proposed phenomenon.[39] Writer and transgender advocate Liz Duck-Chong described the hypothesized condition as "a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people" in an op-ed published in The Guardian,[11] while Abigail Shrier, who later published the controversial book Irreversible Damage about the concept, called it an explanation for the experiences of parents in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal.[23][40][41][42]
In a Psychology Today opinion piece, Rutgers University psychology professor Lee Jussim described the PLOS-requested rewrite of the paper as an "Orwellian correction" involving additions and minor changes where no errors had existed.[43] Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, called Brown University's failure to defend Littman "an indictment of the integrity of their academic and administrative leadership", and described Brown's explanation of the retraction as "anti-intellectual" and "completely antithetical to academic freedom".[10]
Conservative media outlets such as Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, Breitbart, and Quillette heavily publicized the article and criticized Brown recalling its initial press release concerning the paper. Conservative outlets cite the paper to claim that transgender identity is a "trend, phase, or disease".[13][14][15]
Professional commentary
More allegations of conservative-sponsored pseudo-science:
en.wikipedia.org
The Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is an activist non-profit organisation that is known for mischaracterizing standards of care for transgender youth and engaging in political lobbying using misinformation which contradicts the evidence base around transgender healthcare.[1][2][3][4] The group routinely cites the discredited[5] theory of rapid-onset gender dysphoria and has falsely claimed that conversion therapy can only be practiced on the basis of sexual orientation rather than gender identity.[6] SEGM opposes informed consent for transgender healthcare for people under the age of 25.[3] SEGM is often cited in anti-transgender legislation and court cases, sometimes providing evidence briefs themselves.[4][6] It is not recognized as a scientific organization by the international medical community.[2][3][7]
Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine issued a report which described SEGM as a small group of anti-trans activists.[8] A commentary published in the journal Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology described them as a "discriminatory advocacy organization".[4] Joshua Safer, a spokesperson for the Endocrine Society, described them as outside the medical mainstream.[3] Aviva Stahl stated they were "pushing flawed science"[1] and Mallory Moore stated they have "ties to evangelical activists".[9][6]
SEGM is closely affiliated with Genspect: seven advisors to SEGM are on Genspect's team of advisors, including Stella O'Malley, Genspect's founder.[10]
Activities and positions
William Malone, a founder of SEGM, has opposed the informed consent model for transgender healthcare, where adults older than 18 can start hormones after signing an informed consent document without requiring an evaluation by a mental health professional. He told Medscape that "cognitive maturity doesn’t occur until the age of 25."[3]
SEGM made a submission[11] in defense of the state of Arizona's ban on Medicaid coverage for transgender healthcare.[6] In it, they advanced the discredited idea of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), which suggests a subtype of gender dysphoria caused by peer influence and social contagion. ROGD has been condemned as unevidenced and nonscientific by the majority of the worlds' major psychological bodies.[9][12] Lambda Legal and Cooley LLP filed an amicus brief opposing the ban on behalf of LGBT advocacy organizations such as PFLAG, the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance, and the TransActive Gender Project. The Pediatric Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health also filed amicus briefs opposing the ban.[13]
Citations in anti-trans legislation
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton cited SEGM's statement that "childhood-onset gender dysphoria has been shown to have a high rate of natural resolution, with 61-98% of children reidentifying with their biological sex during puberty" in a bill that would define providing gender-affirming care to minors as "child abuse". The statistic is cited from a paper which showed a strong association between the intensity of a child's dysphoria and its persistence.[2][21][22][6]
In March 2020, SEGM was cited in an Idaho bill barring transgender people from changing their sex on their birth certificate. A SEGM spokesperson said they never expressed support for the bill.[1] The legislation stated SEGM "has declared that the conflation of sex and gender in health care is alarming, subjects hundreds of thousands of individuals to the risk of unintended medical harm, and will greatly impede medical research" without providing evidence for the claims. The ACLU condemned the state for their actions.[23] Malone also testified to the legislature in favor of a bill that would make it a felony to prescribe hormone blockers to people under 18 or refer them to gender-reassignment surgery.[6]
In February 2023, Mike Leman spoke for the Catholic Dioceses in support of Wyoming Senate File 111, which ban gender-affirming care for minors. He cited a study from SEGM that questioned Dutch research into such care.[7]
Reception
On April 16 2021, BuzzFeed News stated "A small number of highly controversial doctors and researchers have been pushing these anti-trans bills. Representing organizations with seemingly professional names like the American College of Pediatricians or the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, they have effectively accomplished for gender dysphoria what anti-vaxxer medical professionals have sought to do for their cause: give credence to the notion that no scientific or medical consensus exists regarding the relative safety and efficacy of a given treatment, despite the clear and growing evidence to the contrary".[1]
In August, Trans Safety Network described SEGM as "an anti-trans psychiatric and sociological think tank" and fringe group and reported that most of SEGM's funding came in donations greater than $10,000.[24][9]
In August, Vice News characterized William Malone as an "anti-trans activist" and stated that while SEGM claims to be concerned about the lack of evidence surrounding gender-affirming care for young people, they use the same tactics and citations as Florida's memo, which claimed to provide a scientific basis for banning gender-affirming care but was criticized by organizations such as WPATH. Vice reached out to authors cited in the memo, who said it took their research out of context as the research, and later research, supported gender-affirming care.[8]
In January 2023, R.V. Scheide writing in A News Cafe stated "law firms such as Center for American Liberty can count on support from anti-transgender Christian physician groups such as the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine for expert testimony in court cases."[26]
Medical community
In April 2021, Medscape Medical News asked Joshua Safer – an endocrinologist from Mount Sinai acting as a spokesperson for the Endocrine Society on transgender issues – about SEGM, SEGM member Will Malone, and their concerns about treatment for transgender youth, he stated: "This is a relatively small group that has been making the same arguments for a number of years, and they are very much outside the mainstream. It's not that there's a debate within organized medicine, where there are equal numbers of people on both sides. Dr Malone is outside of those arguments; [he is] not in the mainstream".[3]
In March 2022, SEGM funded a paper titled "Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults"[27] which appeared in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. In June, the journal published a response which compared SEGM to the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a prominent conversion therapy advocation organization which focused on sexual orientation change efforts, as they both provide "scientific experts" to testify against LGBT rights.[28]
In April, the Yale School of Medicine issued a report in response to the attacks on transgender healthcare in Arizona and Texas which described SEGM as a small group of anti-trans activists "without apparent ties to mainstream scientific of professional organizations" whose "medical claims are not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion" and help lawmakers criminalize transgender care.[2][8]
In September, a commentary published in Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology titled "Supporting and Advocating for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth and Their Families Within the Sociopolitical Context of Widespread Discriminatory Legislation and Policies" used SEGM and the American College of Pediatricians as examples of "discrimatory advocacy organizations" with ties to "professionals who lack expertise in the field". They stated they spread misinformation about transgender health care by mischaracterizing clinical best practices and the scientific research base around transgender care by relying "on a very small, nonrepresentative sample of the available literature, which is often inaccurately interpreted".[4]
In October, Science-Based Medicine described SEGM as a "transphobic organization" which is closely affiliated with Genspect, who they described as "an anti-trans gender critical (GC) organization", and stated they "both regularly peddle anti-trans pseudoscience".[6][10]
In the Fall of 2022, America First Legal ran a campaign ad claiming "Joe Biden and the New Left even promote surgery on teens and young adults, removing breasts and genitals". Kaiser Health News fact checked the claim and found it false, stating "even leaders of the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, who are wholly skeptical of the acceleration in gender-affirming care", found it false.[29]
In February 2023, in response to Mike Leman citing SEGM for Wyoming Senate File 111, Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, who directs programs at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Fenway Institute, stated "there are a lot of unofficial, fringe and radical organizations posing deceptively as legitimate healthcare professional societies and claiming, falsely, that gender-affirming medical care causes harm".[7]
Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is an activist non-profit organisation that is known for mischaracterizing standards of care for transgender youth and engaging in political lobbying using misinformation which contradicts the evidence base around transgender healthcare.[1][2][3][4] The group routinely cites the discredited[5] theory of rapid-onset gender dysphoria and has falsely claimed that conversion therapy can only be practiced on the basis of sexual orientation rather than gender identity.[6] SEGM opposes informed consent for transgender healthcare for people under the age of 25.[3] SEGM is often cited in anti-transgender legislation and court cases, sometimes providing evidence briefs themselves.[4][6] It is not recognized as a scientific organization by the international medical community.[2][3][7]
Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine issued a report which described SEGM as a small group of anti-trans activists.[8] A commentary published in the journal Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology described them as a "discriminatory advocacy organization".[4] Joshua Safer, a spokesperson for the Endocrine Society, described them as outside the medical mainstream.[3] Aviva Stahl stated they were "pushing flawed science"[1] and Mallory Moore stated they have "ties to evangelical activists".[9][6]
SEGM is closely affiliated with Genspect: seven advisors to SEGM are on Genspect's team of advisors, including Stella O'Malley, Genspect's founder.[10]
Activities and positions
William Malone, a founder of SEGM, has opposed the informed consent model for transgender healthcare, where adults older than 18 can start hormones after signing an informed consent document without requiring an evaluation by a mental health professional. He told Medscape that "cognitive maturity doesn’t occur until the age of 25."[3]
SEGM made a submission[11] in defense of the state of Arizona's ban on Medicaid coverage for transgender healthcare.[6] In it, they advanced the discredited idea of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), which suggests a subtype of gender dysphoria caused by peer influence and social contagion. ROGD has been condemned as unevidenced and nonscientific by the majority of the worlds' major psychological bodies.[9][12] Lambda Legal and Cooley LLP filed an amicus brief opposing the ban on behalf of LGBT advocacy organizations such as PFLAG, the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance, and the TransActive Gender Project. The Pediatric Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health also filed amicus briefs opposing the ban.[13]
Citations in anti-trans legislation
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton cited SEGM's statement that "childhood-onset gender dysphoria has been shown to have a high rate of natural resolution, with 61-98% of children reidentifying with their biological sex during puberty" in a bill that would define providing gender-affirming care to minors as "child abuse". The statistic is cited from a paper which showed a strong association between the intensity of a child's dysphoria and its persistence.[2][21][22][6]
In March 2020, SEGM was cited in an Idaho bill barring transgender people from changing their sex on their birth certificate. A SEGM spokesperson said they never expressed support for the bill.[1] The legislation stated SEGM "has declared that the conflation of sex and gender in health care is alarming, subjects hundreds of thousands of individuals to the risk of unintended medical harm, and will greatly impede medical research" without providing evidence for the claims. The ACLU condemned the state for their actions.[23] Malone also testified to the legislature in favor of a bill that would make it a felony to prescribe hormone blockers to people under 18 or refer them to gender-reassignment surgery.[6]
In February 2023, Mike Leman spoke for the Catholic Dioceses in support of Wyoming Senate File 111, which ban gender-affirming care for minors. He cited a study from SEGM that questioned Dutch research into such care.[7]
Reception
On April 16 2021, BuzzFeed News stated "A small number of highly controversial doctors and researchers have been pushing these anti-trans bills. Representing organizations with seemingly professional names like the American College of Pediatricians or the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, they have effectively accomplished for gender dysphoria what anti-vaxxer medical professionals have sought to do for their cause: give credence to the notion that no scientific or medical consensus exists regarding the relative safety and efficacy of a given treatment, despite the clear and growing evidence to the contrary".[1]
In August, Trans Safety Network described SEGM as "an anti-trans psychiatric and sociological think tank" and fringe group and reported that most of SEGM's funding came in donations greater than $10,000.[24][9]
In August, Vice News characterized William Malone as an "anti-trans activist" and stated that while SEGM claims to be concerned about the lack of evidence surrounding gender-affirming care for young people, they use the same tactics and citations as Florida's memo, which claimed to provide a scientific basis for banning gender-affirming care but was criticized by organizations such as WPATH. Vice reached out to authors cited in the memo, who said it took their research out of context as the research, and later research, supported gender-affirming care.[8]
In January 2023, R.V. Scheide writing in A News Cafe stated "law firms such as Center for American Liberty can count on support from anti-transgender Christian physician groups such as the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine for expert testimony in court cases."[26]
Medical community
In April 2021, Medscape Medical News asked Joshua Safer – an endocrinologist from Mount Sinai acting as a spokesperson for the Endocrine Society on transgender issues – about SEGM, SEGM member Will Malone, and their concerns about treatment for transgender youth, he stated: "This is a relatively small group that has been making the same arguments for a number of years, and they are very much outside the mainstream. It's not that there's a debate within organized medicine, where there are equal numbers of people on both sides. Dr Malone is outside of those arguments; [he is] not in the mainstream".[3]
In March 2022, SEGM funded a paper titled "Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults"[27] which appeared in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. In June, the journal published a response which compared SEGM to the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a prominent conversion therapy advocation organization which focused on sexual orientation change efforts, as they both provide "scientific experts" to testify against LGBT rights.[28]
In April, the Yale School of Medicine issued a report in response to the attacks on transgender healthcare in Arizona and Texas which described SEGM as a small group of anti-trans activists "without apparent ties to mainstream scientific of professional organizations" whose "medical claims are not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion" and help lawmakers criminalize transgender care.[2][8]
In September, a commentary published in Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology titled "Supporting and Advocating for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth and Their Families Within the Sociopolitical Context of Widespread Discriminatory Legislation and Policies" used SEGM and the American College of Pediatricians as examples of "discrimatory advocacy organizations" with ties to "professionals who lack expertise in the field". They stated they spread misinformation about transgender health care by mischaracterizing clinical best practices and the scientific research base around transgender care by relying "on a very small, nonrepresentative sample of the available literature, which is often inaccurately interpreted".[4]
In October, Science-Based Medicine described SEGM as a "transphobic organization" which is closely affiliated with Genspect, who they described as "an anti-trans gender critical (GC) organization", and stated they "both regularly peddle anti-trans pseudoscience".[6][10]
In the Fall of 2022, America First Legal ran a campaign ad claiming "Joe Biden and the New Left even promote surgery on teens and young adults, removing breasts and genitals". Kaiser Health News fact checked the claim and found it false, stating "even leaders of the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, who are wholly skeptical of the acceleration in gender-affirming care", found it false.[29]
In February 2023, in response to Mike Leman citing SEGM for Wyoming Senate File 111, Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, who directs programs at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Fenway Institute, stated "there are a lot of unofficial, fringe and radical organizations posing deceptively as legitimate healthcare professional societies and claiming, falsely, that gender-affirming medical care causes harm".[7]
More allegations of rightie-sponsored anti-trans pseudo-science:
medicine.yale.edu
Executive Summary and Table of Contents
Introduction and Summary
On February 18, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an interpretation of Texas state law (the “AG Opinion”), taking the position that certain medical procedures constitute child abuse as defined in the Texas Family Code.1 Texas Governor Greg Abbott cited the AG Opinion as authority for his February 22, 2022 directive requiring the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures” (the “Governor’s Directive”).2
On April 7, 2022, Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama signed S.B. 184 (the “Alabama Law”), which imposes felony penalties on anyone providing certain medical care to any child, adolescent, or young adult under age 19.3
We are a group of six scientists and one law professor. Among the scientists, three of us are M.D.s., three are PhD’s, and all treat transgender children and adolescents in daily clinical practice. We all hold academic appointments at major medical schools, including the University of Texas Southwestern and Yale University. In this report, we examine in depth the scientific claims made in the AG Opinion and the text of the Alabama Law about medical care for transgender children and adolescents. Note that, although we reject the AG’s assertion that gender-affirming care constitutes child abuse and we oppose the Alabama Law’s criminalization of such care, we do not address, in this report, the legal validity of either.4 In accordance with our expertise, our focus is on the science.
After examining the AG Opinion and the findings of “fact” in the Alabama Law in detail, we conclude that their medical claims are not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion. These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the AG Opinion’s claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse. The Alabama Law contains similar assertions of scientific fact, and these too are riddled with errors, calling into question the scientific foundations of the law.
In this report, we focus closely on the AG Opinion, because it contains a full explanation of its reasoning, while the Alabama law presents a list of purported scientific findings without argument or citation. We note, throughout, when the purported findings in the Alabama law echo the claims made in the AG Opinion.
The Texas Attorney General either misunderstands or deliberately misstates medical protocols and scientific evidence. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law make exaggerated and unsupported claims about the course of treatment for gender dysphoria, specifically claiming that standard medical care for pediatric patients includes surgery on genitals and reproductive organs. In fact, the authoritative protocols for medical care for transgender children and adolescents, which define what we term “gender-affirming care,” specifically state that individuals must be over the age of majority before they can undergo such surgery. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law also ignore the mainstream scientific evidence showing the significant benefits of gender-affirming care and exaggerate potential risks.
These are not close calls or areas of reasonable disagreement. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law’s findings ignore established medical authorities and repeat discredited, outdated, and poor-quality information. The AG Opinion also mischaracterizes reputable sources and repeatedly cites a fringe group whose listed advisors have limited (or no) scientific and medical credentials and include well-known anti-trans activists.
The AG Opinion falsely implies that puberty blockers and hormones are administered to prepubertal children, when, in fact, the standard medical protocols recommend drug treatments only for adolescents (and not prepubertal children). For purposes of this report, we use the term “adolescent” to refer to a child under the age of majority in whom pubertal development has begun.
The AG Opinion also omits mention of the extensive safeguards established by the standard protocols to ensure that medication is needed and that adolescents and their parents give informed assent and consent, respectively, to treatment when it is determined to be essential care. There is no rush to treatment: the course of gender-affirming care is tailored to each individual, and standard protocols mandate a process of consultation involving an interdisciplinary team including mental health professionals, medical providers, and parents.
By omitting the evidence demonstrating the substantial benefits of treatment for gender dysphoria, and by focusing on invented and exaggerated harms, the AG Opinion and the Alabama Law portray a warped picture of the scientific evidence. Contrary to their claims, a solid body of reputable evidence shows that gender-affirming care can be lifesaving and significantly improves mental health and reduces suicide attempts. The standard medical protocols were crafted by bodies of international experts based on a solid scientific foundation and have been in use for decades. Thus, treating gender dysphoria is considered not only ethical but also the clinically and medically recommended standard of care. Indeed, it would be considered unethical to withhold medical care from patients with gender dysphoria, just as it would be unethical to withhold potentially lifesaving care for patients with any other serious medical condition.
The repeated errors and omissions in the AG Opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence. It seems apparent that the AG Opinion is, rather, motivated by bias and crafted to achieve a preordained goal: to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The same is true of the scientific claims made in the Alabama Law.
Many reputable scientific and professional organizations have issued statements opposing the Texas action,5 but to our knowledge, none have conducted the in-depth, point-by-point review that we provide here.
Throughout this report, we use the highest-quality scientific evidence available. In this context, large-scale, randomized controlled trials would be inappropriate for ethical reasons: when medical care has been shown (by other methods) to reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental health, as is the case for gender-affirming care for individuals with gender dysphoria, it would be unethical to deny that care to a control group of patients. This is true in many areas of medicine. In such cases, physicians instead rely on studies using other scientific methods, and they judge the relative quality of evidence based on several factors, including whether the study is peer-reviewed, published in a high-impact journal, up to date, and conducted by reputable investigators.
In this report, we cite studies that are peer-reviewed, up to date, conducted by respected investigators, and published in high-impact journals that are widely read. This represents the highest-quality evidence available to physicians making treatment decisions in this context. By contrast, the AG Opinion relies on very poor-quality evidence. Only two of its sources are peer-reviewed scientific studies. Of these, one is badly out-of-date, and the other is cited for a proposition that is irrelevant to the treatment of transgender children and adolescents.6
To summarize, we find that:
1. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law falsely claim that current medical standards authorize the surgical sterilization of transgender children and adolescents. In fact, present medical standards state that individuals must be the age of majority or older before undergoing surgery on genitals or reproductive organs.
Current medical protocols do not allow for either surgery or drug therapy for prepubertal children and specifically state that genital surgery should not be carried out before patients reach the legal age of majority. The standards of care do permit the careful use of drug therapies for adolescents (but not prepubertal children) and caution that drug therapies should be undertaken only after a careful, staged process of psychological and medical counseling. The AG Opinion’s and Alabama Law’s lists of “sex change procedures” and the claims that doctors are routinely sterilizing children and teenagers do not reflect current medical practice.
2. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law ignore the substantial benefits of medical care for transgender children and adolescents, care which has consistently been shown to reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental health. The best scientific evidence shows that gender dysphoria is real, that untreated gender dysphoria leads predictably to serious, negative medical consequences, and that gender-affirming care significantly improves mental health outcomes, including reducing rates of suicide.
The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law omit any discussion of the demonstrated benefits of gender-affirming care as recognized by established medical science. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law also greatly exaggerate the percentage of adolescents whose diagnosed gender dysphoria dissipates without gender-affirming care. And the AG Opinion repeats discredited evidence claiming that there is a wave of so-called “rapid-onset” gender dysphoria among U.S. adolescents.
3. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law greatly exaggerate the risks of gender-affirming drug therapy.
The AG Opinion exhibits a poor understanding of medicine and consistently misstates medical protocols and scientific evidence. Contrary to the AG Opinion’s statements, gender-affirming drug therapy (including puberty blockers and hormonal treatments) is safe and effective and has been approved by the major medical authorities. Puberty blockers are fully reversible; when discontinued, puberty begins, and fertility develops normally.
Gender-affirming hormone treatments can reduce fertility to some degree while ongoing, but the evidence suggests that these effects are reversible when hormone therapy is discontinued. Standard medical protocols manage these risks in the way any medical risks should be managed: by weighing the benefits of treatment against potential harms and by a careful and individualized process of consultation and consent. Indeed, the informed consent procedures for gender-affirming drug treatment are at least as rigorous as the consent required for any other drug treatment.
Biased Science in Texas & Alabama
On February 18, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an interpretation of Texas state law (the “AG Opinion”), taking the position that certain medical
medicine.yale.edu
Executive Summary and Table of Contents
Introduction and Summary
On February 18, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an interpretation of Texas state law (the “AG Opinion”), taking the position that certain medical procedures constitute child abuse as defined in the Texas Family Code.1 Texas Governor Greg Abbott cited the AG Opinion as authority for his February 22, 2022 directive requiring the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures” (the “Governor’s Directive”).2
On April 7, 2022, Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama signed S.B. 184 (the “Alabama Law”), which imposes felony penalties on anyone providing certain medical care to any child, adolescent, or young adult under age 19.3
We are a group of six scientists and one law professor. Among the scientists, three of us are M.D.s., three are PhD’s, and all treat transgender children and adolescents in daily clinical practice. We all hold academic appointments at major medical schools, including the University of Texas Southwestern and Yale University. In this report, we examine in depth the scientific claims made in the AG Opinion and the text of the Alabama Law about medical care for transgender children and adolescents. Note that, although we reject the AG’s assertion that gender-affirming care constitutes child abuse and we oppose the Alabama Law’s criminalization of such care, we do not address, in this report, the legal validity of either.4 In accordance with our expertise, our focus is on the science.
After examining the AG Opinion and the findings of “fact” in the Alabama Law in detail, we conclude that their medical claims are not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion. These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the AG Opinion’s claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse. The Alabama Law contains similar assertions of scientific fact, and these too are riddled with errors, calling into question the scientific foundations of the law.
In this report, we focus closely on the AG Opinion, because it contains a full explanation of its reasoning, while the Alabama law presents a list of purported scientific findings without argument or citation. We note, throughout, when the purported findings in the Alabama law echo the claims made in the AG Opinion.
The Texas Attorney General either misunderstands or deliberately misstates medical protocols and scientific evidence. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law make exaggerated and unsupported claims about the course of treatment for gender dysphoria, specifically claiming that standard medical care for pediatric patients includes surgery on genitals and reproductive organs. In fact, the authoritative protocols for medical care for transgender children and adolescents, which define what we term “gender-affirming care,” specifically state that individuals must be over the age of majority before they can undergo such surgery. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law also ignore the mainstream scientific evidence showing the significant benefits of gender-affirming care and exaggerate potential risks.
These are not close calls or areas of reasonable disagreement. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law’s findings ignore established medical authorities and repeat discredited, outdated, and poor-quality information. The AG Opinion also mischaracterizes reputable sources and repeatedly cites a fringe group whose listed advisors have limited (or no) scientific and medical credentials and include well-known anti-trans activists.
The AG Opinion falsely implies that puberty blockers and hormones are administered to prepubertal children, when, in fact, the standard medical protocols recommend drug treatments only for adolescents (and not prepubertal children). For purposes of this report, we use the term “adolescent” to refer to a child under the age of majority in whom pubertal development has begun.
The AG Opinion also omits mention of the extensive safeguards established by the standard protocols to ensure that medication is needed and that adolescents and their parents give informed assent and consent, respectively, to treatment when it is determined to be essential care. There is no rush to treatment: the course of gender-affirming care is tailored to each individual, and standard protocols mandate a process of consultation involving an interdisciplinary team including mental health professionals, medical providers, and parents.
By omitting the evidence demonstrating the substantial benefits of treatment for gender dysphoria, and by focusing on invented and exaggerated harms, the AG Opinion and the Alabama Law portray a warped picture of the scientific evidence. Contrary to their claims, a solid body of reputable evidence shows that gender-affirming care can be lifesaving and significantly improves mental health and reduces suicide attempts. The standard medical protocols were crafted by bodies of international experts based on a solid scientific foundation and have been in use for decades. Thus, treating gender dysphoria is considered not only ethical but also the clinically and medically recommended standard of care. Indeed, it would be considered unethical to withhold medical care from patients with gender dysphoria, just as it would be unethical to withhold potentially lifesaving care for patients with any other serious medical condition.
The repeated errors and omissions in the AG Opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence. It seems apparent that the AG Opinion is, rather, motivated by bias and crafted to achieve a preordained goal: to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The same is true of the scientific claims made in the Alabama Law.
Many reputable scientific and professional organizations have issued statements opposing the Texas action,5 but to our knowledge, none have conducted the in-depth, point-by-point review that we provide here.
Throughout this report, we use the highest-quality scientific evidence available. In this context, large-scale, randomized controlled trials would be inappropriate for ethical reasons: when medical care has been shown (by other methods) to reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental health, as is the case for gender-affirming care for individuals with gender dysphoria, it would be unethical to deny that care to a control group of patients. This is true in many areas of medicine. In such cases, physicians instead rely on studies using other scientific methods, and they judge the relative quality of evidence based on several factors, including whether the study is peer-reviewed, published in a high-impact journal, up to date, and conducted by reputable investigators.
In this report, we cite studies that are peer-reviewed, up to date, conducted by respected investigators, and published in high-impact journals that are widely read. This represents the highest-quality evidence available to physicians making treatment decisions in this context. By contrast, the AG Opinion relies on very poor-quality evidence. Only two of its sources are peer-reviewed scientific studies. Of these, one is badly out-of-date, and the other is cited for a proposition that is irrelevant to the treatment of transgender children and adolescents.6
To summarize, we find that:
1. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law falsely claim that current medical standards authorize the surgical sterilization of transgender children and adolescents. In fact, present medical standards state that individuals must be the age of majority or older before undergoing surgery on genitals or reproductive organs.
Current medical protocols do not allow for either surgery or drug therapy for prepubertal children and specifically state that genital surgery should not be carried out before patients reach the legal age of majority. The standards of care do permit the careful use of drug therapies for adolescents (but not prepubertal children) and caution that drug therapies should be undertaken only after a careful, staged process of psychological and medical counseling. The AG Opinion’s and Alabama Law’s lists of “sex change procedures” and the claims that doctors are routinely sterilizing children and teenagers do not reflect current medical practice.
2. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law ignore the substantial benefits of medical care for transgender children and adolescents, care which has consistently been shown to reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental health. The best scientific evidence shows that gender dysphoria is real, that untreated gender dysphoria leads predictably to serious, negative medical consequences, and that gender-affirming care significantly improves mental health outcomes, including reducing rates of suicide.
The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law omit any discussion of the demonstrated benefits of gender-affirming care as recognized by established medical science. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law also greatly exaggerate the percentage of adolescents whose diagnosed gender dysphoria dissipates without gender-affirming care. And the AG Opinion repeats discredited evidence claiming that there is a wave of so-called “rapid-onset” gender dysphoria among U.S. adolescents.
3. The AG Opinion and the Alabama Law greatly exaggerate the risks of gender-affirming drug therapy.
The AG Opinion exhibits a poor understanding of medicine and consistently misstates medical protocols and scientific evidence. Contrary to the AG Opinion’s statements, gender-affirming drug therapy (including puberty blockers and hormonal treatments) is safe and effective and has been approved by the major medical authorities. Puberty blockers are fully reversible; when discontinued, puberty begins, and fertility develops normally.
Gender-affirming hormone treatments can reduce fertility to some degree while ongoing, but the evidence suggests that these effects are reversible when hormone therapy is discontinued. Standard medical protocols manage these risks in the way any medical risks should be managed: by weighing the benefits of treatment against potential harms and by a careful and individualized process of consultation and consent. Indeed, the informed consent procedures for gender-affirming drug treatment are at least as rigorous as the consent required for any other drug treatment.
$700 million spent in the EU on anti trans crap alone?
www.aidsmap.com
Who’s financing the ‘anti-gender’ movement in Europe?
Over half of funding for anti-gender actors in Europe appears to come from within Europe itself, with significant amounts of money also flowing from the US and the Russian Federation, according to information shared at the European Parliament in March. The public hearing on ‘Foreign...
For some years now, there have been reports of an increasingly organised movement in Europe against access to safe abortion and contraception, LGBTI rights, and sex education. This is visible in different forms, from increased violence and hate speech, to difficulties accessing funding for organisations, and regressive law-making.$700 million spent in the EU on anti trans crap alone?
Who’s financing the ‘anti-gender’ movement in Europe?
Over half of funding for anti-gender actors in Europe appears to come from within Europe itself, with significant amounts of money also flowing from the US and the Russian Federation, according to information shared at the European Parliament in March. The public hearing on ‘Foreign...
These trends point to a growing backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, said Evelyn Regner, member of the European Parliament (MEP) and co-chair of the hearing. This movement is “specifically targeting women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, while also promoting discrimination and violence against LGBTI people, with worrying consequences in some member states,” she said.
Regner, representing the women’s right committee of the European Parliament, FEMM, focused on the hearing’s need to learn about the financial flows to European anti-choice organisations, which are actively working to undermine women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.
EPF identified US$186 million of funding coming from the Russian Federation and US$81 million from the US, with smaller amounts from other countries including Mexico and Qatar. The funding identified is not from governments, but from private individuals and foundations.
The US financing comes mainly from ten key Christian Right organisations, usually funded by private individuals linked to far-right and libertarian causes in the US. They seek to actively influence European institutions and their presence in Europe has become significant.
“Over the last seven years, they’ve established a network of offices in Europe – in Brussels, Geneva, London, Strasbourg, Rome and Vienna,” Datta said. “Those cities are not selected randomly, [they are] the centres for human rights decision-making across Europe. So not just the EU, but the UN, OSCE [the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], Council of Europe, and the courts.”
Where is this money being spent?
EPF identified five elements, which together make up an “anti-human rights infrastructure”.
- Trans-national coalitions e.g. against abortion, LGBT rights or surrogacy.
- New political projects, as anti-gender activists move into far-right political parties.
- New anti-gender social media platforms, like CitizenGo.
- A new presence in the EU, lobbying and targeting institutions.
- Infiltration of positions of power in member states.
An important aspect of this issue is the proliferation of misinformation. For example, OpenDemocracy found that women across Europe are targeted with misinformation by projects affiliated to a large Christian Conservative group, Heartbeat International. The projects establish crisis pregnancy centres that aim to stop women from having abortions.
Heartbeat International has more than 400 affiliates in Italy, including many embedded within hospitals and healthcare centres. One undercover reporter was told by activists inside an obstetrics ward that having an abortion can cause cancer, and that having a baby can cure serious illnesses, including leukaemia.
Provost said, “At almost every affiliate investigated by OpenDemocracy, our undercover reporters were told similar misleading or incorrect claims about their health and/or they were made to feel guilty about having a legal abortion and pressured to do otherwise.”
The same group also promotes so-called abortion pill reversal – an unproven and potentially dangerous treatment that it claims can reverse a medical abortion. OpenDemocracy has launched a new investigation into this issue.
Why would you bring Ben Shapiro into this? He is a lawyer by trade, is he not? The politization of the issue is what's hurting those people.
You mean the incessant attacks on their existence by rightie scumbag politicians?
This assjack wants to ban trans altogether and genocide them.
Last edited:
