Dude, you ain't got a leg to stand on. Even in the progressive Europe the answer to the early onset of gender dysphoria is psychiatric observation and counseling until the very late teens. Why? Because there's no credible research on the effectiveness of the pharmacological or surgical interventions at the young age. Think of the kids and forget the noise.
Lia Thomas exposed 'male genitalia' in women's locker room after meeting
- Thread starter AndrewX
- Start date
What's your endgame?
You want men to be able to compete in athletics with women because those men identify as women? You want them to share locker rooms because it would devastate them otherwise? Because some abstract study posted by a medically trained trans apologist says it's okay?
You want kids to medically post-pone puberty because radical activism says it's okay?
Sorry, I'll never support that type of social engineering. Try and reflect on how insane your position has become. You're way down the rabbit hole.
Evolution created the delineation between the human male and female. It's a beautiful thing.
Viable and reasonable solutions have been proposed already. Trans compete with trans.
Ah, the point is the scared right wingers claimed it was science until it was pointed out that the science says they are wrong.
Now they say the science has an agenda so they won't listen to it because it doesn't fit their agenda.
You built your own reality, its just messed up.
So much outrage over such a tiny minority of people already targeted by hate groups.
They're minorities with regard to having a gender identity condition, but they belong to approx 50% of the population called men.
No woman should be compelled to compete against a man because that man belongs to a tiny minority of people.
You're not creating a better society by undermining women's autonomy.
Stop viewing anyone that disagrees with you as some hateful bigot and look at the facts.
It's the "medically trained" part that you can't refute, huh?
50 years ago, guys just like you were arguing against decriminalization of gay sex using much the same arguments.
This is not even about sports and such same bullshit. This is purely about performing life altering procedures on minors who cannot consent with outcomes that are uncertain and unpredictable and as the psychiatric research shows, unnecessary in over 90% of cases. They want to experiment on children! I can see the pharma industry salivating at the prospects of lifetime dependency on their services.
50 years ago nobody was castrating young boys or exposing them to lifetime of hormonal treatments with zero guarantees of making them "better". Actually, if you want a real analogy this is an equivalent of the conversion therapy, but with drugs and scalpels.
There are rules in place already about this.
Do you have specific issues with them or are you just ranting?
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?
<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"
321K 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
