Detransitioned man blasts “transworld”

Angus is the pseudonym of a mostly-retired clinical epidemiologist on the faculty of a major health sciences university. We asked Angus to provide a short bio, and this is what he wrote:

“Angus is in his late 50s now, but back in his 40th year of life, his arrogance and folly led him to think it was fine to transgress, wear the dress, and pretend to be a “woman.” He did this for 13 long years, taking the synthetic estrogen drug every day, self-absorbed and entirely content. He was so convinced that he would carry on as a fake “lady” until the day he died, he decided to have some surgery. Not the more drastic option, it’s true, but most men would do anything to avoid the one he got. Quite unexpectedly one morning Angus snapped out of his transfugue trance state and felt compelled to examine his life. He rapidly ceased his masquerading and mimicry and re-engaged with material reality. He has the blog at autogynephiliatruth.wordpress.com but hasn’t put anything up there for a while. Angus can sometimes be observed causing trouble on Twitter @iforgetalready.”

As with all articles submitted by our contributors, the opinions expressed by the author are his own. He is interacting in the comments section of his post under the moniker “Awesome Cat.”


by Angus

The trans industry must concede that rapid onset gender dysphoria is a social contagion and they must cease recruiting efforts among young people.

Girls and young women increasingly make the claim in recent years to have “gender dysphoria,” an inversion of the male-dominant pattern that has been observed over many decades. More than just flipping the chart, this represents a major surge in the rate at which women are inducted into the illusory realm of TransWorld. The trans industry’s nonsensical position is that practically all “cis” people are potentially “trans,” but it’s impossible to know for sure whether anyone is a man, a woman, or some innovation unless they tell you. Even then, you may need to ask again tomorrow.

Clinicians have struggled to explain why there has been such an appalling growth in adolescent “gender dysphoria,” especially in girls and women.  One possible explanation, recognized as far back as 2010 and 2012, is the impact of social expectations, including the Internet, on the development of a transgender identity.

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And even further back, in 1999, WPATH (formerly called the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association) advised clinicians to proceed with caution when treating adolescents because of the changeability of “gender identity.”

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Then, in 2016, a physician named Lisa Littman conducted a study which, in part, investigated whether social contagion could be a contributing cause; in other words, perhaps some kids caught up in this mix do not really have a long-standing discomfort with their sex. It’s possible for many that the trap door could open below their feet, and within a short time, they’d be injecting testosterone. That’s truly how they roll with “affirmative transcare.”

Trans activists raged over the anticipatory invalidation they already felt with this story, as it dramatically undermined their alibi of “born this way” innocence. They seek transrecruits among children and youth, and at least in the USA, have an alarming interest in giving kids hormone drugs and surgeries at the earliest possible ages. Along with academic and clinician running dogs and other personnel getting paid in the trans industry’s multifarious dimensions, they worried that the mainstream public might see through transvested interests of its pseudoscience. They tried to kill this story with fire. Their efforts only made the story better known.***

Let me just say that I don’t believe that anyone on Earth is “transgender,” “transsexual,” trans-anything except perhaps transvestite, because that term is specific to clothes (Latin vestīre). In English the word just means crossdresser, which is accurate in a simplistic way. Nor is anyone “cis.” Evolution would not allow development of a heritable trait cluster or quasi-sub-species in which a woman or man in good physical health would have an insatiable obsessed yearning to mimic the sociocultural sex stereotypes (i.e. “gender”) for appearance and mannerisms of the opposite sex. There is no way that little Johnny likes to play with dolls or that little Jenny likes to play with trucks because as “trans kids,” they are on the spear point of an ancient evolutionary process that manifests at a certain prevalence in a given population. Had there been such genetic innovation back when we roamed the savannahs, folks with those characteristics would have all died out pretty quickly due to the lack of skilled plastic surgeons and endocrinologists. After all, along with voice coaches, such professionals are the only ones who can deliver “the basic health care they need to survive.” Our illustrious forebears in the painted caves would not have been pleased with the maladaptive meltdown and tantrum behaviour that would have emerged in proto-trans people in response to rampant “misgendering,” and excess mortality due to other people declining to play along would have been high. In real life, simpler explanations are more likely to be true, and there are far more compelling approaches to exploring the question of why women and men with healthy bodies might get it into their minds that they are really the opposite sex.

It should be pretty obvious that the “transition” one hears too much about is also a bogus mind-game. No-one “transitions” to anything except a likely-shortened lifestyle with lots more trips to the doctor, massive surgeries, aftercare; complications (some quite filthy), surgical revisions, risk of cardiovascular trouble; and lifelong drugs. Men may look forward to practicing fake voices & mincing walks, incessant “dilation” of the pseudo-“vagina” seeping void space created through flaying & inverting their genitals, heightened risk of multiple sclerosis and still being 100% male. Women may anticipate the potential for luxuriant back hair growth and being rather shocked that after mastectomies and having the organs of their reproductive systems ripped out, they are still as female as the day is long. Also, a greater risk of kidney failure, even if they are vegans.

Men and women who bought into the transprop and believe its lies have paid with their bodily integrity, and many times with their health. They are victims of it themselves, and I wish healing and wholeness for them. In the moment, however, many contribute to transgenderism’s harms.

For nearly 100 years, since doctors began misleading confused men and women to believe that this might be an option, vastly more males than females have desperately demanded to go under the knife and “change sex.” Such “change” is only illusion, but many men and women have fixated on that fraudulent goal in the vain hope to escape the miseries and melodrama of their own real lives. It is thus a matter of tremendous public health concern, indeed it’s a public health emergency, that over the course of a few years the rate of young women and girls who newly claim to be trans has gone through the roof. Doctors in Amsterdam and Toronto reported in 2015 that in their clinics there were now more females than males getting transbees in their bonnets. These women and girls had never previously shown profound dissatisfaction with being female; their “gender dysphoria” seemed to be new. Investigators used their Discussion to propose that among other reasons why women now greatly outpaced men, perhaps more secretly trans heterosexual women were now hopping on board the transwagon. Alternatively, maybe this decade’s grossly overblown propagandizing of all things trans has resulted in an Exodus of silently-suffering transfolk, women and men both, from “cisnormative” agony; women lead the way, enjoying their female privilege, as many already owned a few pairs of blue jeans or had short hair.

Newcomers to the trans industry, Helsinki then piped up to say that in their first two years running a child transing center they were stunned to find that 41 of 46 (87%) of adolescents were girls. Inconveniently for trans industry bigwigs, the Finns continued. It seems that 35/47 (75%) of these youth were already in treatment for serious psychiatric comorbidity unrelated to “gender”; and 12/47 (26%) were on the autism spectrum. The ratio of females to males, autism prevalence and levels of comorbid psychopathology were far higher than had ever previously been reported. Investigators were flummoxed by all of this, pointing out the ways that it contradicted the lying official translore, and could propose no solid explanations; least of all for the massive overrepresentation of girls.

Reports from the United Kingdom of huge spikes in the rate of child referrals to transing centers also show far more girls than ever before. The most recent of these papers from the UK suggests that from 2009-2016, the average year-on-year increase in referrals for children under age 12 was “only” 48.6% for boys, while it was 92.7% for girls; in adolescents the corresponding rates were 54.9% and 88.6%.

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Naturally, the new transcenario posed a problem for TransHQ. Most industry clinicians maintained the party line, more or less saying “gee, we didn’t know there were so many transkids.” When two of the more notorious pediatric trans industry doctors were asked about the startlingly high proportions of girls, Johanna Olson-Kennedy seemed taken aback but then acknowledged that it was true, before uttering a few more incoherent half-thoughts. Joshua Safer seemed evasive and glassy-eyed as he answered in terms of both sexes.

None of the researchers reporting this outbreak of “girlpower denied” was apparently able to imagine a possibility that would require coloring outside the lines of the trans cult’s hijacked rainbow; an answer that was much more likely to be true than their mouthfuls of bloated transjargon.

In 2016, however, Dr. Lisa Littman (now at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA) published a summary description of her survey undertaken with parents of youth purporting to have “gender dysphoria.” Results of her survey suggested something pretty obvious: This new type of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is a whole different animal than the usual kind observed in adolescents. It was really sort of a youth craze, exacerbated via social contagion through the influence of peer groups and shady characters who promote trans ideology and recruit adolescents aboard the transwagon. Psychotherapist Lisa Marchiano also wrote eloquently on ROGD in several articles, including this piece from the perspective of Jungian psychology.

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The discussion of ROGD came upon trans activists unawares, but as the story continued to gain traction, the transmachine hotly blew up its transmissions, spewing towering tizzies of refutation, torrid pseudoscientific tirades, aggrieved attacks on academic integrity. Many trans industry academics and clinicians who have desperately tried for years to show that “gender identity” is innate now faced the possibility that the public would begin to catch on: “Innate gender identity” was complete garbage. Ice cold embarrassment and waves of sweaty invalidation flew from the ridgetops of their enormous brows. Social media was also transflamed with outrage, scorn, popcorn and flipped wigs.

But what can these trans cult & industry personnel and enablers really say in their dizzy diatribes? They raged against ROGD, called it a “hoax diagnosis,” scoffed at the study design and impugned Dr. Littman’s academic integrity. Yet they knew full well that the entirety of the “affirmative model of care” for people confused about what sex they are has much flimsier underpinnings, in addition to cherry-picking, confirmation bias, same-team replication & review, in-house “bioethicists” and financial or other conflicts of interest. What can they say, when reports from around the world confirm not only an explosion in the rate of children and adolescents getting hooked into TransWorld, but a reversal of the old familiar sex ratio? What can they say when there is in real life no “trans”?

Young people are systematically gaslighted in their indoctrination about all things trans. Like many adults, adolescents are usually overstimulated, sleep-deprived and eating suboptimal food; often somewhat traumatized and fragmented far away from knowing their own wholeness. Trans ideology is now presented to kids in USA schools as truth, “settled science” that helps people to “become their authentic selves,” masquerading through life as the opposite sex. But based on both my personal experience as a former “transwoman” and my ongoing research,  trans itself actually doesn’t exist, at least not in material reality. It exists only through mind-games; reversals, inversions & perversions of meaning; language-policing; and bureaucratic paperwork.

All human beings are “valid,” but transgenderism is a cultish ideology that leads to serious harms. Rich countries of the world have fallen grotesquely into error and if there is any justice, the people who promote and take advantage of the transcraze in young people someday will be held accountable.

98 thoughts on “Detransitioned man blasts “transworld”

  1. Thank you for speaking on this. As a parent the affirmation model is a nightmare. You have brought clarity to this debate and I thank you. Please keep writing and speaking the truth

  2. Thank you Angus!!! I have always battled with the thought that transgender people have always existed. My feelings are there have always been people who exhibit behaviors and preferences associated with the opposite sex but trans wasn’t a “thing” until doctors made it so. Thank you so much for speaking up. I have absolutely no faith in the mental health profession any longer. My 20 year old is neck deep in her beliefs and Not one professional has ever questioned these beliefs. I don’t know how much longer they can turn a blind eye.

    • There surely have always been people who defy the social expectations of their time. However that doesn’t prove that humans are born inherently needing to be put on Lupron or needing to make any other body modifications.

  3. Thank you, Angus! You have written a strong manifesto here. It is refreshing to hear a clear & forceful voice speaking out against trans ideology.
    You are an expert.
    I don’t know if I agree with everything you said–but I do want to say thank you for defending the young.
    The retributions are coming.
    Also, a message to the ROGD young women who have taken this path:
    it is possible to come back.

  4. Youth craze may be part of the reason for the prevalence of rapid-onset girls. (Though I am not sure why girls would be more susceptible to youth crazes than boys.) I think the reason is a combination of the youth craze giving girls a social permission to transition AND several sexist forces: sexual assault and harassment (I recently read that 89% of girls experience sexual harassment by the time they graduate high school; a quarter experience rape) – a reason cited in the 2012 statement above; anti-lesbian bias, as many parents would rather have a trans kid than a gay kid, and with “corrective rape” being part of the young lesbian experience, this would combine with the first reason; male bias in that parents would rather have sons than daughters, so if their daughter wants to become their son: presto, instant son! It is critical to not overlook the brutality of sexism when examining the rapid onset phenomenon. Many young girls – harassed, raped, tomboyish, lesbian – would LOVE to “identify out of” the cesspool of violence directed toward them.

    • Absolutely this. Who wouldn’t want to transition into another race that earns more money, gets more respect and encounters way less sex based violence … plus gets much more family support for being male. Sexism is the huge elephant in the trans room.

      • I was born with an intersex condition and back in the 70’s (UK) it was so much better to be a female, and they wouldn’t have swopped for the world, back then they felt sorry for the men, but we’ve had 40 yrs of intense feminist propaganda that has warped perceptions, convincing women that the grass is greener. Its the same brainwashed delusion causing all these fake trans at the moment. I think women are losing respect because of their often disgusting spiteful self righteous behaviour towards men.

    • There seem to be a lot of people on here saying that their daughters were not gender non-conforming children (tomboys) and are interested in boys, and yet they still want to transition. This is what’s new–and it has to be to fuel this large a rise in transitioners, because there really aren’t that many tomboyish lesbian teenage girls.

    • I think females have lost a lot of respect since the 70’s when I was at school, the girls had so much confidence then and even felt sorry for the males, but the feminist propaganda left them feeling confused like second rate males instead of first rate females. Check out the detransing girls on Utube from a rad feminist background whove done so much damage to themselves on T. I think eventually it will be realised that feminism is even more toxic to females than to males.

      • Jerry, go home. Claiming that feminism is “toxic” to females is insane mansplaining. Feminism refers to the ideology and practice of liberating females from male domination. By definition, it involves what is better for females than what we have now (rape, FGM, trafficking, child “marriage,” rampant battering, murder by males). You clearly have no idea what sexism involves if you believe the feminism is in any way worse. Just go home.

  5. What a great article. Such common sense, so sad yet so funny in places: ‘the trans-cult’s hijacked rainbow’. Thank you so much for writing it. I hope it’s read as widely as it deserves to be.

  6. Thanks Angus, I learn a lot a lot from your Twitter! What I’d find fascinating is to hear your reflections on why you chose the path of transition–and then, later, why you stopped. I’ve read several accounts by detransitioned women but not by men. Of course this might be too personal …

    • I wrote about it in the first few months after snapping out of it, back in 2013, but this writing doesn’t really capture what i would say now. I’ve learned a lot since then. I may write it all up again some time. I wonder if an extremely concise narrative could actually tell much of the story? Won’t capture all, but perhaps informative. Let’s see:

      A few hard, emotional years in my late 30s. Son grown up & left home. Although i had come to terms with my occasional transvestism years earlier, having read J. Raymond & M. Daly; knew it was just my personality; would never do anything “medical”; i was really depressed. Self-isolated, drinking, had internet at home for the first time. Way too much time on internet. Sorry for myself, self-indulgent. Decided arrogantly to go against what i knew and start a “new life.” Much “validation” ensued.

      13 years of being a workaholic, loner, no social life; a “comfortable rut”; successful career; actually “happy” but aware that in suppressing my “old self” i was unbalanced. Began to reconnect with surfing and other aspects.

      Old friend looked me up, used to hang out >20 yrs earlier. Amazing connection, got together every weekend. She asked tough questions. Estrogen drug in men causes mild euphoria, complacency. I had never thought about stuff she was asking me. She urged me to stop taking it, for fear of stroke. I stopped. A week later i woke up and felt very different. Intensely tried to sort myself out; at first merely thought i’d mimic “femininity” rather less; but after a month i knew: Stop pretending. And so i did, from that day.

  7. Angus, thanks for writing this. Before coming out of the transcult, were you able to tell that their publications and refutations of others were all pseudoscience and rhetoric? I really wonder about the easy acceptance of incoherent positions that are contrary to the facts.

    • The truth is that I avoided looking at both science and trans pseudoscience. Jumping in, i didn’t really consider science; I did read many Geocities web pages made by “successful transwomen” (sic) like Anne Lawrence and some of the others who later attacked Bailey. At the time, some of them (besides Lawrence) even admitted their autogynephilia. AGP seemed plausible to me but it was too enbarrassing to confront. Some of these pages spoke excitedly of the latest “proof,” namely the ambiguous findings from the brains of half a dozen transcadavers, who in life had taken hormone drugs for decades, and i thought it sounded like bullshit. Even so, i was influenced by these folks, educated, seemingly intelligent. I didn’t really see their insanity. I mainly fell for their trope of saying that male & female were biological categories but man & woman were social categories. I grabbed hold of that (false) explanation. I would never have said I was “female” but I did say I was a “woman.” My descent into transworld was attended by much shame about AGP, but all the enabling & validation i received had me giddy with narcissism and i kept going.

      I was fortunate in that i never engaged with the “trans community” and wasn’t friends with any. I paid no attention at all to anything “trans” from 2000-2013, except in systematic reviews of HIV prevention. I didn’t know that transing kids & young people was even a thing; didn’t know about the attacks on Bailey; etc. And then the world cracked open.

  8. There’s clearly some major issues with the models transactivists have of how trans issues work, but Littman’s study is flawed from the perspective of proving the existence of ROGD. The main flaw is that rather than examining a representative sample of FtMs (e.g. by getting a clinical sample), Littman specifically recruited those who had been classified by their parents as ROGD.

    To see why this is flawed, imagine that the transactivist model is 100% correct; in that case, ROGD doesn’t exist, but “trans awareness” (which in certain cases could have similar-looking effects) does. This would certainly lead to parents of “truly trans” kids with a ROGD-like onset being concerned about their children and forming groups like 4thwavenow, and these parents would then mostly be the ones recruited for Littman’s study in the counterfactual world. This would mean that Littman would end up with similar results (because she never recruited participants in a way that would lead parents of non-ROGD “truly trans” kids report things), despite ROGD being 100% nonexistent. Since her study would’ve yielded the same results regardless of the validity of ROGD, it fails to prove the existence of anything.

    • While you are correct that using clinical data would be better, you are too quick to dismiss ROGD as a real concern. The tremendous rise in mostly female adolescents presenting as transgender is very concerning as would be any rather sudden increase in a medical condition, especially one for which the treatments are lifelong drugs, serious surgeries, sterility, and frequent problems with sexual response all in people who often have had no teen or adult sexual experience. It seems that the prudent “first do no harm” thing to do would be to suspend medical transition all together and then do the best studies we can. Since gender clinics are advocates of affirm only and medical transition, they are too biased to produce reliable data. Some kind of public health clinics with good record keeping might be better, or at least we would need some controls to see if there are significant differences between gender clinics and others that are not committed to the gender clinic model in terms of diagnosis and treatment. As I understand it, “truly trans” kids would be those who had developed a cross sex identity from a very early age, with no outside influences to guide them. Social contagion (ROGD) trans kids would be, more or less, those who never had a cross sex identity until finding out about trans from friends, the Internet, or other sources. You seem to dismiss parental concerns and also disbelieve parent narratives that go against the common trans narrative. This is quite a difficult subject, as without some fairly in depth interviewing of parents and children by an unbiased researcher, it is pretty hard to sort out. Children typically start using a very standardized set of assertions in order to be treated as trans, including a historical revision of their childhood experiences. They are advised online by transactivists about what to say to parents and doctors to get the transitions they suddenly crave. What would the evidence be that is reliable? Parents can show photos or old letters or emails etc. to show what their kids’ childhoods were like and the choices their kids made in dress and toys etc. but that is disputable evidence, though it is actual evidence. For the children, we would need to see their Internet history, including websites, reddit conversations, etc. that led up to their announcement to their parents. We would have to have a thorough previous medical and psychological history to see if there are co-morbid conditions or endocrine problems that might be confounding. Such research would be difficult as the variables are many and subtle. Perhaps you have thought out how this research could be done so that a clearer, even if not perfect, picture could emerge.

      • In my comment above, I merely criticized the use of Littman’s study in the article and not the entire model.

        “As I understand it, “truly trans” kids would be those who had developed a cross sex identity from a very early age, with no outside influences to guide them.”
        This is mostly incorrect. First of all, the “very early age” only applies to Early Onset Gender Dysphorics (trans people need to be distinguished by onset age, Late (adolescent or older) vs Early (before adolescence)). In natal males, the kind you are referring to is known as homosexual gender dysphoria because it is fundamentally on the same spectrum as homosexuality, and its associated dysphoria is inherently very social in nature. Most likely, the case in natal females is very similar, but categorizing it as “homosexual” is controversial because of differences between male and female sexual orientation. However, when we’re talking “ROGD” trans “kids”, we’re generally talking about Late Onset Gender Dysphoria (because they’re generally adolescents). In natal males, Late Onset Gender Dysphoria is known to be caused by autogynephilia, while in natal females, Late Onset Gender Dysphoria has been thought to be mostly nonexistent until the recent “ROGD” situation.

        “What would the evidence be that is reliable?”
        Transactivists tend to blame the late onset on “repression”, arguing that the parents forced the kids to “hide their true gender identity”. This is highly inaccurate and wrongly places the blame on the parents, because there is no such thing as a “gender identity”. However, when transactivists suggest this is what happened, we can transfer the argument into a more-reliable framework and see what conclusions we can draw then. In particular, this would mean that the transactivists are arguing that the natal female gender dysphorics you classify as ROGD are actually autoandrophilic. This may sound unlikely because most people don’t expect AAP to be real or relevant, but it is at the very least a testable hypothesis. So far, my surveys have suggested that autoandrophilia is relevant in most cases that would be called ROGD, but I have recently gotten some weak evidence that other types of dysphoria may also exist (most strongly, queer girls who have been abused by men). This is of course difficult to study, because trans people generally work to obstruct research into this, but it’s still doable.

    • Did you even read the three-sentence abstract? The purpose was not to recruit and study a representative sample as you erroneously state. The purpose is clearly stated to “document this observation and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria inconsistent with existing research.”

      Even the APA acknowledges that adolescents may suddenly claim that they are transgender who have no history of questioning their gender and/or no history of gender role nonconformity. They term this late-onset gender dysphoria in their treatment guidelines. It’s essentially the same thing as ROGD – in both cases, the adolescent can have no history of GNC or questioning.

      What is contentious, is that the parents have observed that their adolescent’s trans questioning and/or claim of trans-identity came after becoming a fan of online transgender propaganda or after engaging with peers who all decided they are trans together. Parents are reporting their observations that these powerful influences (online communities and peer groups) instigated their child’s gender questioning and persuaded them to pursue transition.

      It is likely that future studies will document observational data from desisted and detransitioned teens and young adults who report that these social influences led to their trans claim. It’s bound to happen because it is what’s happening in homes across the world and no one can keep a lid on this much longer.

      If you tell a late-onset/ROGD kid that they are correct and that they were indeed born in the wrong body (affirmation therapy as recommended in the US), where is the objectivity in that? There is none. There is no effort (in fact it’s nearly forbidden as conversion therapy) to explore or investigate the root cause of their sudden claim, or to determine how or when it began (using all available evidence). Now that’s a real scientific flaw. It’s pure assumption.

      If you were objective, you’d at least wait for the publication to come out before you criticize it erroneously.

      • I’m not criticizing the study in general, but instead when used “from the perspective of proving the existence of ROGD”, which is what Angus uses the survey for. I agree that conditional on ROGD existing in the way 4thwavenow describes it, the study can be valuable for documenting the phenomenon.

        There is a large difference between LOGD and ROGD in that many cases of LOGD are known to have a fundamentally different etiology from social contagion. See the “Gender dysphoria is not one thing” article that was posted elsewhere on this site.

        I am personally working to investigate the causes of LOGD in natal females, and based on what I’ve found, I think the ROGD model is highly incomplete.

      • The study talks only about parental observations
        It says absolutely nothing about whether ROGD actually exists. The children involved may have been in the closet; the parents may have missed signs, or missed their importance; the parents might be lying; ROGD might even exist. Who knows? The Littman study cannot answer this question because it does not actually interview the subjects of the study, interviewing only parents who have a vested interest in their children not being trans.

        Compare, if you would, parents who insist that their children when they come out of the closet are mistaken. Is the claim of parents one that should be respected, at least without engaging with the person’s they are making claims about?

      • You have presented no information of any kind that supports your belief in lying parents, kids “in the closet”, or parents missing signs. Perhaps you are unaware of the many people who realize, some after they have gone through irreversible drug and surgical interventions, that they are not really trans, that it was ideology, Internet sites, and social pressures that induced them to adopt a trans identity as a way of trying to solve other real problems that they were experiencing. Parents are right to ask questions and put on the brakes. They are right to want unbiased psychological evaluations for their children and they are right to present their children with other alternatives that will be less intrusive and permanent than drugs and surgeries. First Do No Harm.

      • I cannot present _any_ information, as I noted, because the Littman paper gathered no information that can speak to or against the thesis that ROGD exists. All we have are the observations of parents strongly motivated to believe that their children are not trans that their trans identification came as a surprise. There are many explanations for this that do not need ROGD to exist—children in the closet and/or parents in denial come to mind. The paper only demonstrates that many parents of teens who identify as trans are critical of the idea, and that is something we already knew.

        Certainly a degree of caution is justifiable. If we are defining caution in such a way as to exclude the possibility that some teenagers really are trans and that their interests are best served by transitioning, however, that is a mistake.

      • The leading “affirmative” therapists say a truly transgender child is unmistakable–that their gender message is loud and clear, and they are “persistent, consistent, and insistent” throughout childhood. This narrative is repeated over and over again, and is often touted as being sufficient for differential diagnosis. Yet you are positing that a parent (are you one?) can live with a child all their life, including in the early years when children don’t even know HOW to tell a lie effectively, and not see any signs whatsoever that the kid is distressed about gender. So which is it?

        If we rule out that parents are just LYING in their reports of a sudden gender dysphoria, your proposal that they are that clueless about their own kids beggars belief. Do you have any knowledge of developmental psychology? Of the parent-child relationship?

        You have chosen to comment on a website built and now maintained by parents who have lived this reality. Several of their offspring have desisted and agreed that social contagion, especially online, was a factor in their temporary idea they were trans. There are several posts by desisters acknowledging their own rapid-onset dysphoria. Yet you want to suggest that ROGD may not even “exist.”

        Of course more research is needed–Littman herself, in her poster presentation says this is only the first step, more study is needed. But that doesn’t mean her work thus far is somehow worthless. It’s the first to attempt to understand a phenomenon which pretty much everyone apart from trans activists is beginning to notice.

      • Right now the errors are almost entirely in the other direction. Kids are immediately affirmed without question and hurried into drugs and surgery. Parents are lied to by psychologists, doctors, and gender clinic staff (who stand to make LOTS of money off these kids–and the younger they transition them the more they will make) with tropes like “you can either have a living son or a dead daughter” that are not based in fact and are meant to scare and manipulate. Any kid whose parents won’t let them medically transition can do this as soon as they turn 18 and are outside parental control, so it is not like it has to be now or never.

      • Talicalled:

        I was referring to the APA’s description in their treatment guidelines “Adolescents presenting with gender identity concerns bring their own set of unique challenges. This may include having a late-onset (i.e., postpubertal) presentation of gender nonconforming identification, with no history of gender role nonconformity or gender questioning in childhood (Edwards-Leeper & Spack, 2012).” This description applies to the ROGD population.

        I was not referring to your or anyone else’s definition of LOGD, which may be more descriptive of GD populations other than ROGD.

        Of course there are many different types of gender dysphoria. (which belies any common neurodevelopmental explanation)

        You say that the ROGD model is incomplete? My goodness! What ROGD model has been claimed to be completely described in the scientific literature? The science is so far behind what is actually happening. It’s just getting started and you’re already questioning a model based on a survey that doesn’t propose a complete model, but reports on a new finding.

        There are many drivers for ROGD specific to each child, but it’s the commonality that is intriguing and repugnantly sad. It’s these common motivations and drivers that are explored and documented in the survey. Thus, the validity of the survey with respect to the criticism that it doesn’t represent the full trans-identifying population is wholly irrelevant. It is describing a new and previously unknown phenomenon within the broader GD population.

        The survey will lead scientists to question whether the finding provides some explanation for the explosion in trans-identifying teens and whether it could be applied to the broader GD population. That is a question for the discussion section and for future study – and we shall see what the fuller scientific community thinks when all this starts to come out.

        I know what I think – it’s just the beginning of the whole house of cards crashing down on the irresponsible assumption that every newly-minted trans-identifying teen is actually suffering from some well-defined condition of ‘wrong bodyness’ that needs to be availed with the full array of medical intervention – and that’s why this one survey has some people so worried and defensive. They know that the fuller medical community will start to question current practices.

      • thinkandblinkparents:

        “This description applies to the ROGD population.”
        I’m not saying that the LOGD description doesn’t apply to genuine ROGDs, but instead that it also applies to known forms of dysphoria that have little-to-nothing to do with ROGD, such as autogynephilic gender dysphoria. This means that LOGD can’t be said to be “essentially the same thing” as ROGD.

        “You say that the ROGD model is incomplete? My goodness! What ROGD model has been claimed to be completely described in the scientific literature?”
        The problem is that many ROGD proponents assume ROGD (or patriarchy-induced gender dysphoria, or other forms of dysphoria that don’t justify transition) are the only forms relevant and therefore work to block access to treatment from those for whom transition is genuinely the right solution.

        “Thus, the validity of the survey with respect to the criticism that it doesn’t represent the full trans-identifying population is wholly irrelevant.”
        It is highly relevant if you’re trying to use the survey to prove that ROGD is real and the nonrepresentativeness specifically increases the bias towards finding that conclusion over other possibilities. That is not to say that the survey isn’t relevant for other purposes; for example, it can tell us something about what ROGD can look like, conditional on it existing.

    • Oh, good grief. I expect more nuanced insight from you, Tailcalled. Kristina Olson’s study touted as proof that early social and medical transition is “beneficial” to “trans kids,” uses the exact same sample methods as Littman.

      Olson surveyed only those parents who affirmed, who believed their children were born in the wrong body. Where is the control group? Where are the responses from kids/parents who watchfully waited, supporting their kids in exploring gender critically while not affirming “born in the wrong body” neuroses?

      If you think Littman’s respondents were all 4thwave parents, you’re not paying attention to actions like those of TransActive Gender Center’s Exec Director Jenn Burleton who admitted to lying on the survey (does Jenn have a tans kid?) and who asked parents to do the same in the hopes of tainting the results. Proof: https://ibb.co/iMqsYn

      Let’s talk about biased data. Where are the:
      Kids/families like mine, who supported their kids but didn’t affirm represented in the data? Where are questions about what kinds of gender critical resources were offered to families of kids seen at gender clinics? Which alternative means of dealing with dysphoria were shared with families? Why isn’t anyone publishing data about the other meds these kids are taking? Has anyone since Zucker looked specifically at parental homophobia, how gender atypical kids are read as “proto-homosexuals” by their parents, educators, and *peers?

      You want better data? Great! Me too

      *DeLay (2017) address peer influences in “The Influence of Peers During Adolescence: Does Homophobic Name Calling by Peers Change Gender Identity?” which finds that “homophobic name calling predicted identifying significantly less with own-gender peers and marginally more with other-gender peers over the course of an academic year.”

      • I have never cited any study by Kristina Olson, so I can’t comment on those methods. If you have an issue with this study, I would recommend you take it up with the people who cite her.

        It’s unfortunate that people acted to sabotage the Lisa’s survey. I’ve also had problems with that in my surveys, and I sympathize with the frustration this causes. However, it’s hardly an argument that makes the survey any more valid.

        Other forms of gender dysphoria treatment may be relevant, but which treatments are likely to work depend on the etiology of the gender dysphoria, and therefore talking about the validity of the ROGD model is relevant.

    • Dr. Littman’s study has not been published yet, so I find it really difficult to understand how you can attack it, until she has finished editing it, and officially releasing it. By the way, I didn’t see any Phd after your name, what are your credentials?

      • We’re referring to the study titled “Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Descriptive Study”, yes? She has published enough that I know that I know how she recruited participants and therefore also know that my argument goes though.

        You don’t see a PhD after my name because I don’t have a PhD (yet – but I probably will eventually). I don’t have many relevant credentials, but I’d ask that you let my arguments stand or fall on their own merits.

    • …and what’s your proof for the claim that ROGD is “100% nonexistent.” That’s a pretty bold claim and made without a single shred of supporting evidence. Even if we discard Littman’s excellent work completely, that wouldn’t be any kind of proof that ROGD is nonexistent. Stay in school. Please.

      • I’m not claiming this. ROGD probably exists in some cases, at least as a contributing factor.

        The point I’m making is that for some data to be evidence in favor of some theory, it needs to be more likely for us to get this data if the theory is right than if the theory is wrong. This means that we need to consider the counterfactual case where the theory is wrong and see if this would still yield the same data, which is what I did in my comment.

  9. A self-loathing autogynephile doesn’t care about the lived experience and life choices of gender-non-conforming young people. What else is new?

    • I always find these charges of being “self-loathing,” directed at people who at one time believed themselves to be transsexual, and then stopped having that belief, to be interesting. What could possibly be more “self-loathing” than paying someone to take a knife to your healthy body? Especially some of the professionals operating in this space, who seem to be perfectly okay with, shall we say, pretty sub-optimal results.

      I mean that in all sincerity. The whole idea of “body dysmorphia” is that you hare strong, negative feelings about your body, for reasons in your head. In other words, you dislike, hate, even “loathe” yourself as you are, and desperately need to change it. Projection much?

      • Oh, there’s no *projection* involved here at all. Both transition and detransition can involve plenty of self-loathing. Plenty of people down either route are happy, well-adjusted people who have assimilated into society presenting as something they once didn’t. Plenty *aren’t*, and I wonder which category the man behind ‘autogynephiliatruth’ is closer to?

    • @ Trent Z Andrewson An adult male is keen to promote innovation & aberration in the sexuality and body manipulations of other people’s children. What else is new?

      • Well, it’s nice to hear you accept someone who transitioned from female to male at 15 as a man, but that’s neither here nor there. “Aberration in the sexuality” — in another life, you’d be saying that about butch lesbians. I bet you think your autogynephilia is cured, don’t you?

        Why do you think gender-non-conforming children should be forced to take a path many of them can’t? Are you unfamiliar with the *other* side of Blanchard’s typology? HSTSes exist even when it’s inconvenient for us to — this is true when transactivists are obsessing over the ~legitimacy~ of their autogynephilic fantasies, and it’s just as true when ten years later they’re channeling their narcissistic rage through Twitter in a slightly different way to their siblings.

      • Trent is female and self-loathing. Mammals can’t actually change sex, or “transition.”

  10. Great article – you have a very direct style which gives great clarity to the issue. When will the medical profession wake up to what is happening?

  11. Dear Angus, (seems strange to call you by that name) as ever your writing is well researched and holds no bars, quite simply awesome! You may remember me commenting on your blog fairly regularly back in the day when your blog was active and I was searching for answers as a newly bereaved transwidow.

    I did find many answers, not always pleasant, and I began to understand the sexual nature of autogynephilia and make sense of my 30 year long marriage to a man who had an apparent need to wear women’s clothing from time to time. Something that I never shared, I might add. It used to baffle me, having always been a bit of a tomboy with little interest in clothes, but I saw that when he was depressed or stressed he would disappear for some time out and come back to his usual self eventually. If that’s what it takes, no harm done I thought. The appearance of children at a late stage in our marriage seems to have exacerbated the need to have his own time and to start making subtle physical changes…..hours in the shower exfoliating. You know the kind of stuff. I know now that it is the classic autogynephile story and I have met other widows online, and with whom I correspond, who’s stories mirror mine. I think of it as an addiction in that in order to get that buzz he pushed the boundaries a little more each time. Never once in our marriage did he mention “gender-identity”, his true “authentic-self” or having any feeling that he had been “born in the wrong body”. That came later, after he had attended the gender-identity clinic, where his condition was enabled rather than given the counselling and coping skills that he so desperately needed.

    Back then, when I was first searching for answers on-line, there wasn’t the plethora of trans activism that we see today. I had to really dig hard to find writing. I did come across the blog of an elderly transexual who had “transitioned” at a very early age and had been treated by Harry Benjamin. They called themselves “Ben Girls” I remember. But this didn’t compute with my husband; heterosexual, a STEM academic, gender appropriate interests, zero interest in the arts or creativity. What I was shocked by at the time was the most vitriolic hatred expressed by transexual “Ben Girls” towards late-transitioning men. Now I understand that they are two extremes of Blanchard’s typology. It seemed that all was not sweetness and light under the trans-umbrella.
    I think that the exponential rise in the visibility of trans issues has been pushed by men like my husband (many of whom are wealthy and have pumped money into the promotion of trans at both grass-roots, political levels and most importantly in the media) in a backlash against not being welcomed into “club-trans” by “true-trans”.

    Now we see the consequences of that backlash, and you describe in your post how young girls are being swept up in the bow wave. Instead of looking out for these girls, educators and politicians have been lazy in not investigating what is going on. For the most part psychologists have not known what to do, and,if they have questioned current trans ideology at all, have only to look at the careers of Kenneth Zucker and Michael Bailey to know the consequences of that questioning. Some like the Olson-Kennedys have decided to ride the wave of a career in transgenderism and if children are wrongly diagnosed……well, we see the consequences faced by many of the parents who write on this blog.

    I wanted nothing more for my ex than to get the psychological help he needed, to develop better coping skills, to be the happy, kind, gentle person that I knew he had been. Increasing narcissism is what I see as a big problem; once the hospital fed into his narcissistic supply and gave him free rein to call our marriage a lie it all came tumbling down. I was at one stage glad that gender-identity clinics and trans visibility were becoming more talked about. I feel guilty at how naive I was. I thought that real treatment and counselling would be available and that men like my ex would no longer have to pretend and hide away in a positive way. I wanted nothing more than people to be honest and respected for that honesty. I also didn’t, and still don’t, want women to enter into relationships like mine which were based on a lie and cause a great deal of harm when they implode. What we now see, however, is men announcing that they are women in their teenage years and using that pubescent testosterone surge to reinvent what a woman is in their own mind, quite possibly fuelled by the porn that they watch online. We see men changing the language that we use, schools welcoming “education” sessions by trans-activists who go by cute animal names and libraries putting on exhibitions that incite violence against women they call TERFS. The misogyny in the trans movement is extremely harmful.

    I’m glad that you have taken the step to write about ROGD, from your perspective. I just want to reiterate what you send in your last paragraph……”All human beings are “valid,” but transgenderism is a cultish ideology that leads to serious harms. Rich countries of the world have fallen grotesquely into error and if there is any justice, the people who promote and take advantage of the transcraze in young people someday will be held accountable.”

    I’m glad that you are well. I sometimes miss the sparring following your blog posts. I’ll still never get my head around queer-theory.
    best wishes,
    atranswidow

    • Thank you so much, atranswidow. Of course, I remember you well.

      These fancy “theories” & ideologies are evil, and not the mild sort of “negativity” that keeps unrelenting positivity in check. No, it’s truly evil to promote the idea that healthy bodies can be “wrong”; that all choices should be freely available and of equal value, including suicide; that the beautiful polarity of male and female, which is how all are even here, means nothing. It’s really all one ideology of separation from realiity. I used to study classical Arabic, and was very intrigued to find that the definition of “Sha’itan” (satan) was “to be separated, as though from oneself.”

      Take good care.

  12. With forty years of cross sex living and a sex change, I definitely qualify as transsexual. And I am simply amazed at the kids, and their parents on this comment board, who are so pro-trans ideology that they must personally attack anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. And then there are the “non-binary” group here that is so fearful of transsexual regret they must kill off every author and doctor who doesn’t recognize their chosen status as Not A, Not B, – Other. What this doctor is saying, is what every other doctor with a brain and heart has said for the last forty plus years, that living cross sex and pills and sex changes are not a viable lifestyle. That is why the suicide rate is way out in the atmosphere. If you love your non binary, trans life experience I’m honestly happy for you’all. But I for one, am super concerned about the statistic that he brings up here. and that is that we now have a majority of young girls wanting to cut off their breasts. The social pathology here is so vastly different from traditional trans sexuality, and as such, must be looked into and its cause identified, before an entire generation of young girls destroy their lives

  13. This is for tailcalled:
    the data could be better, but it is accurate as it can be under the circumstances.
    I am in agreement with GILAW, Brie, and thinkandblinkparents on this.

    From GILAW’s comment: “The tremendous rise in mostly female adolescents presenting as transgender is very concerning as would be any rather sudden increase in a medical condition”…

    Isn’t the fact that this new phenomenon of teen girls wanting to opt-out of womanhood, this social idea of genderqueer/transgender that is contagious among girls & spread by social media & peers- isn’t the chief problem that the idea gains traction as a medical problem?
    It is a psychological problem and a problem which should be of greatest concern to sociologists.
    Give this one to the sociologists and not the people who hand out binders and testosterone.
    I am in agreement that sexual assault can be a factor.
    Again, the domain of sociologists.

    • “the data could be better, but it is accurate as it can be under the circumstances.”
      As someone who is directly surveying more-representative populations of FtMs specifically to determine the causes, I disagree. There are plenty of ways that you can get access to trans samples, and even beyond that you could try to collect some evidence showing connections between gender issues and proposed causes in non-trans groups.

      • Again, you don’t understand the scope of the study. What is a “more representative population”? One that supports the conclusions you work backwards from?

      • The most direct and easily fixable flaw is that Littman explicitly included “Rapid onset gender dysphoria” in the title and description of the survey, which ultimately makes it *completely* impossible for cases that don’t look like ROGD to be included. Secondly, the survey should be shared in non-gender-critical spaces, as gender critical spaces implicitly select for parents who believe their child is ROGD. For this, I’ve used general-purpose trans discussion forums. I would imagine that someone with academic connections might be able to work with a gender clinic, but it’s also possible that the gender clinics would be too hostile to do this.

      • Do you understand that Littman is specifically studying the phenomenon of rapid onset gender dysphoria? The point of her work is not to describe the other types, which also exist and which no one denies. She is describing characteristics reported by multiple parents. Conversely, parents whose children have not experienced the phenomenon are not the population she is studying.

        The rapid-onset phenomenon has also been acknowledged by some experienced clinicians, including Susan Bradley, MD, who is an expert not only in childhood gender dysphoria, but autism. Additionally, Tania Marshall, an author and mental health professional who specializes in autism in girls and young women, is reporting these characteristics. Do you also understand that everyone–including these seasoned professionals– is calling for more research? That’s different from somehow attempting to “disprove” what is being increasingly reported not just by parents, but by other professionals and by desisters themselves. It’s like you don’t understand that this is a specific line of research that is being pursued for the first time. If Littman and others also survey families who have not experienced this phenomenon, it does nothing to refute the data showing a population that does present with these characteristics.

        While you seem to be trying to present a neutral stance, the way you suggest a qualified researcher carry on a line of study and replicate data belies that supposed neutrality (and demonstrates a certain amount of ignorance about how this type of research is conducted). Littman‘s work isn’t “flawed“. It is an initial foray into the topic. Suggesting she ask the same questions of parents who are fully on board with the medical transition of their kids, no matter when the dysphoria first appeared, does absolutely nothing to refute the experiences of the parents she did survey.

        You’ve had the opportunity now to make your case in many comments. Unless you have something truly new to contribute to the discussion, it may be time for you to talk about your ideas in another forum. We get your point.

      • Littman’s study on its own can make sense for certain things, but Angus presents it as evidence in favor of the existence of ROGD when he says “a physician named Lisa Littman conducted a study which, in part, investigated whether social contagion could be a contributing cause”; this is the central point I’m arguing against. I’m aware that not everyone is using the study to prove this point, and that this was not the purpose of the study, but some people, including Angus, seem to be treating it this way.

        I’m confused as how you can think that my approach would capture significant amounts of non-ROGDs? You yourselves present plenty of evidence that the rate of transition is increasing rapidly, to the point where way more natal females are transitioning today than in the past. I thought you’d see this increase as being due to socially contagious gender dysphoria? Most of the other proposed causes don’t exactly seem to fit, as they wouldn’t have changed much over time. If the increase is due to social contagion, then this means that the vast, vast majority of trans natal females have ROGD as at least a partial cause, and so it should be observed in most of them. Is that not your model?

      • Tailcalled: By no means was I saying that Littman’s study is “proof” of ROGD. I’m abundantly familiar with study design and epidemiologic bias. I’m also expert in the GRADE methodology for assessing the certainty of evidence for a given outcome. Littman’s study and its implIcations have been discussed on this site for a while now. If you would kindly read my article again, a little more slowly, you will see that I have taken a different approach.

        Far from saying her study is “proof,” I simply showed that others have made similar observations, going back at least nine years. And these “others” included very senior “trans” industry operatives from WPATH, as well as members of the DSM Task Force. The reason I wrote the article was to issue a stern rebuke to the “trans” cult’s pusillanimous punditry, scoffing from their “only want to pee” peanut gallery, all dressed up with no place to go. They had whizzed up a smug whirlwind of negative nattering, with whistling in the dark a huge component of their cosplay. Yes, I may ramble a bit sometimes, but I think you’ll see that this rebuke was my point in writing.

  14. “Evolution would not allow development of a heritable trait cluster or quasi-sub-species in which a woman or man in good physical health would have an insatiable obsessed yearning to mimic the sociocultural sex stereotypes (i.e. “gender”) for appearance and mannerisms of the opposite sex.”

    That is an impoverished view of evolutio indeed, one that reduces everything to a matter of individuals. If anything, evolution works on the level of communities. Witness how gay, lesbian, and bisexual people manifestly exist.

    • My statement obviously has nothing to do with gay, lesbian, bisexual people as such, or before these groups were conceptualized, with anyone’s sexual preferences or behavior. You brought that in from left field and it’s irrelevant.

      And i’ll get in ahead of you, sure, there have always been the rare “intersex” persons, whom the transients try to co-opt; and there have always (or at least for a long while) been men who adopt “women’s role” in some traditional societies, often because homosexuality was forbidden; or are coerced to do so in debauched societies (e.g. ancient Rome). And yes there have been hardcore transvestites like the Chevalier d’Eon, and others. Note that he didn’t castrate himself or show any sign of “gender dysphoria.”

      I’m talking about men and women with normal XY and XX characteristics respectively who “somehow,” through genetic inheritance, “really are” the opposite sex – This is not something that has been passed down through the millennia. We have no reports of people going haywire about “misgendering” until the late 20th century. We don’t have any evidence whatsoever that “being trans” is something folks are born with or have a predisposition toward. “Trans” is entirely a behavior and a lifestyle.

      Think about Bruce Jenner. Do you really believe that in the prime of his vigorous younger days, winning intense physical competitions; making vigorous manly love to women; do you think “I’m really a laydee” was anywhere in his mind? Highly unlikely. He must have enjoyed very much to be male at those times. How could anyone believe that he’s a woman!? Just because he says so? He’s a transvestite fetishist whose masturbation scripts weren’t doing it for him anymore. That’s “gender dysphoria” in men. They’re happy to be male, but then suddenly they’re not. If you think Bruce is a woman, that Kool-Aid is too strong for you.

      • “My statement obviously has nothing to do with gay, lesbian, bisexual people as such, or before these groups were conceptualized, with anyone’s sexual preferences or behavior. You brought that in from left field and it’s irrelevant.”

        I brought that in because it is entirely relevant. Some who is not heterosexual has a rather lower chance of becoming a parent than someone who is heterosexual. Does that mean gays and lesbians and bisexuals are not natural?

      • Reproductive success is not the only trait selected for by evolutionary pressures, so how is that relevant to this discussion?

        Homosexuality has been observed throughout the animal kingdom–obviously it’s “natural.” A certain percentage of the population being gay or lesbian won’t (and obviously hasn’t so far) cause Homo sapiens to go extinct. One could imagine there being some adaptive advantages to having some non-reproducing members, freed to contribute in other ways that benefit the group.

        But has anyone observed an animal attempting to bite or pull off its genitalia or mammary glands? It’s highly unlikely evolutionary pressures would select for a self-destructive, self-mutilating trait like that. If it were ever observed (say, in one of our close primate cousins), it would likely only be in brain damaged or otherwise mentally compromised individuals.

        This is yet another case where conflating LGB with T makes no sense at all.

  15. “If we rule out that parents are just LYING in their reports of a sudden gender dysphoria, your proposal that they are that clueless about their own kids beggars belief.”

    I do know that children can easily have interior lives, and secrets, that their parents might not know themselves. Why not? Parents can regularly be surprised by any number of things, especially ones outside of their control. Why cannot being trans be one of those surprises?

    • You didn’t answer the question: Which is it? Unmistakable, persistent, consistent, insistent, or… kept entirely “secret” (even by guileless toddlers) until age 15? How about children who openly expressed happiness at being the sex they are for most of their lives, until it abruptly changed after a Tumblr/YouTube binge? Anyone who understands children and parent-child relationships (or who has bothered to actually read the words of the thoughtful parents who congregate here) would admit there’s something going on here that isn’t childhood onset dysphoria. And someone with integrity would want fuller investigation of the phenomenon, versus doing nothing more than casting aspersions on parents and Littman, the first person to begin formally researching it.

      By the way, you didn’t answer another question: Are you a parent?

      • Randy’s very insistent that ‘closeted transkids’ are directly analogous to closeted gay/lesbian kids. Had exchange w/him on that subject over at American Conservative on one of Rod Dreher’s blogs.

        If you believe both trans ID and homosexual ID are innate and immutable — and the minute you say you are trans, you ARE trans — you really can’t have any other view of the situation. Randy appears to have this “innate-trans” view for every kid who’s ever made such an announcement, even in the face of evidence that kids’ brains are plastic, and their identities of all types are in flux.

        There’s little point in pushing consideration of parental experiences w/their actual kids, here. The opinions are so far apart that I don’t think any real give & take on the subject is possible.

      • I can’t answer the question; I lack the specialized knowledge.

        All I can say is that dismissing the suggestion that teenagers might be trans on the assumption that parents know everything that there is to know about the inner life of their child is flawed. Claiming children cannot keep big secrets from their parents just is not plausible, as anyone who was a child themselves surely knows.

      • Once again, you are missing the key point: What’s “rapid onset” is the dysphoria. Since you believe there is such a thing as a truly transgender child, your argument on that basis is nonsense: If a child (again, toddlers have no capacity to lie or keep secrets effectively) is “truly trans,” they wouldn’t go their entire life with zero dysphoria expressed, until after encountering YouTube transition videos or Tumblr blogs as a teen. Of COURSE teens keep secrets from their parents. The point is, their gender dysphoria–whether hidden or not–arose suddenly. That’s what parents, a growing number of clinicians, and unbiased observers are pointing out–your (and other trans activists’) denial notwithstanding.

      • Puzzled, I think that the experiences of the person making the claim must take priority over the experiences of people not making a claim. It is ultimately up to the person involved to decide who they are; having other people make claims about them just does not work.

      • Yes. Just like every 85-pound teen girl infected with the social contagion of anorexia or bulimia gets to decide she’s fat. Let’s always prioritize and never question the pronouncements of teenagers, because they’re always right.

      • Puzzled, to go along with what you are saying, I didn’t care that my kid came out as trans. It wasn’t until her mental health deteriorated as a result, and then insisted on medically transitioning, that I said, “hold up, let’s look at this deeper”.

        A life as a medical patient with massive anxiety and depression? That is not the life I want for my kids. No way. I did not birth my kid and nurse her and care for her physical and mental health for her to decide to destroy that. There has to be better answers. Kids say a lot of things that aren’t actual and factual. My kid said she was trans, was persistent and insistent with gender dysphoria.

        Her experience was real and painful. I believed her pain and her experience. What I didn’t accept was that medical transitioning was the answer to that experience and that pain. Was she really trans?

        She says obviously not since she’s desisted. A lot of very pro-trans acquaintances insisted that I made her desist and continued to call her a boy. So which is it? Was she ever really trans? Diagnostically, it’s still in her medical charts that she has severe gender dysphoria and should revisit the gender clinic upon turning 18. Does that make her trans?

        She is a female child who has learned to love her body, which allowed her to desist. The core of her trans identity was self hatred. She was never gnc. She is not trans. Trans is illusive and meaningless.

        My child’s experience is real. ROGD describes it.

      • “It is ultimately up to the person involved to decide who they are; having other people make claims about them just does not work.”

        This is total BS and you know it. Objectively, you were either born with or without a penis or vagina. You either have two XX chromosomes or an XY configuration. That is objective reality and anyone’s personal feelings on the inside don’t matter. You can feel you are a cat on the inside but that has nothing to do with the reality of your body. Subjective feelings do not trump reality.

        Ultimately, you are on the side of gender stereotyping – you think someone having a preference for pink over blue and high heels over sneakers must make them female, instead of objective biological reality. Transgenderism is sexism disguised as enlightened “non-discrimination.”

    • “Gender dysphoria” in DSM-5 is a psychiatric billing code developed to facilitate payments for a wide range of trans industry professionals. Patients classified with this code “have” a “marked incongruence” (whatever the hell that means) between “the gender they have been assigned to” (i.e. stupid sex role stereotypes; also terrible writing) and “their experienced/expressed gender” (large load of horseshit attempting to say personality and style). “This discrepancy is the core component of the diagnosis.” Does everyone see how ridiculous this is? “There must also be evidence of distress about this incongruence.” “Distress” is not defined anywhere in the book. Having a bad hair day or a chipped nail is probably distress. “Feeling blue once in while” is probably distress.

      To a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail, and the trans industry is like 1000 psychotic octopi wielding hammers. Add to the mix the numerous papers over 80 or 90 years, consistently reporting serious psychopathology as well as neurodiversity in large proportions of patients (including teens) demanding any kind of phony “gender treatment,” and it becomes shockingly clear how unethical & dangerous is the “affirmative” model for making money with confused “gender” patients.

      • Actually, the affirmative model completely dispenses with any need for the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. Today, essentially everyone is self diagnosed and then affirmed.

    • Randy, “Claiming children cannot keep big secrets from their parents just is not plausible, as anyone who was a child themselves surely knows.”

      Wow, that just proved right there Randeena is not a parent. My 20 years old who was abruptly cult-cocked by the trans-agenda in junior college – to this DAY – cannot keep a secret from me. When real parent watches their babies and children go through the ‘lying stage’ for so long, it’s amazing how we know every single tell.

      Randy, are you just a FTM trying to justify your error? …or an angry un-claimed man trying to get revenge on all the young women of the world?

      • If I _am_ a FTM, that would be a pretty huge surprise to me.

        I simply look back to my childhood and young adulthood, and remember the things about my life that my parents either did not pick up on or chose not to pick up on. I simply think about other people who were once children and their parents and their parents’ surprise that the lives they had imagined for their children would not come about. (Coming out, for whatever it’s worth, seems to be a surprise generally, even when it should not be a surprise.)

        Children simply are not uncomplicated extensions of their parents. They can have inclinations and identities quite distinct from what their parents have. That simple truth merits recognition.

      • @Randy – So your theory is, that since you kept secrets from your parents – all children and teenagers by default – if they have a secret, desire, or impression of themselves – is simply fact, because it exists in their mind. All this regardless of influence, environment, or science… Basically, all humans are born with full wisdom.

        So…have you ever lived near or been around people? You seem a bit lost in this world.

  16. Funny isn’t it?…… one little study that doesn’t go along with the typical trans narrative pushed by activists and the media causes such an uproar! Wow! That tells me a lot. It’s a one way street!

  17. Angus, “trans ee in their bonnet” – you are a breath of fresh air, as always. I’m your pal Charly the worm from Twitter, now exiled and suspended but finding IRL meeting, blogs, email lists, huge radfem surge outside Twitter bros. I tried Gab but finding more love on MeWe. Thanks for this article, as comprehensive, well-reasoned and fact full to the brim as you always are.

  18. Pingback: ACTION: Tell the media breast binding, body dysphoria and bilateral mastectomies are not experiences that should be normalized or glorified – Gender Critical Action Center

  19. Jenny. You bring up a VERY important point! Even if a child does exhibit all the diagnostic criteria (insistent ,consistent, persistent) it still does not mean medical transition is the only or best treatment. Same goes for adults. This is the exact reason detransitioners who have found other ways to heal from dysphoria NEED to be listened to!! But we have all seen what happens when they actually have the extreme bravery to try to reach out to people or speak up to professionals. Until and unless all options and avenues are slowly and truthfully explored than these professionals who are in any way involved with medically transition are proceeding from half truths, ideology and recklessness. Hell even if they just admitted to their patients that they really don’t know if what they are doing is going to be beneficial … at least I could respect that a little. But we see and experience how these treatments are almost pushed on to these young people and no one ever mentions other options! It is in one word … unethical!

  20. dear 4thwavenow, like so many parents posting here, our young-adult son has announced he is trans and is now on hormones. Needless to say we are heartsick. We have found much useful information on this site (thank you!)–debunking the transition or die narrative, for instance, but are are also seeking information about long-term medical risks of hormone treatments. We thought perhaps Angus might have some pointers to studies–anything would be so appreciated. We are desperate and beyond sad watching our beautiful child change before our eyes. We weren’t sure how or where in all the threads it might be appropriate to post this. Feel free to paraphrase. Thank you.

    • Amy, there is some stuff in the “resources” section here at 4thwavenow.

      Also some info at the transgendertrend.com website.

  21. Randy. I have never thought of my children as an extension of myself or husband. I have always recognized with amazement what unique personalities they are. I always had a hard time believing in the children are molded by their parents. I do think they are nurtured by us if we are loving and open to listening to them and I do think we have influence but so do many other things in our society. The problem I am seeing with my adult child is her natural way of being and behaving changed drastically when she decided to socially transition. Also she had never exhibited childhood gender dysphoria as described in the DSM. I honestly cannot buy that her friend group did not influence her. Out of a very small group 4 females suddenly discovered they were trans? Really? If I can freely admit that children are distinct from there parents and are their own unique beings than surely you can admit that something just doesn’t add up to all these teens and young adults suddenly discovering that they are trans in clusters. There is nothing wrong with researchers looking into many different possible reasons there has been such a huge explosion in the number of young people seeking medical treatment for gender dysphoria. Especially because a huge chunk of these people are young lesbian females. Time will tell. Let all voices be heard. If you are so convinced that you are correct than you have nothing to worry about. Only one side is allowed to be heard right now and that is dangerous. If people truly want best treatment for truly dysphoric people than we need to allow many different voices to be heard.

  22. Pingback: Tell the NY Times to stop normalizing female body-hatred by glorifying double mastectomies of healthy breasts. – Gender Critical Action Center

  23. So, I struggle about all of this. My beautiful, ASD daughter announced three years ago at 15 (seemingly under the influence of rejection by neuro-typical peers, the prevailing zeitgeist, credulous gay and “trans” friends who are rapidly multiplying, and the Internet) that she “is” a boy. This is a kid who STILL half then time prefers dresses, playsuits and evening gowns, which she refers to as “drag,” yet also wants to be put on “T” and speaks approvingly of “top surgery. I’m jut not buying it, and neither, thank God, is her therapist, who does not believe that her issues are going to be resolved by “transitioning” her gender.

    At the same time, her father and I are committed liberals, 100 percent opposed to right-wing efforts to suppress gay civil rights, boot transgender people out of the military and so forth. I am uncomfortable with this language of the “transcult” or the putdowns of people like Randy who obviously feel very deeply (at least at the moment) that this is the core truth of who he is. No, I don’t think my daughter was “in the closet” throughout her childhood (and by the way, neither does she). But I do believe that some people (not nearly as many as are rushing off to clinics these days) are really transgender.

    I think both sides of this discussion need to come together. Parents need to be willing to recognize that some kids might actually be trans (probably not that many, or the species would die out). On the trans side, there needs to be an acknowledgement that there is an element of social contagion here, and that researching that or researching desistance, or not immediately giving in to a young teenager’s impulse to take hormones or cut her breasts off, does not equal an evil, right-wing plot.

    • Measured comments like yours are few and far between. Thanks for writing. Let us know when you hear any trans activist give an inch on the issue of rapid onset dysphoria, or the potential harms to LGB and ASD youth. And if you hear a gender clinician acknowledge the influence of social contagion on vulnerable young women also please let us know.

      • That’s the problem, right? 🙂 Trans activists and “gender clinicians” are not doing that at the moment. But just saying it would be good if they did.

    • If some people are “true trans” then why wasn’t this ever recorded in ancient societies like Egypt, Greece, China, or the Roman Empire? The Romans in particular recorded everything, including homosexuality, and they certainly weren’t shy, yet there isn’t a single recorded case of youth who had to “transition or die” in all of the ancient world. Not one!

      • Yes. We covered that in this post. Trans activists rushed in to talk about “third genders” and “two spirits” but they missed the point, which lovetruthcourage just stated. There is no record in medical history of an epidemic of “trans kids” committing suicide because they believed they were in the wrong body. Gender atypicality has been in existence since forever. The “suicide or transition” meme spread irresponsibly by activists and some clinicians is new. As is the current trans activist assertion that trans people are LITERALLY the opposite sex. “Third genders” never claimed that.
        //4thwavenow.com/2016/08/29/hippocrates-rolls-in-his-grave-in-search-of-the-dysphoric-trans-tweens-of-yore/

      • Well, “two spirits” and all that sound silly and unscientific. But can’t we concede that there may be some very small number of people who feel this way strongly enough for it to make sense for them to take on other gender names or to socially identify with the other gender, if that’s what they want to do? I just don’t happen to believe that my child is one of them.

      • Yes. And until very recently it was a rare group of people, and no one was talking about medical transition of minors. That is what has created this backlash, not that once-rare group of people who considered themselves to be transsexual.

      • I want to state first that I am anti-trans ideology and anti-transition, but there were cases in the Ancient world in which males attempted to live as “females” or pseudo-females by voluntary castration. These males would probably be considered in the homosexual spectrum now.

        There were ancient Mesopotamian boy prostitutes who castrated themselves to retain an androgynous appearance, much like today’s Hijra in India. There were the Roman Galli, castrated priests who dressed in female robes and gesticulated in an exaggerately female manner, and the Priests of Cybele who sacrificed their manhood to their androgynous goddess to live as pseudo-women. There was even an emperor, Helagabalus, who ordered his genitals be refashioned into a female shape to be penetrated by his servant lover.

        The fact is, historically speaking, you can’t dissociate historical homosexuality from these forms of primitive low-tech transgenderism (the other form male homosexuality can take historically is pederasty, but that’s beside the point). “Homophobia”, the expectation that a male would castrate himself because homosexual relationships were not accepted, only covers some of this to a point. Why would an emperor such as Helagabalus, the most powerful man in his empire, desire such surgery if he already could frolick with his male slaves all he wanted and had no superiors to answer to? It is an interesting question to ponder.

      • Response to the comment by Daiana:

        The Roman Galli, the cult of Cybele, and the case of the Emperor Helagabalus (aka Elagabalus) are discussed in some detail in various comments on this post, already cited in a comment above: Hippocrates rolls in his grave: In search of the dysphoric trans tweens of yore.

        With reference specifically to the case of Helagabalus, see this comment. The source does not say that Helagabalus ‘ordered his genitals be refashioned into a female shape’. It says, and this is a literal translation, that he ‘begged his doctor to use his skill to make him double in form by means of an incision at the front’. In other words, he wanted a pseudo-vagina in addition to his penis, not in place of it. This is not a case of voluntary castration.

  24. Hi Angus. I’m a brain anatomist and MRI methods researcher at Oxford in the UK. I’m not trans and I don’t have kids although I may soon have two very young step daughters.

    I liked your piece, and broadly I’m in firm agreement with what you say. But, I think you are at your weakest when you discuss evolutionary mechanisms. You say

    “Evolution would not allow development of a heritable trait cluster or quasi-sub-species in which a woman or man in good physical health would have an insatiable obsessed yearning to mimic the sociocultural sex stereotypes”

    And although that sounds true, and may well be true, we cannot know whether it actually is true. It’s a story. Moreover, you can basically infer or attribute almost anything to “evolution-by-inference” and this is a classic tool for e.g. racists. This kind of speculation on the evolutionary past given a putative claim about the present looks really weak to me, scientifically speaking, compared to the rest of what you are saying.

    I’m not saying it’s wrong – although it probably is in terms of detail, if not spirit. I’m saying it’s a poor argument, and as a style of argument it has undesirable past political associations.

    I would suggest there are likely to be much stronger biological arguments for what you are saying than using speculation about evolutionary processes. But I’m not a researcher in evolutionary biology.

    cheers C

  25. To me the principal problem is the conflagration of biological sex and socialised gender.

    I grew up in a place and time (leftist artist, barely post hippie family in Germany and France of the 1960s and 1970s) with zero pressure on gender conformation by either peers or family and in a generally progressive urban society which not just didn’t enforce gendering, no, gendering wasn’t an issue anywhere. I can most identify with peachyoghurt’s youth, which also appears to have had freedom of choice. Unlike her I am no lesbian, I am bisexual though.

    It has been my observation that the anglo-saxon sphere has always, even then (I was in the USA as a guest student for a few months as a teen), been much more insistent on the observation of classic gendering by its citizens. This has become even more pronounced over the last few decades, with gendering activities of the culture reaching deeply into the often peer-pressured lives of the children.

    Believe it or not, when I grew up there were no “babyblue” or “pink” clothes and playthings ANYwhere in our household, and not just not in ours, I haven’t seen them then in shops either. The closest it came to this was the beginning of Barbie sales in Europe, and at the time Barbie was scorned by most parents.

    I grew up with the free choice of whether I wore trousers or skirts (it was trousers), long hair or short (it was very short) or whom I wanted to play and associate with (mostly boys). No one thought twice about the fact that I played upper children’s league level table tennis, rode horses twice a week (roughneck outside), took ballet lessons (own choice) and was the light technician of a rock band. When I was 15 I dressed the entire year long as a male from the Georgian and Regency eras, clothes sewn on my own, and no one batted an eye when I swept into high school in a floor length black cloak covering male baroque attire, not even the most conservative teachers of the time.

    Nor the other pupils either, by the way. We had no cliques, and bullying wasn’t something that happened. Individualism was a given, and just as we had the likes of myself, there were boys wearing make up and dressing up like David Bowie or long-haired hippie types. Whether, for instance, a girl wore a bra (I didn’t), or shaved (more didn’t shave than shaved, I sure as hell never shaved) or wore make-up (I mostly didn’t) didn’t matter. I was asked to participate in a dance event (in front of the entire school) by our local “girly” group because they knew I’d danced ballet for long. That I was such a zany tomboy was of no import, and I had no objection going along with it for the fun of it.

    So, with this being my formative first fifteen years I have side-eyed the recent 25 years or so and their advent of severest gendering of youths. Not just in the USA, where this seems to have originated, but also slowly but surely here in Europe. I’ve seen the advent of gender-segregated clothing, of gender-segregated toys and sports, and of a whole new slew of rules for how girls and boys “have to behave”. Most of it would have made me fucking miserable as a child and youth, and in hindsight, if I were born today, I might have turned towards trans ideology to avoid being warped.

    It is my firm believe that the narrowing of life choices, the needless enforcing of gendered behaviour, the squashing of any type of sexuality other than heteronormative sexuality, the shaming of children and the institution of peers in the schools as genderpolicing agents, is at the back of all this.

    Because, seriously, what shall a gender-nonconforming or queer child these days do? It can’t live out what it wants to live like, because s/he will immediately be negatively impacted by their peers, teachers and parents. So the only way out of gendering is “switching” to the gender they feel most attracted to. But that’s quite insane in reality, because it means that to change the social construct of one’s gender this kids become convinced to try change their biological gender. Which of course fails. And renders them incapable of having families and children in so many cases.

    I also believe that unless we as a society don’t get back to individual freedom and the least possible amount of gendering of our youths, if we don’t firmly abolish and squash peer pressure among children and youths in the schools, we will not be able to stop what is happening now.

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