There is a sort of hysteria about transgender people that has gripped the minds of (mostly) Republican legislators. They claim that teachers are “grooming” children to be gay or transgender. We used to think of the word “groom” to refer to a male who was getting married and the word “grooming” as a description of one’s manner of dress (“good grooming” or “bad grooming”). Now the word has a sinister connotation, as rightwing zealots like Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty accuse the nation’s teachers of conspiring to turn their students gay or transgender.
The Williams Institute at the School of Law at UCLA developed an estimate of the number of transgender people in the U.S. population. The estimate is that transgender people are 0.06%, or about 1.4 million people. Unless my math is off, that is six people out of every 10,000 people identify as transgender.
I have not seen any evidence that children were turned gay or transgender because of what their teachers did in school. It seems to be a decision that is never taken easily or lightly because there is so much social opprobrium attached to being transgender.
The issue has been dormant until recently, when a transgender woman (formerly male) swimmer won national competitions. So, now, the issue has become a matter of “protecting women’s sports.” No one worries about a transgender man (formerly female) competing in men’s sports, but they believe that a transgender woman has biological advantages that make the competition unfair.
I won’t share my views because frankly I am conflicted. The only thing I can say with conviction is that a problem that affects a very tiny number of people has been cynically turned into a culture war issue.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
GOP = Genitally Obsessed Paranoids
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HAAAA!!!! Exactly.
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I think your math is off a bit. 0.06% is 6 in 10,000 not 6 in 1,000. That would translate to about 200,000 Americans.
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Thank you for the correction.
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Re “The estimate is that transgender people are 0.06%, or about 1.4 million people. Unless my math is off, that is six people out of every 1,000 people identify as transgender.”
Your math is off. That is 6 out of 10,000.
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thank you!
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Thank you for correcting me.
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Actually, an athletes gender should be irrelevant to sports competitions. Athletes are separated by sex, not gender. Shy people substitute the word “gender” for “sex” so as to not use a “dirty” word.
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Actually athletes are separated by gender rather than sex. That is the issue with the transgender swimmer: she went through puberty as a male, giving her a very different biological boost compared to cisgender female swimmers. She competes as a female because of her gender.
I am a fan of The Economist’s suggested solution to the sports issue. They suggest that there should be two categories in sports competitions, one for biologically female athletes, and the other open to any athlete.
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Red meat for the Maga crowd, a hyped up big nothing so that Tucker Carlson et al. can spew their hatred and stand in the way of any decency or sanity.
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exactly
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I am glad to hear you are conflicted on this issue. This has become a culture war in which the left as well as the right has participated in facile slogans and superficial arguments. There is a huge increase in children and young men and women deciding that they are trans and quickly being led down the path of medicalization without access to mental health care. We need to look at the whole child deeply before taking on an affirming or condemning stance. But, the issues are complex, and the current climate does not allow for a middle ground and a balance of views or even to discuss the actual scientific research. In this issue, good intentions absolutely does not infer beneficial outcomes because many teens who are dysphoric are in the process of identity formation, as they should be. The percentage of young adults currently self identifying as trans is much higher than historic figure, which are likely wrong as well. There is a phenomenon that many teens and their families are dealing with called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, and we need to treat them with care. We need institutions and media to allow us to discuss this more openly, but there is a great deal of fear in schools and among parents with left leaning political beliefs to openly discuss the issue. I recommend the podcast- Gender- A Wider Lens – two psychologists discuss the rapidly rising rates of youth with gender dysphoria with an array of experts and trans adults. This article discusses the topic of parents trying to get information and help for their dysphoric children who encounter extreme prejudice when questioning the gender affirmation model of care that is prevalent in our schools and medical institutions on both sides of the pond. https://quillette.com/2021/04/02/when-sons-become-daughters-parents-of-transitioning-boys-speak-out-on-their-own-suffering/?fbclid=IwAR3zk8YqunPboqGYQHkoGBunZE1EBGns2yWs9ggMOc4SBnySi2M62jGdmk4
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Oh for pity sake. You act like transitioning is something kids wake up and decide to do one morning and get it done that afternoon. As a parent of a trans child, I could only wish it was a tenth that easy. By the time my son gets his first consultation (as which time no treatment will be provided, only deciding next steps) it will have been a year since he came out. The timeline from there will take years before he is eligible for any surgery (which insurance may or may not cover) during which time he has to be in therapy.
BTW, are you equally concerned about kids making decisions like joining the military, or are you just obsessed with other people’s genitals?
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Thank you dienne for your comment.
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Thank you, Dienne!!! Sense!!! And best of wishes to you and your son on this journey!
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Hi Dienne,
I am no stranger to this issue myself. Lots of those that I know and love are struggling. I am linking Lisa Marchiano’s article on the topic that many of us have found to be quite relevant. There is indeed a rise in teens who are choosing a new gender when faced with the difficulties of puberty. As someone who has been interested and experimented with sex and gender my entire life, I wonder what I would have chosen if choices had been available to me as a youth. Please don’t make assumptions about me or launch accusations. This is a highly sensitive subject for both of us, and I respect and seek to listen to a variety of perspectives on the subject. Have you listened to Gender: A Wider Lens podcast? Here is a quote from the article and a link to it.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804
Now I would like to discuss how therapists are contributing to the rise in transitioning by quickly validating a young person’s self-diagnosis as transgender without careful differential diagnosis, exploration of trauma, questions about sexual orientation, etc. Let me say at the outset that I believe most, if not all, therapists are well meaning in doing this. However, I also believe that we, as mental health professionals, need to think more critically about this trend. We are effectively encouraging young people to permanently alter their bodies when there may well be less invasive ways of dealing with their distress.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that young people are receiving hormone prescriptions without careful assessment. In the study of 200 detransitioned women, 65% of them responded that they had received no therapy before starting hormones. Most who had been to therapy had only a handful of sessions before being given a letter for hormones. The median age for starting transition among those who answered was 17 (Stella, 2016c). The website transgenderreality.com documents online reports of young people receiving letters from therapists for hormones after one, two, or three sessions. One poster explains why she got the required letter after just three sessions. “My therapist got her degree from a school with a strong social justice emphasis and so thankfully she emphasized that she didn’t want to be a ‘barrier’ to me” (T, 2015).
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Support and shout out to Dienne for her contributions to this discussion. I know people whose kids have come out as non-binary, then trans, as teens, and another family whose first child (whom they assumed to be a girl), announced he was a boy as soon as he could conceptualize (around age 3). He is now 9, and has been living life as a boy, which is also called “social transitioning.” Additionally, I teach college students who feel they don’t fit OR have younger siblings who go through a period of questioning their gender identification because they do not identify with the small box of gender that they feel society is trying to put them in. Fortunately, there is enough information out there that young people CAN question and then hopefully grow into themselves, though some will need help to transition–help that in some states is being outlawed. Many of us older people who identify as cisgender but gender-nonconforming can tell you that there has been a strong backlash against the freedoms gained in the 1970s. I see this in my 30-something children and their peers. Even liberal parents who would welcome and support an LGBT or Q child reinforce the pink and blue/princesses and trucks stereotypes. Their rationale is that they are going to assume conventional gender or sexuality until the child announces differently. Even educated, liberal parents assume that only OTHER PEOPLE’s kids are gay, trans, or questioning. Hopefully they will be able to adapt and support their own kids when and if the questioning happens.
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Anne– “the small box of gender that they feel society is trying to put them in… Even liberal parents who would welcome and support an LGBT or Q child reinforce the pink and blue/princesses and trucks stereotypes.” If there’s one helpful thing parents could do from the get-go it would be to drop this stuff. Follow your kids’ druthers in clothing, hairstyle, colors, toys, activities—without injecting attitude! It seems so obvious. Yet I’ve known more than one family who anxed so over the onslaught of opprobrium their kids might get in public school for being raised free of gender stereotype that they came close to turning their lives upside-down to homeschool, in a day & locale where was no homeschooling network.
It was so easy—for girls only—in my antique day, when being a ‘tomboy’ was no biggie, & even ‘Boston marriages’ got a pass. Unless I’m mistaken, those days are gone, & of course none of this was ever socially OK for boys. Thank god for the collectables craze from ‘80’s on, which allowed little boys Cabbage Patch dolls, then Beanie Babies, then Pokémon figures on which to exercise their paternal/ maternal affections. I have been worrying about little girls ever since Barbie showed up.
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quilette, a libertarian stronghold.
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maestramalinche– “Rapid Onset” Gender Dysphoria is a condition theorized by exactly one doctor in 2018. It posits [with zero scientific evidence] a type of gender dysphoria not constituting an actual medical condition, but rather occurring as the result of social media and peer pressure. The paper was published in a now-16-y.o. med journal, creating its third controversy [the first resulting in firing a peer-reviewer with apology to paper submitted, the second in a hasty retraction of a published paper]. In 2019 the ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’ author published a corrected version clarifying that it is a hypothesis based on anecdotal evidence, not a diagnosis.
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quickly being led down the path of medicalization without access to mental health care
evidence of this?
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There is quite a bit of evidence on this. But mainstream media is not publishing much of it. In my progressive groups of friends, almost half of us have teens and young adults identifying as non-binary or trans. Several of them have been prescribed hormones and many of the young women, who may have been tomboys or gay in times past, are now binding their breasts and participate in friend groups who do the same. This is definitely a trend, with some potentially life-changing consequences. Here is one trans woman who works as a psychologist and gender specialist who is speaking out about the rise in numbers of gender dysphoric teens and urges caution about early medical interventions. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-04-12/a-transgender-psychologist-reckons-with-how-to-support-a-new-generation-of-trans-teens
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I have no doubt that trans identities (and sometimes transient trans identities) are becoming more common among teens, BUT a) one cannot know whether these are due to latent proclivity that has finally been given opportunity for expression, faddishness among teenagers coupled with the usual teenage identity crisis, seizing upon new possibilities for self expression, or some combination thereof, AND since the number of trans identifying teens is in flux, there aren’t good figures on this, but it’s definitely a minority of the population, and those undergoing hormone therapy are a small percentage of the small percentage. But definitely, it is in fact the case that there is a significant cultural shift going on. And, , , , Harry Syles. LOL.
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And this is doubtless very difficult for many parents to navigate. Having recently taught high-school students, I can say with some authority that it’s a wonder many of them make it through this time at all. They are often extreme. They have little experience of the world. They are still children but think of themselves as adults. Every tiny thing is a huge crisis. Lots and lots and lots of drama. And, according to long-term FMRI studies, the areas of their brains that govern planning and control are not fully developed until they are well past this age, in their twenties. So, caution is advisable. I think that a lot of the pressure could be taken off all this if people understood the difference between sex as a biological inheritance and gender as all the outward reflections in behavior traditionally associated with one’s biological inheritance. One can make changes in the latter and take one’s time about the former. That seems the wisest approach, and that is, of course, the course that doctors take.
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Alas, this article is behind a paywall, so I can’t access it.
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My advice is Roy Turrentine’s: love them, let them know that you stand with them unconditionally, show them understanding, counsel patience present them with alternatives to taking dramatic action, get them non-judgmental and balanced counseling if you can.
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Bob Shepherd, here is an article by the same psychologist on the same issue – no paywall, but lots of ads.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/are-we-seeing-a-phenomenon-of-trans-youth-social-contagion/
The New York Times published an article last week trying to distill the different camps and perspectives on this issue and the difficulty that parents of young adults face when teens find out that they can medicalize the problem away. Finland and Sweden and some of the Northern European countries have now come out with stricter protocols around trans identifying youth, as they saw a huge increase in the trans identifying teens that could not be explained easily, and they were not seeing positive outcomes with early medicalization. Love and self-acceptance is indeed the answer, yet this is the challenge of puberty.
Many of us in the older queer communities are worried about young people making irrevocable changes to their bodies that they will later regret.
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Thanks, Ms. Aguilar.
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Sorry, Sasha but the second link doesn’t continue past a teaser para. I wonder if you could summarize one or the other, with a few quotes? Looks like a practitioner I’d like to hear from. [I enjoyed the NYT Douthat piece, which was very balanced (for him!).]
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bethree5, I am very sorry to hear about your loss and your challenges dealing with the for profit medical / psychiatric care in this country. It is challenging indeed. There are often concurrent neural diversities in trans identifying kids today – autism, being chief among them in both natal boys and girls. In addition, traumatic experiences, which can include puberty itself, is another underlying mental health issue which must be dealt with carefully before diagnosing with puberty blockers or hormonal treatments. I have copied the full text of the Erica Anderson editorial here (from the SF Examiner):
Opinion: When it comes to trans youth, we’re in danger of losing our way
Fueled by isolation and social media, some youth rush toward gender identity as answer to distress
By Erica Anderson Special to The Examiner • January 3, 2022 8:30 am – Updated January 4, 2022 11:38 am
Through a grant from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, UCSF’s Child and Adolescent Gender Center has for the past five years provided training and consultation on transgender kids to all youth-serving agencies and professionals in The City, including its public schools. The vision has been to make San Francisco a model in caring for its gender creative youth.
I was part of that effort, and for years worked at UCSF’s Gender Center as one of its two psychologists. I provided consultation, taught in the professional schools and wrote about the work. It is well documented that LGBTQ youth are subject to minority stress and higher rates of almost every potential psychological and social problem.
As a trans woman and therapist to trans and gender creative people, I’ve worked hard to advance acceptance of trans identities, including those of trans youth. But increasingly I’m worried that in our zeal to identify and protect these special children and adolescents, we may have strayed from some core principles and we are in danger of losing our way.Covid, ahead of the 2022 Paris Roubaix.
In this extraordinary time during a global pandemic, we have all been subject to extra stress to stay vigilant and avoid COVID and all its variants. Young people have pivoted to remote learning and stayed at home for in many cases more than an entire academic year, depriving them of ordinary social experiences. As a result, most adolescents have also depended upon social media and the internet to an extent never before seen.
We are learning some worrisome things about this massive, unplanned social experiment. Even the tech giants have conceded in their own research that there is a new kind of addiction/attraction to certain content and a kind of contagion among select groups, especially adolescent girls. Increased rates of depression and suicide, declines in dating and sexual activity, more reported loneliness and feelings of being left out, lower rates of involvement in extracurricular activities and surprisingly less sleep all characterize the current generation of adolescents. These trends seem to be accelerating in the era of the smartphone.
There is little question that reliance on screens and devices has isolated adolescents who may be most vulnerable and susceptible to peer and other influences, intensifying their usage of and reliance on whatever messages and images they see. I am concerned that our computer-mediated, always online environment is creating isolated echo chambers that can work on adolescents in an insidious way. And I believe that it’s been worse during COVID.
For example, some content on YouTube and TikTok includes “influencers,” who themselves are barely out of puberty. They dispense advice to other young people, specifically encouraging them to explore their gender identity freely.
On the one hand, I’m glad our society has evolved toward greater acceptance of all LGBTQ identities. On the other hand, some of the messaging has landed on vulnerable youth searching not just for keys to their own identity but solutions to other psychological and emotional problems, including serious psychiatric problems.
Here is where things may have gone wrong.
Some influencers are literally encouraging the idea that one’s psychological distress may be because a young person is trans and is suffering from gender dysphoria. The remedy, they say, is to come out as trans or non-binary, which the influencers advise will alleviate their suffering. Welcomed into the company of other trans and gender creative persons, such young people may have found acceptance — though virtual acceptance, since much of this rapport is online.
They also may be coached on how to navigate and/or control these issues with their parents, who they are told may not “get it.” Among the advice from these influencers is to make a quick social and gender transition, which may include a new chosen name and pronoun and access to gender-affirming hormones. Many of these influencers are literally dispensing medical advice.
Increasingly, I am contacted by parents whose child has come out to them as trans in recent weeks. Searching for help, they find me because they want to be affirming. But they report that the newly asserted gender identity occurred during the pandemic, and they cannot recall any significant suggestion of gender creativity by their child prior to recent events, though many parents report previous psychological problems with their child.
For example, I received a recent inquiry from a San Francisco father whose 14 year old came out as trans in late October after a year of therapy for anxiety and depression. “We were pretty surprised by the news, as we’d had no indication that he had thoughts in this area,” the father communicated.
Supportive, open-minded and conscientious parents like these have been contacting me at an accelerating rate in the past year. They also report that their initial contact with therapists leads to affirmation of their child’s asserted trans identity and referral to gender clinics. The numbers of new cases at such clinics have exploded. (A recent Gallup poll found that 1 in 6 members of Gen Z identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.)
In some cases, well-meaning psychological and medical providers are allowing themselves to be “triangulated,” pitting a child’s wishes against parents who are reluctant to see their child quickly put on hormone blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Minors need parental consent for gender-affirming medicines that can pause natal puberty and/or introduce physical changes concordant with the affirmed transgender identity. And minors, especially those between the ages of 12 and 17, often prefer not to heed the advice of their parents.
So instead of forging an alliance between child and parent to evaluate what is needed and drive consensus as the basis for gender affirmation, providers may challenge parents and fuel adolescent rebellion. Of course, virtually all young people need their parents and will for years. Some families experience a rupture from which it may be difficult to recover. In my experience, the vast majority of parents want to support their child whom they love. But they are overwhelmed with shock, grief and legitimate concern for their child’s well-being.
In the hundreds of cases I have seen over the past half decade at UCSF and in my private practice, these types of cases are growing. Often by the time I get involved, there has been set up a pitched battle between a youth whose interest is to hurdle toward life-changing decisions with enduring consequences and parents who are bereft and torn between the acceptance and affirmation they want to give their child and their terror about consenting to medical interventions they fear are not right for their child at this time or at all. Ominously, such parents are worried that the child will later regret such decisions and blame parents for allowing it.
With some colleagues, I have been speaking and writing about these concerns. Unfortunately, we find the research on trans youth has not kept up with what is happening. The pandemic has turbo-charged these dynamic trends. Some deny the reality of peer influence upon identity formation. Others decry the methodological approach necessary and consistent with best practices, namely the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care and the Endocrine Society and APA guidelines — which encourage an individualized, comprehensive biopsychosocial evaluation prior to initiation of gender-affirming medications and, of course, surgeries.
Research confirming the benefits of gender-affirming psychological and medical care has been done at university-based gender clinics like UCSF in the U.S. and Europe. The gender creative youth served by these clinics, which offer a careful methodical approach with the support of parents and professionals, go on to do well. In the case of a recently disclosed gender identity, the established clinics and best practices have encouraged gender exploratory therapy. This can be a matter of a few weeks to a year or more.
In my over 40 years as a psychologist, I’ve seen psychotherapeutic phenomena come and go. Eating disorders, multiple personality disorders and repressed memory syndrome have in retrospect spread through subgroups of adolescents and the professionals who have treated them. This spread is like wildfire through vulnerable underbrush, clearly borne in an environment of contagion.
Why is this phenomenon distinctly different from previous ones? How is it possible that gender identity formation constitutes the only area of development in adolescence that is immune from peer influence? Having gone to extraordinary lengths to make San Francisco the best city in the world for trans acceptance and affirmation, let’s not be derailed by zealous disregard for what we see happening in our own back, front and virtual yard.
The COVID pandemic doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, nor are online dynamics detrimental to young people. So let’s make sure that every young person questioning their gender gets what they need, not just what they want.
Erica E. Anderson, Ph.D. is the former president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, former board member of WPATH and is writing a book on the evolution of the science, practice and culture dealing with transgender healthcare; she is based in Berkeley.
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Very interesting, Sasha, thanks for going to the trouble to reproduce that piece here.
I would totally have been fodder for such social media silos at the age of 11-12. We had something truly awful called “slam books”—spiral notepads passed surreptitiously among 7th-gr students: each page had a name at the top with numbered lines inviting everyone to anonymously write in a pithy comment. Their opinion of the person. That year I actually abandoned using my middle name, which was quite a nice, but unusual one, because people would comment ‘that’s a boy’s name.’ (There were so many among family and friends bearing my first name that we all had nicknames or alternatives.)
And thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it.
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You write: “No one worries about a transgender man competing in men’s sports, but they believe that a transgender woman has biological advantages that make the competition unfair……I won’t share my views because frankly I am conflicted.”
Be honest, Ms. Ravitch. You are NOT actually conflicted. You won’t share your views because you fear being canceled and excoriated on social media for defying woke orthodoxy on this issue. You know full well that among highly trained athletes at all levels from high school on up, people who have gone through male puberty (XY chromosomes) have inherent and significant physical advantages over XX chromosomed people, i.e. girls and women. You post constantly about how you believe in sound science as compared to those on the Right who don’t. Have the courage of your convictions, even if it costs you a few days of grief on Twitter.
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Kate Rusch, I am never afraid of being “canceled.” I say whatever I want. I am 83 years old and I don’t fear anyone’s opinion, certainly not yours. I am conflicted about the issue. I believe that if a young person chooses to be transgender, that is a very hard choice that involves enormous social opprobrium. My heart goes out to them. One of my sons is gay. I am married to a woman. If any of my grandsons told me that they were transgender (they have not), I would still love them. This is not a political issue. It is deeply personal and should remain that way.
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Ms. Ravitch, of course genuine transgender people should be treated with compassion; no adult would choose to go through the grief that transgender people have to suffer. But denying the physical advantages that post-puberty male athletes have is absurd, a denial that has been refuted beyond all doubt by anyone who actually follows the science. Why do you have any doubt about this matter?
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I don’t rush to judgment, unlike you.
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Rush to judgment? There is no one who is expert on this issue who has any doubt about the physical differences between post-puberty males and females. No layperson with any common sense has doubts, either.
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Kate: So which is the more important problem in society? Men competing as women or competition in athletics being more of an issue than the treatment of people in general?
This country is sports crazy. To some people, it means more that an unfair advantage might be gained on the court than it would mean for a poor person to be denied the right to go to school. So is that not what this is all about? If we were not talking about this issue, perhaps we would be highlighting the fact that one of my best pupils ever cannot afford college next year.
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Kate Rusch– UT’s Gov Cox noted (in regard to his veto of a trans sports bill), “Of the 75,000 high school kids who play sports at their schools in the Utah, only four are openly transgender. Of that four, only one plays on a girls’ team.”
Trans athletic participation should not be subject to the blunt instrument of the law. Guidance should be taken from state or national interscholastic athletic associations. They are most likely to be up on the nuanced rules of Olympic sports participation.
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20-30% of youth are now “identifying” as LGBTQ+….mostly TQ+ since the the rates of homosexuality have remained low and stable. What do we think has happened?
In 5-10 yrs human evolution has dramatically morphed from a dimorphic to a multi-morphic species (gender vs biological sex) OR
2.There is a strange ideology that is selling an illusion and making $$$$ while harming teens/children (there are now over 70 gender classifications)?
The answer is #2. It is coming from social media but it makes its way into schools and spreads like the flu…social contagion. Since the rise of social media, teens/children have spent more time online resulting in mental health problems. Covid hit putting more teens/children online for many more hrs of the day. The Fed Gov’t isn’t helping by lumping gender identity in with sexual orientation (biology) and now we have the erosion of women’s hard earned rights (especially to separate spaces).
The Dems don’t want to mess with this by denying that a problem exists but the Reps are willing to take it on as a political ploy. Now, as much as I think DeSantis is a bozo, he is right on this one.
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Maybe a lot more people were transgender in times past, they just kept their mouths shut and suffered silently because of bigots like you? Maybe it’s a good thing that people can allow their external expression to match their internal experience now?
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exactly, Dienne. To your point, after the Kinsey Reports, when it became clear how common secret homosexual and bisexual orientations were, many people chose to come out, though many remained closeted because of this opprobrium.
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Another example. My best friend in high school was a fellow who, like me, aspired to be a writer. We spent countless hours, for years, pounding the pavement around town together on warm summer nights, talking about EVERYTHING–art, girls, politics, history, girls, literature, music, philosophy, girls, religion, girls. I thought I knew this person better than I did almost anyone on planet Earth.
Then, as an adult, she wrote a great novel about growing up trans in the then overwhelmingly prejudiced Midwest. Even I did not know, back then, her secret.
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I’m in the same boat as you Dienne, but I choose not to affirm the delusion/madness. I’m sorry that this has entered your home as it’s not easy to deal with. I don’t believe in “gendered souls” or “being born in the wrong body” or being “two spirited” etc. I do believe that puberty (and young adulthood) is tough on all kids but that it shouldn’t be pharmaceutically (or surgically) washed away….because puberty has a huge biological purpose. I know my child’s life and I know that none of this started until she had way more time on the internet due to Covid isolation. I believe this to be a huge medical scandal as thousands of de-sisters/de-transitioners are coming forward and openly talking about what they have gone through. The gender ideology movement is harmful for children/teens, it erodes the rights of women and it threatens the recently gained rights/respect of LGB people. If that makes me a bigot….so be it.
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“thousands of de-sisters/de-transitioners are coming forward and openly talking about what they have gone through.”
If we are throwing out unsupported “facts”, may I join in?
Thousands of trans kids have said their good mothers are the reason they became trans.
Thousand of trans kids have said their bad mothers are the reason they became trans.
Thousands of trans kids have said their bad fathers are the reason they became trans.
Thousands of trans kids have said their good fathers are the reason they became trans.
And 75% of trans kids say that all that brainwashing that they got in their K-3 grade classes in their public schools (but not private schools) is the reason they became trans. 25% of trans kids say it was the brainwashing they got their public schools in grades 4-6.
Every student who attends a private, charter or parochial school says that they would never become trans because they were taught by their admirable non-union teachers that being trans was just something that nasty union teachers are teaching kids.
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Nycpsp– “75% of trans kids say that all that brainwashing that they got in their K-3 grade classes in their public schools (but not private schools) is the reason they became trans.” Can you source for that stat? Is there a separate source for the priv vs pubsh distinction? Also, I do not understand why you say every student who attends a private, parochial or charter school says they would never become trans because of anti-trans teaching, when above you indicate that private schools did not brainwash them but pubschs did. ??
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bethree5,
I apologize because I was being snarky in response to the constant unsupported statistics I see thrown out here with no attribution.
I don’t have any reason to believe any of those statistics are correct. But doesn’t it sound convincing for me to post them with such complete confidence? I’m just pushing false narratives to try to convince people of whatever I believe will help my cause and whether or not it is true is no longer important. And we are all complicit in that until we stand up to it and try to inject some reality into the situation.
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Oops, hahaha nycpsp! 😀 That one went right over my head.
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In 5-10 yrs human evolution has dramatically morphed from a dimorphic to a multi-morphic species (gender vs biological sex)
See my notes about the science of cultural shifts, above.
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Cultural shifts arise slowly and barely noticed, and then, boom, they reach a tipping point. This is the way they USUALLY work, and there is a lot of science on this now. Your post confuses sex (morphology) and gender (behavioral expression), which makes discussion of this topic very difficult.
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I KNOW the difference between sex and gender! I am a “woman”…an adult human female (sex) but I wear jeans and t-shirts and you can typically find me doing all the yard work (gender=stereotypes). We ARE a dimorphic species…ovum meets sperm is the only way we reproduce.
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Sorry, I was confused by your post because no one is claiming that we are not primarily dimorphic, that is, of two sexes, though there are intersex persons and women have male sex hormones and men have female sex hormones to greater or lesser extents.
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Lisa, what was your source for “20-30% of youth are now “identifying” as LGBTQ+”?
Gallup’s large 2021 poll has that # at 9.5% for millennials and 16% for Generation Z (18-23 in 2020) [5.6% for all adults combined]. Given choice of bisexual, gay, lesbian, trans, 66% of that GenZ cohort identifies as bisexual. This corresponds with millennials [50% of a 9.5% cohort] and all adults 18 & over [54% of a 5.6% cohort]. The number for gay/lesbian in GenZ can’t have remained stable [nor the proportion of trans], as the bisexual part of the non-hetero quotient has jumped up considerably.
Maybe by youth you meant teenagers, and that non-hetero cohort did reach 20% in the 2016 Minn study of 81,000 9th & 11th graders. That was about orientation. They had separate questions on gender identity, and 3% chose trans, gender fluid, or not sure.
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https://pitt.substack.com/p/cognitive-political-dissonance?s=r
PITT stands for Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans and is FREE to read. You will find that most parents (having to post anonymously due to cancel culture/safety issues by trans activists) are actually Dems. The Republicans will win in the mid-terms as parents will vote on issues related to their children if the Dems don’t come clean on this. Children trump $$$ politically.
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So you approve of GOP fear mongering and telling outright lies?
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Even a broken clock is right twice a day and the GOP is right on this issue. If you fail to read/educate yourself about this “delicate” matter then you are doing the same ” Dem denial” hoping it will magically go away. Expect a red wave in the mid terms if the Dems don’t start taking a stand. Children/teens are being hurt mentally and physically and parents are a huge voting bloc.
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Sorry, LisaM, I don’t get why you are so threatened by this issue which actually affects a very small section of the population. Nobody is indoctrinating kids to become transgender in the schools, that’s just silly; that’s what you hear from some GOP fear propagandists. Sadly, yes, the GOP could win upcoming elections, but that’s for a whole host of other issues besides this transgender fear mongering.
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Joe, remember that some people are dealing with personal family issues that affect considerably their POV on such questions. I know that in my own family, when my brother came out, my mother was initially horrified and quoted Bible verses at him. But today she is a stanch LQBTQX activist and member of PFLAG.
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cx: staunch
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Wow, what a tangled mess this all is. I’m an old guy who grew up straight, disrespecting “queers” and other mixed gender folks, especially men. I became a male “feminist” in the ’70”s, as a teacher assn. leader–in part after realizing that women paid most of my salary. In my time we were taught, mostly by religion I think, not science, that gender was digital–only two sexes, an either/or world. Gradually–mostly with the help of gay friends–I realized it isn’t nearly that simple. I now believe gender is more “analogue.” I look back on my life and remember hiding my poetry book behind a MAD magazine in h.s., because poetry was considered feminine. Today, in my senior years, (and an Army veteran) I strongly dislike the excesses of masculinity–noisy trucks, guns, boxing, war & violence in movies, etc. As to sports, I still love football, but dislike that they’ve taken away ties, or that we have endless playoffs, etc. (But that’s mostly crass commercialization). As to who gets to play in what sports, etc., if we didn’t overemphasize winning, it wouldn’t matter as much. I do think it’s only fair–since most males are bigger and stronger–to separate the sports. But in the end, it’s sports–not war, not life and death. As to Republicans. Sad. I was one in ’67, but today’s R’s, seemingly only representing their wealthy donors and their own egos, can’t run on “Vote for me and I’ll help the Rich!” So, they demagog, sewing confusion, anger, whatever, to hide the real issues–then flood the field with money to win.
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Thank you for this testament, Jack! And good for you for continuing to evolve throughout your life!
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What exactly is the culture war about? I don’t understand. As a young Black man, I don’t understand the opposition to Trans People. I don’t clearly understand the need for safe spaces either, when we are all supposed to be integrated every way possible. 🤔😐
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You understand that we have ideals that sometimes fail to live up to what really happens in society. If you do not walk the same path as someone else, it may be difficult to understand the amount of prejudice and sometimes violence those that are different endure. LGBTQ people are often marginalized and sometimes murdered all over the world. The most memorable atrocity in the US occurred in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016. 49 people were killed and 53 more were wounded. “Gay bashing” is so prevalent that it has it own Wikipedia page. LGBTQ young people are so vulnerable as some of them are cast out by their families at a young age. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/10-anti-gay-myths-debunked
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We’re undergoing a cultural shift, Eddie, in which many young people have become accepting of gay and trans identities and the many variations thereof. And a lot of older people are very uncomfortable with this. That often happens with cultural shifts. We went through the same thing with the second-wave feminist revolution of the 1960s-1970s. Safe spaces are needed because people with gay and trans identities and people who are considering these often feel persecuted, objects of oppression, and they need places where people accept them. So, such a safe space might be a Gay Student Alliance group in a school or an online forum or simply a get-together with friends who are of a like mindset.
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The problem with the trans in sports issue is that it opens a can of worms with regard to the idea of humanity itself. We know that one of the factors affecting muscle building in testosterone. We know that the trans athlete might get a bit more testosterone before surgery, but what about the girl who naturally benefits from more testosterone than the average female? Are we going to go to the extreme of testing testosterone and setting appropriate levels? What about males with an extra genetic tendency to produce more of some substance that enhances performance? This gets messy.
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but what about the girl who naturally benefits from more testosterone than the average female?
it gets messy indeed. I have a rather radical solution for individual sports like swimming, gymnastics, and track and field: forget competition with others and replace this with competition against one’s own previous record, one’s personal best. “Wow! Hector just beat her personal best by 2 seconds! That’s gotta be a record in this state!”
Mikail Baryshnikov wrote, “I don’t try to dance better than others. I try to dance better than myself.”
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OK, I haven’t done this in a while, but here goes. Trans med/psych for teens is a relatively new field.
I am concerned with the issue raised by several posters, that counseling/ medical help sought by those whose children are declaring trans or expressing gender dysphoria/ fluidity seems to be sub-par. I.e., not scientifically sound. By that I mean, the expert advice sought out seems to lean in politically-correct directions: too quick to assume the new patient is in fact gender-dysphoric, latent trans, a potential near-term candidate for puberty-blocking hormones, et al. That’s a hallmark of a young and developing med/ psych field, so beware.
This blog is not the only place I’m hearing this, and it worries me that this may be prevalent. I get the motivation: psych & med consultants both are concerned with the high depression/ suicide stats in this sector. Nevertheless my [deceased at 23yo] son’s disastrous experience with med & psych establishments, despite best parental efforts, is blinking a big yellow caution light.
My eldest was afflicted with two rare illnesses which exacerbated each other. The body illness was a rare reactive arthritis which was only recognized in US in the ‘70’s. Symptoms started when he was 9 mos old [in the late ‘80’s], but it took a pediatric rheumatologist [rare specialty] to diagnose it at age 10. [At that time it was thought it would remain mild/ not interfere overly with conducting his life.] His mental illness [bipolar I, with mania expressing as psychosis (rare) at age 16] was there to be seen in childhood, but the psychiatric establishment at that time still cast “childhood bipolar” as a fringe diagnosis; he was treated as just another ADD, with meds that were completely countermanded had they understood he was bipolar, which aggravated the reactive arthritis, which aggravated the bipolar, which consequently expressed in psychotic mania a good 3 yrs before necessary.
By the time he was 15, the chronic pain from the physical illness interfered with daily life, despite OTC meds. It flared up terribly after the first psychotic mania, but local docs sent him to specialists in the specific physical pain regions [rather than rheumatologists], who trialed meds that caused other issues [because this reactive arthritis affects organs, not just joints], who threw up their hands.
And it went on from there: both the bipolar and the reactive arthritis caused us to be guinea pigs for docs listening to Big Pharma, always pushing the most expensive drug with the least history (& plenty of free samples in the doc’s drawer). Reactive arthritis is a disease of severe chronic pain; rheumatologist brought in pain mgt doc, another fledgling med field which made mistakes in the 2000’s.
I learned two things about the US med establishment. The main finding: there is no there there when it comes to connecting physical with mental illness at the clinical level in US medical practice. Still none today. Lots of papers and research, but trying to connect the two halves of this medicine is like trying to nudge a cruise ship in a different direction. You will have to look long and hard for practitioners with sensitivity to both. Second: many if not most med & psych practitioners you encounter are going to be ordinary, don’t expect different. By ‘ordinary,’ I mean they will be going with the flow of consensus, & that includes pushing the pop treatments—because ours is a for-profit healthcare system.
I don’t mean to imply that gender-fluid/ trans-leaning equates to mental illness. But being in a small and bullied minority will lead many to depression, or may activate genetic susceptibility to mental illness. And pursuing physical changes that may seem necessary [with psych therapy] means involving docs who are ‘can-do’ about physical remedies– don’t count on them to have a holistic psych/ physical picture. Best advice: keep looking for another practitioner if anything feels off.
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Bethree, I’m so sorry to hear what you and your son went through. God bless you.
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Thank you, FLERP. That means a lot to me and it helps.
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bethree5,
There are always some subpar practitioners of medicine. Where is the evidence that there are more of those subpar doctors treating trans kids than there are subpar doctors treating kids with ADHD or anxiety or even a bad cough that doesn’t go away? I know someone whose baby almost died because the “good” pediatrician didn’t recognize the serious heart problem.
I know you are not doing this, and I have enjoyed reading your thoughtful posts. But think of the double standard here and the hypocrisy and the intentional politicization of this that is designed for one purpose only:
To make being trans abnormal and not okay. These folks hate that schools are giving the message that it is okay to be trans and what is worse, they hate that being trans is being normalized when either for personal reasons or for political gain, they want to demonize the trans community by pushing the narrative that these kids are not normal.
Did you hear that doctors over prescribed antibiotics for sore throats and ear infections? Does that mean we tell children that the pain that they feel in their ear and throat is due to their own mental illness and they should only see a psychiatrist that will help them understand that everything is just in their heads?
The medical community is far from perfect, but it does try to hold doctors to standards. Sometimes it fails.
But what NEVER works is folks who have no idea what is going on but make sweeping conclusions about what is going on based on their own beliefs and something they heard or read on the internet.
It’s no different than the anti-vaxxers. I share some commonalities with the anti-vaxxers.
I believe in being skeptical, and I don’t just accept all vaccines at face value.
But I also don’t accept those who bash vaccines at face value either.
I look at the evidence presented by both sides. There have been times when vaccines had problems (including with the early polio vaccine and the Johnson & Johnson covid) but there is a difference between recognizing and publicizing problems and understanding that a problem doesn’t necessarily discredit the entire idea of vaccines.
But somehow people do not realize that their skepticism has morphed into an Orwellian world view where anything they support needs no evidence and anything they don’t support can never provide enough evidence to “prove” it isn’t bad.
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^^^bethree5, I should have added that I have so much admiration for parents like you that fight through the US medical establishment and the brush offs and spend endless hours themselves researching to find more appropriate doctors when necessary. It is incredibly difficult and thankless.
I do think that the majority of doctors really aren’t being influenced by “big pharma” so much as just not having the time to think beyond the box that they have been taught — and the training doctors get is extensive and intensive, so many just don’t have the extra bandwidth to spend on the truly difficult to diagnose cases. Even the most caring doctors can’t always figure out the best way to treat a patient whose symptoms are complex. Those patients benefit hugely by having an advocate like you were for your son.
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nycpsp– You’re right, I shouldn’t have used the expression ”sub-par,” [we might have encountered only one in all those years!], I meant below the high expectations worried parents have when they first seek expert help for their disturbed teens. But such worried parents should not be encountering experts who immediately buy into and run with whatever their kids think they need: first stop should be a psych who helps kids analyze the situation from a neutral, measured position. That was certainly the position of any therapist I or my son consulted; that is par.
I don’t understand your equation with docs overprescribing antibiotics and never heard of them suggesting ear pain was psychological. The usual alternative is warm oil in the ear plus aspirin & call if it’s not better in 2 days. Nor the comparison to anti-vaxxers.
One needs to separate the pop/ political/ social attitudes toward trans— hypocrisy, intentional politicization etc– from what one expects from medical & psychiatric professionals. When I hear from multiple sources that their kids got scrips for hormone blockers after 1 or 2 or 3 therapy sessions, it worries me. That’s a link between therapist and prescribing physical doc similar to the link between therapist and psychiatrist with which I’m familiar, & it never happens that fast. 6 wks maybe at the shortest, after a battery of psych tests & therapy sessions. Perhaps the reports I’ve read are exaggerated.
Thanks so much for your support about our journey for our son. I totally agree that most drs don’t have the bandwidth to pursue the most difficult cases. I like to think that the wonderful doctors we eventually found learned from our son’s case and paid it forward.
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bethree5,
Do you really know of a family – or multiple families – where a kid was given a prescription for a hormone blocker after one or two sessions of therapy? Or did you just hear of them?
That sounds unlikely on its face. But what does sound much more likely (and what happens with depression, anxiety and ADHD, etc.) is that a child might be working for a therapist for months or years and then the therapist might recommend a psychiatrist who can prescribe medications.
I completely agree with you that any doctor who gives a kid who walks in the door with no prior counseling or medical treatment a prescription for a hormone blocker after 1 or 2 sessions needs to be looked at carefully if that is really happening.
But if this really happening frequently, then I wonder if there is more to the story, because pediatricians and therapists are constantly referring their patients to “specialists” who prescribe medication after 1 or 2 visits but that also comes with a backstory of the child previously having treatment with another provider and their medical history.
And I think there is an anti-trans movement that has no compunction about misleading parents to create fear about something that doesn’t exist.
How many visits does a child need to see a psychiatrist before he prescribes ADHD or anti-anxiety drugs? Many kids only have 1 or 2, but most kids were referred to that psychiatrist because their pediatrician or therapist thought more medical treatment of the child’s issues might be called for. That’s different than a rush to medicate (which does also happen). But the far more frequent rush to medicate kids with ADHD isn’t being used to imply that schools themselves and what kids are learning in schools is causing a rash of ADHD and anxiety that psychiatrists are prescribing medications for after a single visit. In most cases, it is a psychiatrist who can prescribe medications when a therapist or counselor cannot or a pediatrician does not want to without a consult from a psychiatrist. To call this “doctors prescribing meds after a single visit” seems misleading, but someone who wanted to deny the existence of childhood depression, anxiety or ADHD entirely could start amplifying that is “true”, because technically it is true that there are children whose therapists or pediatricians send children who needs more help to a psychiatrist who would prescribe medications the first or second visit. That happens frequently with anxiety and ADHD but it doesn’t mean that the child’s history with other medical professionals is not part of that decision.
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Many good points there, nycpsp. I wasn’t sure whether the input I was getting from various places on a rush to hormones for self-declaring trans/ gender dysphobia was exaggerated. Sasha Aguilar up above has now provided us with some context, a piece by a concerned psych at SF’s Child and Adolescent Gender Center.
Your parallel with ADD treatment is on the nose, and what I talk about below in the long entry about my son’s med/ psych journey—rare conditions with few specialists, new diagnoses suddenly increasing in number, with still-developing treatment protocols. In the early ‘90’s ADD/ADHD diagnosis & treatment was very much an emerging field which had trickled into public awareness via books/ articles in the ‘80’s. Another even newer and more controversial area was the concept of “childhood bipolar,” which ran directly counter to long-held psychiatric opinion [“The Bipolar Child” was published in 1999.]
In ’92 our aged and otherwise-excellent pediatrician– prominent and revered in the whole region– was ready to hand out Ritalin like candy when I spoke to him about the school’s recommendation for IEP evaluation. Without even suggesting a psych consult. [& there we were again: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry was then a specialty rare as hen’s teeth.] A tremendous amount of progress has been made in those fields in 30 yrs; we were just on the wrong end of it. Fortunately I had my sis, a top-notch SpEd teacher in another state, to hold our hand and point out legal, ethical, even ‘political’ [budget-motivated] lapses in input from school et al ‘experts.’
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Ginny, I’m so sorry that you and your family endured this tragedy. There are areas of medicine where the doctors don’t have answers. I learned this when my 2-year-old developed acute leukemia in 1966. There were a variety of treatments but none was sufficient to cure the disease. Now, most kids who get this terrible blood cancer survive. At the time he was diagnosed,it was a death sentence.
As for kids who are or think they may be trans, my best advice is to put off any surgery or permanent decisions as long as possible. And add lots of unconditional love.
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Thank you so much, Diane. That means a lot to me. I picture your lost little boy just as I picture my own.
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Ginny,
I don’t know if there is a heaven. If there is, we will embrace our lost boys again.
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Diane: That must have been traumatic. My heart goes out to all who have lost a child. Having only one late in life has highlighted the value a person puts on their kids, the emotional value, the personal investment. To lose the chance to do that most holy of human experiences seems unthinkable.
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Bethree:
I am so sorry for your loss & the travails of you and your son. Having had similar experiences w/child & doctors (some who truly made our lives more nightmarish than they already were), we were lucky to find some really good ones (both medical practitioners & those dealing with mental health), which made the bumpy roads much smoother.
There is so much more to say here about
LGBTQX support here, which is so vital to survival & happiness.
What more I can say is in answer to whoever earlier commented that Ron DeINSANEtis got it right.
No, he most certainly did not, & he never will.
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Thank you, retiredutmissthekids. So glad you we3re able to find the help you neede.
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Thank you so much for your sympathy and support all, it really helps the grieving, which seems to be an endless task.
I hope you understand what I’m trying to convey. We never once thought of suing the excellent doctors we eventually found, though some might have in our circumstances. Much less the mediocre doctors, early along: they all did what they could. You begin to acquire a sort of 6th sense to read when they can’t do more [& the most direct even say so so]. Experience taught us to just keep asking— we eventually arrived at docs and psychiatrists with unusual skills/ experience, recommended by lesser docs/ psychs. Along that road we gained a holistic sense of where the med/ psych fields were at, and realized we were in more-or-less virgin territory. The trans road is similar, especially given all the public input the med/ psych fields are buffeted with today.
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I am so sorry, I should have read more carefully as I did not realize you had lost your son and I thought you were still working tirelessly to get him proper and better medical treatment. Your son faced so many tough challenges and deserved so much better from the medical establishment. Your advice to other parents facing the same rough road is invaluable and spot on. Thank you.
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Thanks, nycpsp.
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Ginny, this is heartbreaking. Much love to you and yours.
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Thanks Bob, back atcha.
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Ginny, here is Ms. Watters’s site:
http://audreywatters.com/blog/
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Thanks!
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So you are the lady who wrote the education blog that had the pigeon pictures?….or was it about technology in education? I’m so sorry for your loss. I remember you writing about it on your blog and about how you needed to take a break in writing so that you could process what had happened. You always show up on this blog during heated discussions and throw yourself in as a “mediator” of sorts and that is something that I have always appreciated about your comments/posts.
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Lisa, no that’s no me but I would sure be interested if you can find that blog and point me to her. Sadly my tech skills are laughable. The closest I’ve come is a page at wordpress– inspired by a friend who has been posting her poetry for years, I tried for a couple of months to impart some deathless prose, haha. 😉
Thanks for your kind words.
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It’s Audrey Watters. She blogs about technology.
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The lady with the bird pictures who writes about technology is Audrey Watters.
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aha– thanks, Diane! I have seen that blog, the pigeons rang a bell. Will revisit.
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bethree….I have read your story before. Somewhere? Maybe even on this blog? It couldn’t be another person because everything was exactly the same. Anyway, it’s a tragic story and no parent should have to witness the death of a child.
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Yup, probably right on this blog, Lisa. I posted a version of it at least once before (triggered by a discussion on Big Pharma), on how multiple psych drugs, as opposed to those for physical ailments, get FDA approval based on a couple of teeny-cohort 6-week studies and rushed to market. Leaving the hapless public to become the guinea pigs, combing the pages of parent forums or sites like crazy-meds.org to assess risk v benefits. And probably another time in a discussion about our healthcare system, where I talked about how rare conditions (especially chronic) get more research/ better treatments under universal healthcare, because of their disproportionate financial drag on the system.
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So impressed at the quality of the discussions on this blog. Democracy at work. Thank you, everyone who contributed to this.
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Writing from the UK.
Having been saddened that my adopted nation (cultural ties and politics, I never did get to travel in the USA) has become a generally divided and unhappy land, plagued by political snake oil merchants it was heartening to read the tenor of this discussion and exchanges.
There is hope. It lies within the hearts of the people trying to just get on with their lives (Lord knows that is complicated enough).
Best wishes to you all.
Roger
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Much less yelling than the last time!
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