As the mom of an AFAB kid who identifies as trans, I cannot understate my fear that some of this (at least in our case) is congenital-- the result of endocrine disruption.
At age 3, my child was diagnosed with adrenal hyperplasia after we noticed persistent body odor.
The endocrinologist monitored my child until age 9 because that is the age at which reproductive development takes place, and in the words of the doctor, "what happens at this point is just part of biology."
So, as long as my child's skeleton didn't grow disproportionately or the child didn't develop any other medical abnormalities that would've resulted in psychological trauma, it meant annual trips to the specialist until being "released from care" at age nine.
It has always surprised me that nobody is mentioning the rampant presence of chemicals and plastics in everyone's bodies, and whether or not that correlates to to the rise in trans youth-- not as the *sole* cause, but surely part of the explanation?
The best philosophical answer is found in Carl Trueman’s modern classic, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Briefly put, trans ideology is an inevitable outgrowth of modern thought. Read the book for the fuller, much more convincing argument. Dumbed down paraphrasing here:
“As Trueman illustrates, once you no longer get your meaning from external sources, once you create your own meaning, anything goes. Once you are fully on board with the cultural message that you can create your own identity - a message that most of us, including most doctors, have taken for granted for decades and decades - well, you become your own god, and if a god wants to be a girl, what’s to stop him from becoming a girl? You and I might think that’s nuts, that you’re anchored to the inescapable reality of your body, but it’s a totally logical step: if you’re not anchored to the reality of Creation, if the meaning and purpose of life is entirely decided by you and your feelings, if you kill God and become your own god, what is stopping you from making yourself into whatever image you happen to feel like?
The truth is that you are either designed for a purpose or you’re not. If you don’t believe you’ve been designed, what is stopping you from designing yourself? You can do it, the AAP will help, we have the technology, we can pump you full of hormones and perform surgeries and change your sex for you. Why shouldn’t we? Because of ‘biology’? Well, we can control biology; it’s not like there is anyone else but us in control of it, right?”
2. You mention the difference between red and blue states… but both red and blue states have public schools! And trust me, as a Texan, the public schools in the most rural red states are still filled with hardcore woke, pro trans propaganda. So here’s my second argument for why kids are transing more: because it’s there. If schools talked to them about virtue and sacrifice and Saints all day, that’s what they’d aspire to become. But when the main attention is given to the genderbread man, that’s where the action end up. We tragically do the same thing with depression questionnaires in medicine and the classroom: the grooming is inherent in the (perpetual) questioning.
While I may not call it "social contagion" I think we underestimate the cultural shift screens have brought to the transmission of culture. Our once "vertical transmission" of culture (from adult to child) is shifting to "horizontal transmission" (peer to peer) and whatever we think of a teen's gender identification, it is clear adolescents are looking to one another rather than to us for advice, guidance and support on complex issues such as this. Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld explore this idea in their book "Hold on to your Kids". I write about the construct of Peer Attachment in a recent post: https://heartsyncnz.substack.com/p/peer-attachment
The DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) removed "gender identity disorder" and added "gender dysphoria" in 2013 in the move from dsm 4 to 5. This removed the pathologization of being trans and replaced it with the distress of being unaffirmed. This was based on noting that that distress did end with medical and social affirmation.
WPATH (world professional association for transgender health) also updated their standards of care in 2012, removing heavy gatekeeping in the form of mandatory psychotherapy and "real life experience tests" (having to live a stereotypical life of the target gender before medical support) in order to access gender affirming care. This disproportionately removed barriers to care for trans men, as previously most research and studies had been performed on trans women and many medical gatekeepers were not well informed about trans men.
Those two changes dramatically changed the extent of pathologization around being transgender and dramatically increased the ease and access to care. Over the past 10 years, this also led to a slow diffusion of this information to practitioners. I primarily ascribe increased rates of trans identification from this change and increases in trans masculine representation.
Much like the depathologization of homosexuality in 1973, the point was to destigmatize what the medical field had come to understand as a natural part of human variation. Then to adjust care to best meet the needs of that community where they were, rather than attempting to minimize their visibility and numbers overall.
Through that lens, there's nothing surprising about these increased and changed rates of trans identification. They are a natural consequence of policy changes, and to some extent the point of those changes.
I wonder a lot about the connection to pornography. I think a lot of young people have been exposed to digital pornography at a young age, and I think the gender roles and sexual relations they see there are often problematic (at best).
It's one thing to see the distorted relationships, misogyny, or even violence when one is an adult with a healthy view of sex that has been built upon real relationships and experiences. It's quite another to encounter those portrayals without any counter-balances. I have a feeling that they drive a lot of the gender dysphoria experienced by young people.
Both of my kids have correlated anime and manga with the trans community, both media known to explore pornography but through a distorted means because it's not created with human actors. AI -if it hasn't already - will probably exploit pornography for an audience that's already "seen it all." In all cases, the early exposure is surely problematic.
Here's a well documented alternative explanation as to why. And believe me, it's not *just* the political right that yet upset at failing to consider ROGD. Many, many left-leaning people understand this phenomenon but their opinions are shouted down by the gender activists and, in the process, the individuals opining are labeled "far right" even thought it's not at all true.
These three are directly related. In my area this center reports that 80% of the kids coming for services are now autistic. To the point they had to hire staff just to manage that population. https://www.nagly.org/
Have you charted autism rates with trans? Also by gender? And contrast that against the rrise In mental health diagnoses in general.
One thing I find interesting is the parents who tell me how quick public school admin are to latch into any trans kids "coming out" and affirm affirm affirm because it allows them plausible cause to under-service the mental health or neuro divergent diagnosis. Follow the money!
Sorry! I tried to edit but can't. Want to clarify, 80% isn't "reported" by that org, that's what they are telling parents. Presumably to make autistic parents feel comfortable with their services.
But that's the problem right? No one is really tracking this stuff. And non-theraputic services are being sold to parents as therapy. Maybe this is a job for journalists to work alongside data researchers to investigate who is and isn't keeping track?
I agree that the polarisation around this issue makes discussion difficult. The evidence emerging in Australia is consistent with much older evidence. Disproportionately, young people now identifying as trans or non binary have had adverse childhood experiences, disordered attachments, family breakdown etc. so it seems that a small proportion of the younger generation, troubled by psychic distress and still developing their identity about who they are, look to life-changing answers to their problems in medicalised transition or find community in a trans identity. As we know also, many m are on the autism spectrum. Older adults with similar ACEs are more settled in who they are and so less likely to adopt a trans identity as a catch all answer to their problems.
Here's something interesting. My AFAB trans students today (I have quite a few) are all friends with girls, exclusively. In earlier years (before this new wave) I had three students who transitioned, and those students (two male, one female) had social circles that were the same as their new gender. This has made me wonder if, for some of these kids, identifying as a trans male is not as much about feeling male as it is about not feeling as female as Instagram tells them they should. If you are a girl who doesn't fit the Instagram ideal, it might feel more comfortable to be non-binary or male.
Another right-wing theory holds that today’s penchant for indulging adolescent gender confusion shrugged off as transitory in the past accounts for the apparent increase in transgender youth. A University of Groningen, Netherlands, study tracking 2,772 youths from ages 11 to 26 found that 11% of young adolescents expressed “gender non-contentedness,” dwindling to just 4% of the same cohort by their mid-20s. Thus, right-wingers claim that gender radicals are exploiting common but temporarily confused teenage feelings to push large numbers of adolescents and their parents into harsh transitional treatments they will later regret in adulthood.
However, that study actually shows the opposite. It predicts that while over 10% of US adolescents would experience “gender non-contentedness,” just 2% of teens actually identify as transgender and one-fourth of 1% are prescribed puberty blockers. The vast majority of teens experiencing gender dissatisfaction never seek transgender treatment, indicating the carefulness involved in the few who choose actual transition.
Here’s the proof: only tiny percentages of teens who socially or physically transition later regret their decision and/or de-transition as adults. Today, increasingly troubled adults are demonstrating we don’t know what is best for young people and should take much humbler stances regarding their decision making.
The most plausible conclusion is that the rise in transgender youth is not due to social contagion, trendy gender radicalism, or indulgence of adolescent frivolity, but to genuine transition becoming more acceptable among younger generations today.
As the mom of an AFAB kid who identifies as trans, I cannot understate my fear that some of this (at least in our case) is congenital-- the result of endocrine disruption.
At age 3, my child was diagnosed with adrenal hyperplasia after we noticed persistent body odor.
The endocrinologist monitored my child until age 9 because that is the age at which reproductive development takes place, and in the words of the doctor, "what happens at this point is just part of biology."
So, as long as my child's skeleton didn't grow disproportionately or the child didn't develop any other medical abnormalities that would've resulted in psychological trauma, it meant annual trips to the specialist until being "released from care" at age nine.
It has always surprised me that nobody is mentioning the rampant presence of chemicals and plastics in everyone's bodies, and whether or not that correlates to to the rise in trans youth-- not as the *sole* cause, but surely part of the explanation?
The best philosophical answer is found in Carl Trueman’s modern classic, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Briefly put, trans ideology is an inevitable outgrowth of modern thought. Read the book for the fuller, much more convincing argument. Dumbed down paraphrasing here:
“As Trueman illustrates, once you no longer get your meaning from external sources, once you create your own meaning, anything goes. Once you are fully on board with the cultural message that you can create your own identity - a message that most of us, including most doctors, have taken for granted for decades and decades - well, you become your own god, and if a god wants to be a girl, what’s to stop him from becoming a girl? You and I might think that’s nuts, that you’re anchored to the inescapable reality of your body, but it’s a totally logical step: if you’re not anchored to the reality of Creation, if the meaning and purpose of life is entirely decided by you and your feelings, if you kill God and become your own god, what is stopping you from making yourself into whatever image you happen to feel like?
The truth is that you are either designed for a purpose or you’re not. If you don’t believe you’ve been designed, what is stopping you from designing yourself? You can do it, the AAP will help, we have the technology, we can pump you full of hormones and perform surgeries and change your sex for you. Why shouldn’t we? Because of ‘biology’? Well, we can control biology; it’s not like there is anyone else but us in control of it, right?”
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-logical-inevitability-of-your
2. You mention the difference between red and blue states… but both red and blue states have public schools! And trust me, as a Texan, the public schools in the most rural red states are still filled with hardcore woke, pro trans propaganda. So here’s my second argument for why kids are transing more: because it’s there. If schools talked to them about virtue and sacrifice and Saints all day, that’s what they’d aspire to become. But when the main attention is given to the genderbread man, that’s where the action end up. We tragically do the same thing with depression questionnaires in medicine and the classroom: the grooming is inherent in the (perpetual) questioning.
https://gaty.substack.com/p/how-we-make-children-miserable-and
While I may not call it "social contagion" I think we underestimate the cultural shift screens have brought to the transmission of culture. Our once "vertical transmission" of culture (from adult to child) is shifting to "horizontal transmission" (peer to peer) and whatever we think of a teen's gender identification, it is clear adolescents are looking to one another rather than to us for advice, guidance and support on complex issues such as this. Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld explore this idea in their book "Hold on to your Kids". I write about the construct of Peer Attachment in a recent post: https://heartsyncnz.substack.com/p/peer-attachment
The DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) removed "gender identity disorder" and added "gender dysphoria" in 2013 in the move from dsm 4 to 5. This removed the pathologization of being trans and replaced it with the distress of being unaffirmed. This was based on noting that that distress did end with medical and social affirmation.
WPATH (world professional association for transgender health) also updated their standards of care in 2012, removing heavy gatekeeping in the form of mandatory psychotherapy and "real life experience tests" (having to live a stereotypical life of the target gender before medical support) in order to access gender affirming care. This disproportionately removed barriers to care for trans men, as previously most research and studies had been performed on trans women and many medical gatekeepers were not well informed about trans men.
Those two changes dramatically changed the extent of pathologization around being transgender and dramatically increased the ease and access to care. Over the past 10 years, this also led to a slow diffusion of this information to practitioners. I primarily ascribe increased rates of trans identification from this change and increases in trans masculine representation.
Much like the depathologization of homosexuality in 1973, the point was to destigmatize what the medical field had come to understand as a natural part of human variation. Then to adjust care to best meet the needs of that community where they were, rather than attempting to minimize their visibility and numbers overall.
Through that lens, there's nothing surprising about these increased and changed rates of trans identification. They are a natural consequence of policy changes, and to some extent the point of those changes.
I wonder a lot about the connection to pornography. I think a lot of young people have been exposed to digital pornography at a young age, and I think the gender roles and sexual relations they see there are often problematic (at best).
It's one thing to see the distorted relationships, misogyny, or even violence when one is an adult with a healthy view of sex that has been built upon real relationships and experiences. It's quite another to encounter those portrayals without any counter-balances. I have a feeling that they drive a lot of the gender dysphoria experienced by young people.
Both of my kids have correlated anime and manga with the trans community, both media known to explore pornography but through a distorted means because it's not created with human actors. AI -if it hasn't already - will probably exploit pornography for an audience that's already "seen it all." In all cases, the early exposure is surely problematic.
Here's a well documented alternative explanation as to why. And believe me, it's not *just* the political right that yet upset at failing to consider ROGD. Many, many left-leaning people understand this phenomenon but their opinions are shouted down by the gender activists and, in the process, the individuals opining are labeled "far right" even thought it's not at all true.
https://open.substack.com/pub/wrongspeak/p/not-being-affirmed-saved-my-life
Autism.
Social media.
Transgender.
These three are directly related. In my area this center reports that 80% of the kids coming for services are now autistic. To the point they had to hire staff just to manage that population. https://www.nagly.org/
Have you charted autism rates with trans? Also by gender? And contrast that against the rrise In mental health diagnoses in general.
One thing I find interesting is the parents who tell me how quick public school admin are to latch into any trans kids "coming out" and affirm affirm affirm because it allows them plausible cause to under-service the mental health or neuro divergent diagnosis. Follow the money!
Sorry! I tried to edit but can't. Want to clarify, 80% isn't "reported" by that org, that's what they are telling parents. Presumably to make autistic parents feel comfortable with their services.
But that's the problem right? No one is really tracking this stuff. And non-theraputic services are being sold to parents as therapy. Maybe this is a job for journalists to work alongside data researchers to investigate who is and isn't keeping track?
I agree that the polarisation around this issue makes discussion difficult. The evidence emerging in Australia is consistent with much older evidence. Disproportionately, young people now identifying as trans or non binary have had adverse childhood experiences, disordered attachments, family breakdown etc. so it seems that a small proportion of the younger generation, troubled by psychic distress and still developing their identity about who they are, look to life-changing answers to their problems in medicalised transition or find community in a trans identity. As we know also, many m are on the autism spectrum. Older adults with similar ACEs are more settled in who they are and so less likely to adopt a trans identity as a catch all answer to their problems.
Here's something interesting. My AFAB trans students today (I have quite a few) are all friends with girls, exclusively. In earlier years (before this new wave) I had three students who transitioned, and those students (two male, one female) had social circles that were the same as their new gender. This has made me wonder if, for some of these kids, identifying as a trans male is not as much about feeling male as it is about not feeling as female as Instagram tells them they should. If you are a girl who doesn't fit the Instagram ideal, it might feel more comfortable to be non-binary or male.
Another right-wing theory holds that today’s penchant for indulging adolescent gender confusion shrugged off as transitory in the past accounts for the apparent increase in transgender youth. A University of Groningen, Netherlands, study tracking 2,772 youths from ages 11 to 26 found that 11% of young adolescents expressed “gender non-contentedness,” dwindling to just 4% of the same cohort by their mid-20s. Thus, right-wingers claim that gender radicals are exploiting common but temporarily confused teenage feelings to push large numbers of adolescents and their parents into harsh transitional treatments they will later regret in adulthood.
However, that study actually shows the opposite. It predicts that while over 10% of US adolescents would experience “gender non-contentedness,” just 2% of teens actually identify as transgender and one-fourth of 1% are prescribed puberty blockers. The vast majority of teens experiencing gender dissatisfaction never seek transgender treatment, indicating the carefulness involved in the few who choose actual transition.
Here’s the proof: only tiny percentages of teens who socially or physically transition later regret their decision and/or de-transition as adults. Today, increasingly troubled adults are demonstrating we don’t know what is best for young people and should take much humbler stances regarding their decision making.
The most plausible conclusion is that the rise in transgender youth is not due to social contagion, trendy gender radicalism, or indulgence of adolescent frivolity, but to genuine transition becoming more acceptable among younger generations today.
Can you please say more about liberal guilt, as I'm not sure I follow, thanks.
Ah, ok, that makes sense. So the guilt is de rigeur, to some extent? Less of a projection, than a compulsion to compensate...
Thank you for explaining.