Teens are not being so-called infected with doubts about being transgender
17 November 2021 - A new research shows that “rapid onset gender dysphoria” does not exist and is probably based on research that is only based on opinions of prejudiced parents. The parents call this “a social contagion” in schools. They proclaim that the suddenness of teens coming out to be non-binary or transgender is “proof” that it is a fashion and a perverse attempt of the LGBTIQ movement to confuse children. (image: a book cover of a book by a parent promoting the rapid onset gender dysphoria myth)
ROGD
There seems to be a widespread moral panic underway in the USA, UK and Sweden attacking transgender youth. This is based on some research based on convenience samples of parents, who complain about their children coming out non-binary and transgender. Conservative researchers jumped on this and labelled the “sudden” coming-out of non-binary and trans teens “rapid onset gender dysphoria” or “ROGD”. This makes it sound like neutral medical phenomenon, and a socially induced mental sickness.
Research
Because the data on the so-called “ROGD” were based on survey data from a number of parents recruited from parents’ websites, serious researchers were doubting if “ROGD” actually exists. Especially because these websites were targeting conservative parents who generally hold traditional views on gender. Nobody asked the teens anything.
The researchers used data (2017–2019) from the Canadian Trans Youth CAN! Cohort, which follows adolescents from age 16 on, from their first referral visit for hormone suppression or gender-affirming hormones and their subsequent care through a range of different care models. They hypothesized that if “rapid onset gender dysphoria” really exists, the teens would be confused because their got “recent gender knowledge”, even when their parents were supportive of them.
No proof
The researchers did not find support for a new phenomenon of “ROGD” during adolescence. They did not find associations between recent gender knowledge and other factors related to sudden confusion about their gender confusion. The possible associations were not statistically significant, or were in the opposite direction to what would be expected.
The researchers suspect that the research that proposed the so-called “ROGD fashion” may represent the perceptions or experiences of those parents and not of their children. Moreover, the researchers note that the lower anxiety of teens with recent gender knowledge suggests that these teens probably had longstanding experiences of gender dysphoria.
GALE adds that it may also be a good idea to research why some parents have such gender prejudiced perceptions in the first place.
Sources: Bauer GR, Lawson ML, Metzger DL, for the Trans Youth CAN! Research Team, Do Clinical Data From Transgender Adolescents Support the Phenomenon of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria”?, The Journal of Pediatrics (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2021.11.02, thanks to Danielle Askini for the alert.