Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: a Descriptive Study

[spontaneousgiventime]

Lisa L. Littman, MD, MPH

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

It's not the clearest in the world but very interesting. It appears in part to be a social contagion.

Parents online are observed reporting their children experiencing a rapid onset of gender dysphoria appearing for the first time during or after puberty. They describe this development occurring in the context of being part of a peer group where one, multiple, or even all friends have developed gender dysphoria and come out as transgender during the same timeframe and/or an increase in social media/internet use. The purpose of this study is to document this observation and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria inconsistent with existing research.

www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(16)30765-0/fulltext?code=jah-site

I think this is a good subject for a thread. Transactivists have attacked this research and fervently deny the existence of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. But the criticism I've seen made of it is quite lazy.

It's due to TRA criticising it that made me go looking for it. I wanted to know what was so bad. Obvious why they hate it.

I remember when I was in school there was a sudden onslaught of anorexia. I remember teachers gathering us all up and banning us from talking about it, discussing our weight. I remember parents trying to get rid of weighing scales. Three girls in my year in school ended up in hospital within two months of each other - two more left the school and a fair few more were badly affected.

On an even sadder note, there has been an outbreak of teenage suicides where I live - three pupils in one class last year, another four pupils from the same year in a different nearby school, and dozens within the area I live. Again encouraged by each other. A sort of infectious unhappiness, followed by a simplistic solution

I've often wondered whether teenage unhappiness, and especially in girls a dislike of their own bodies and a fear of growing up manifests itself in strange ways. Gender identity seem to be the latest way of doing this.

It's awful.

Research is a must. For the prevalence of ROGD we are seeing now and to stop these kids sterilising themselves, then mutilating themselves and finally subjecting themselves to a lifetime of powerful drugs that no-one seems to know will be safe long term.

The idea of social contagion is as old as time, smoking, drinking, drugs, as Mary says above anorexia and others. With the advent of social media it's easy for irresponsible people to encourage our children down these routes.

Maryz - spot on. I was one of those teenage "social contagion" anorexics, and even had a relapse more recently in my 40s. But in my teens it was more just an "acceptable" expression of teenage angst, emotionally abusive parents, and hate of all that being "female" brought. Fucking dresses and shoes you can't run in, wolf whistles and dodging dodgy dads. Who wouldn't opt out if they could?
But I recovered. I have a husband and kids. If I had been trans where would I be now?

I really really worry for my daughters, especially my GNC, bookish, socially awkward (aka just like me) one.

Research is totally crucial - both for understanding and for converting the non-believers.

It is so obvious to anyone with teenage children that it is a thing - you don't just get 8 girls in one school year at one school all coming out as trans WITHOUT social contagion.

We should not be needing to research whether it happens - but why and how.

I seriously fear for these girls

Psychologist Lisa Marchiano has written some great stuff on this.

quillette.com/2017/10/06/misunderstanding-new-kind-gender-dysphoria/

Here she addresses some of the TRA criticism of ROGD.

quillette.com/2018/03/01/transgenderism-social-construction-diagnosis/

"If a social act such as donning a certain article of clothing or being called by a different name can alleviate a child’s distress, then how can the problem that caused that distress possibly be entirely biological?"
That's a very good point! (Comes from second quillette link).

Extremely good point!

Fucking hell, did you see one of the comments under that second article?

Shattered Mom March 3, 2018
Thank you, Lisa, for writing this excellent article. As the mother of a daughter who developed ROGD at age 14, I can attest to the fact that it is a nightmare. It is beyond appalling that doctors performed a mastectomy and hysterectomy on her before her 18th birthday, without my consent, and that it was fully funded by the United States government. The doctors who mutilated my daughter should have criminal charges brought against them, but are instead protected by law. Parents of ROGD children are fighting back and we are not going to stop! Thank you for your dedication.

Surely that cannot be true

Scarily I think it might be.

Going back to older times, often girls in their early teens were the ones who saw visions/heard voices of the Virgin Mary & other saints. Joan of Arc being an example of this phenomenon. It may have been a way of rejecting what life seemed to have in store for the girl, who'd probably seen how shit women's lives were. Better to be a religious mystic than a poor downtrodden wife & mother of too many kids. Seems to me there could be parallels with 20th & 21st C problems such as anorexia, suicide & ROGD.

The TRAs talk positively about the enormous rise in girls coming out as trans and attribute it to greater awareness and acceptability. But if that were the case, where is the enormous rise in older adult females coming out as Trans? I'm guessing there isn't one.