'Rapid-onset gender dysphoria' is a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people' guardian article

ROGD is certainly a thing. We've had a cluster amongst a friendship group of girls in a school of which I'm aware.

It's fine to argue ROGD is not the same thing as GD or that it's not fully understood, but claiming it's made up to hurt trans people is really harmful to discourse on GD.

The author describes themselves as "post fertility" and writes about "girldick"

Guess which gender they had assigned at birth?

You've all seen this? Janice Turner had an article published in The Times. Fact-checking found that the rate of suicide is actually only 1% www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suicides-should-never-be-a-political-weapon-w0jlhn5v0

Suicide is a dark trope in the trans movement. Parents who hesitate over medical intervention are told by some activists: “Better a living daughter than a dead son.” The ITV drama Butterfly, an infomercial for the trans support group Mermaids, is based upon the story of its CEO Susie Green, who took her child to Thailand for genital surgery at 16 (which was illegal in Britain and is now illegal in Thailand) and features a graphic suicide attempt. Mermaids cites high suicide rates in trans youth to push for faster, younger access to hormones and surgery. Ms Green told MPs that Gids (the NHS’s youth gender identity development service) has a suicide attempt rate of 48 per cent. This was based upon a self-selecting sample of 27 trans people aged under 26 analysed by the LGBT charity Pace.

The sane, compassionate response is more research. Let’s pull out the serious case reviews of every teen suicide to examine all possible causes, including newspaper reporting. Surely Mermaids would welcome proper, independent, methodologically-sound scientific inquiry. In the meantime, the most reliable source is Gids which says of 5,000 young patients referred between 2016 and August this year, there were three suicides and four attempts. Each death is the deepest tragedy, yet this makes a suicide rate of less than 1 per cent. Moreover, Gids director Dr Polly Carmichael has warned that suicidal discourse is “quite unhelpful”, creating a narrative around gender-diverse children “imbued with negativity and lack of resilience.”

This is good news, isn't it? Parents can stop worrying that their kid is going to kill themselves unless they transition. And here's another

people who have had transition surgery are 19 times more likely than average to die by suicide. journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885*

The term "poisonous lie" exemplifies the bias of some of the editorial staff, because usually headlines are written by editorial. Neither the term "poisonous" nor the term "lie" appear in the article itself. You can argue with the terns that do ("pseudo-scientific") and the breath taking misinterpretation of the statement that Rogd might need further investigation but isn't an official condition yet, but the headline is even worse and is dishonest.

Does anyone else see a headline like that and think 'OOOkkkk...'(back away slowly)? Do they think this is good journalism??

I know, it just sounds like a tantrum!

It is difficult and potentially shaming for her to change identity again.

Exactly, I had this issue around my sexuality, which is why we shouldn't be pushed into rigidly defined boxes in the first place. I was also a girl who probably would have been caught up with ROGD if I was a teen now. I was actually extremely traumatised through male abuse as a child, and ended up with BPD, which I never got any proper NHS support for. I suspect it's not too different now.

I know of no other area of pediatric medicine where the concerns of 100s of parents would be so easily dismissed

I'm afraid I do. I have M.E. it's a common occurence that children with certain chronic health conditions are bullied, dismissed and diagnosed with something resembling hysteria even today. Most people just aren't aware how arrogant many doctors are. M.E patients (some of them young children who are seriously ill) are just left to rot despite parents pleading for research and help. I have a lot of stories I could tell.

Anyway, that's by the by. I think this article is terrible. Comparing transing a child and mutilating them with the risks a child is open to if they play sports is disgusting. A broken leg from playing football is nothing like giving a child puberty blockers and removing their breasts when they turn 18. I can't believe saying that giving blockers is safe is allowed to stand, either.

That ROGD article is the biggest load of claptrap and I'm surprised the Guardian published it.
The worst bit was where taking puberty blockers was compared with sports:
Upon the onset of puberty, puberty blockers may be introduced to slow the effects of the hormones the body is itself creating but the potential harm of this process is minimal, and the trans person in question remains under the care and monitoring of a medical professional. By comparison, a 2015 US study found that 4.3% of people 18 and below visit the emergency room for sport-related injuries. This is not at all to say that we should demonise youth sport but rather that we often allow kids to do things that involve risks simply because they want to.

Sport being a thing that enables people to be fit and healthy, with some usually treatable injury risk. Puberty blockers being a thing that enables life long medicalisation, with certainty of sterility. Yep, just the same

I was meant you put flowers after your names

Anchorman, bathshebaeverbusy

I wonder if it's an idea to start a thread, like the trans widows one, for ROGD mums. An opportunity to share experiences, offer advice and mobilise.
Maybe in chat topic? Or here?

Does anyone think that's a good idea?

In my opinion, anyone; whether individual, charity or organisation intent on preventing thorough informed professional investigation into something which may affect vulnerable children and young people profoundly should be viewed with suspicion.

Yes. And, I'm sorry to say, I hope that I don't have to include you in that Bespin, since you're always going on about your "work" with gender-questioning children.

As someone who does have contact with vulnerable minors, I hope you are posting this article from a critical viewpoint. What R0wantrees says above is very, very important.

Discrediting ROGD publicly was one of the plans of attack mentioned at the We're Still Here conference Harpy went to.

I hope there is some form of rebuttal and questions in the press for every one of the claims made on this issue from now on.

Rapid-onset gender dysphoria' is a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people

Does anyone else see a headline like that and think 'OOOkkkk...'(back away slowly)? Do they think this is good journalism??

bathshebaeverbusy I'm so sorry to hear this It's like an octopus that gets its tentacles around anything where there is a vulnerability. Sending hugs.

Sending hugs to all the ROGD mums here.

I'm a parent of an ROGD child too. NO indications whatsoever until age 14.
What she does have is a diagnosis of PTSD and the gender identity is treated as a defence mechanism - a way of coping with stuff that happened to her.
With therapy - the need to project onto that identity is diminishing - but we are caught up in the whole trans thing because " unless we affirm, she will commit suicide ". Her school made the whole thing worse.
She identifies as male at school - less rigidly now. It is difficult and potentially shaming for her to change identity again.

Anyone who works in a secondary school knows it too, AnchorMum.

As a parent of a rapidly transed child I know ROGD exists. And I'm far from alone.

Safeguarding, safeguarding, safeguarding. Rinse and repeat.

The reprehensible and deliberate targeting of children.

Speech by Michele Moore to WPUK which discusses ROGD and sidelining of parents:

What is also offensive, dangerous and becomes a safeguarding issue again is how parents are so quickly dismissed. Parents who clearly want the best for their children and are very concerned and worried about their health and suffering are treated as if they are an untrustworthy source of information. I know of no other area of pediatric medicine where the concerns of 100s of parents would be so easily dismissed. What has also been established by the data that has been collected around the world on "trans" kids is that as a cohort they already are diagnosed with depression, anxiety, autism, eating disorders, ADHD and are affected by trauma and social issues such as bullying at much higher rates than their peers before they begin transitioning. So these girls deserve our care, attention and serious study before we drug them and medicate them into a new, permanent identity.

Oh it exists alright. Go into secondary schools and you'd see. Scary that research is being suppressed. It's almost as if they don't care if children are pushed down an incorrect treatment pathway.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health released a statement on the phenomenon, stating: “The term ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)’ is not a medical entity recognised by any major professional association ... therefore, it constitutes nothing more than an acronym created to describe a proposed clinical phenomenon that may or may not warrant further peer-reviewed scientific investigation.”

The author of the Guardian article and others who have seized on the statement might do well to consider what is actually being said here.

This statement doesn't mean that the patterns described in the term 'ROGD' don't exist with someyoung people, it means that it is not recognised yet as a medical entity and as the statement concludes more scientific study may be needed.

Every medical entity now recognised, went through this process of observation, hypothesis, research, testing, understanding and officially describing and naming.

The government have already announced an investigation into the treatment of rapidly increasing numbers of young people.

In my opinion, anyone; whether individual, charity or organisation intent on preventing thorough informed professional investigation into something which may affect vulnerable children and young people profoundly should be viewed with suspicion.

James Kirkup Spectator: 'Trans rights have gone wrong
The new gender orthodoxy allows no room for dissent'
(extract)
"It is unsurprising that schools want guidance on how to deal with children describing themselves as transgender, since more and more seem to be doing so.

Why? Is it about tolerance: as society becomes more understanding, more trans people feel able to ‘come out’? Could the internet be accelerating ‘social contagion’, where the idea of being transgender spreads rapidly?

What explains the disproportionate number of girls (child ‘assigned female at birth’, to use the approved term) who are starting a journey that can lead to hormone treatment, then binding and ultimately removing their breasts? Is it possible that this is simply part of a wider crisis of mental health among girls?

I don’t know, and neither do the doctors and scientists who study this issue. If you talk to the clinicians at the Tavistock Clinic in London, the NHS centre for the treatment of gender-variant children, they’ll tell you that all the factors I mentioned may be at work, but the evidence base is still incomplete, that they need more time and data before offering explanations. (They’ll also tell you that quite a lot of the children referred to them as transgender will in time desist – although this is not a term the clinic would use – and decide to live in their original gender.)

The government now intends to commission research into all this. You might think that sounds sensible and mundane. You would be wrong.

According to Tara Hewitt, founder of the Trans Equality Legal Initiative (TELI), prominent campaigner for transgender rights and an adviser to numerous public bodies including the NHS, the proposed research is ‘absurd and offensive’. The project should be ‘dropped in the bin — it’s simply not an inquiry that needs to happen,’ Hewitt reckons.

This is the quintessential trans-rights response to scrutiny: even looking for facts about children’s welfare is transphobic. Just accept that trans girls are girls and trans women are women. End of debate" (continues)
www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/trans-rights-have-gone-wrong/

They are desperate now because the government has said it's concerned about this, and academics have said they're being harassed in order to prevent research.

Liz Duck-Chong is a writer, sexual health nerd, podcast host and filmmaker.

Well of course she’s a medical expert; she makes podcasts after all.

I find the lack of acknowledgement of a huge jump in the number of referrals to GIDS quite insulting, but not quite as insulting as the suggestion that the parents of these children just weren’t paying enough attention.