(Un)scientific American: "ROGD is not a thing"

[BonfireLady]

Apologies if there is already a thread and I missed it.

Scientific American has released an article saying that ROGD is "not a thing". From the article:
Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ ClaimsFears of “social contagion,” used to support anti-transgender legislation, are not supported by science

A recent study claiming to describe more than 1,600 possible cases of a “socially contagious syndrome” was retracted in June for failing to obtain ethics approval from an institutional review board.

The article then goes on to "debunk" ROGD. Who could possibly believe that social contagion happens with teenage girls, right? But its main argument still remains that the paper didn't get ethics approval. Yes.... it does appear to be a problem that the scientific community don't like approving any research that challenges the affirmation only narrative.

If anyone has Twitter, any peer reviews and comments on this thread would be greatly appreciated.

https://twitter.com/BonfireLady/status/1697126765687099612?t=e7H4bZSheb5z8CdtkOTfnA&s=19

Link to the article:
Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims

Helen Joyce and Debra Soh both bring forward compelling evidence for ROGD being a social contagion based on Lisa Littman's paper (which was peer reviewed twice due to criticism from TRAs).

Like anorexia and a number of other psychological conditions throughout history, ROGD is communicable amongst teen girls.

Here's the Editor in Chief, Laura Helmuth, talking about it being "not a thing" on the tweet that accompanied the article:

("peer reviews".... Refers to the final tweet in the thread)

Are you able to put your thread threadreader @BonfireLady ? With Elon’s new measures in place I can only read your opening tweet & I want to see more! 🙂

Absolutely! It's appalling that the editor of a major science magazine can push the activist message in this way.
Assuming she really does have a science background and has supposedly been "outside" this whole debate as a "neutral" (as opposed to being a member of WPATH), she's done quite an incredible job of ignoring the wealth of information out there that supports ROGD very much being a thing.

Ethics being "it doesn't support my ideology so I consider it morally wrong and against my ethics"?

Aha! So my opening "hook" has done its job 😁🙏

No idea I'm afraid!
I only started using Twitter about 3 weeks ago - once I saw the shift in the press (after a heavy push on women's sports) following Chloe Cole's story being picked up towards more articles calling out the harms to children, I wanted to add my voice to it.

I was pretty chuffed with myself that I managed to copy the lingo (🧵 with numbered follow-on posts) but wouldn't have a clue how to do that.

If anyone can help with a tip on how to do that I'll happily set that up and pop the link in here.

What's happening here is that "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" isn't recognised as an accepted diagnostic term by the mainstream of the medical community. Hey Presto! it doesn't exist. The only works so long as those making ROGD cease to exist by linguistic sleight of hand, and everyone else, ignore the fact that the phenomenon it describes does exist.

Whatever Laura Helmuth thinks she might be doing here, it's most definitely not science. It's politics.

The article was posted on Twitter a week ago:

https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1694723758152720590

and attracted some comments at that time.

I have been lurking on these threads for a while, I peaked a few years ago.

Thought I might join this thread as I read that the magazine Scientific American broke its 175 history of not being political to endorse Joe Biden at the 2020 election - under Laura Helmuth’s editorship.

Maybe it was also due to Biden’s support on climate change issues (compared to Trump) and not just trans issues, but still it seems to me really strange that a scientific magazine would take a political stance and then claim to be unbiased in reporting on scientific studies in which there is a strong political interest.

Doesn’t this destroy any arguments that Laura Helmuth makes on the original studies bias?

I think things are really messed up if a scientific magazine isn’t impartial - and focused on reporting on scientific facts. Is this also happening in the uk? I really hope not.

If ROGD isn’t a thing and their isn’t social contagion then the following questions need answers:

1. why is every single teenage girl who declares their new cross sex identity as a teenager so good at hiding their dysphoria about it in their early years?

2. are all the parents, every single one of every single teenager with no exceptions terrible parents for failing to notice their child’s dysphoria about their secret hidden cross sex identify in their early years?

3. if gender identity is innate, what does actually explain why some humans declare a cross sex identity at 4 years of age, 12 years of age, or 50 years of age?

4. if there is no contagion and gender is innate, how is gender fluidity explained and how are detransitioners explained?

5. how can it be explained that girls and women themselves describe they felt no dysphoria until adolescence? Are they deluding themselves?

6. If it’s just because they feel comfortable “coming out” in adolescence now compared to previously, where are all the women in their 30s and older who didn’t feel comfortable to “come out” decades ago?

You can’t “debunk” ROGD. There wasn’t dysphoria and now their is, rapidly. Even if you believe that these children have always had an innate “gender identity” that is some form of cross sex identity, the only way you can debunk ROGD is by saying a young child has always had dysphoria about it, but kept it soooo well hidden no one noticed. Not kept any cross sex identity hidden, but kept the dysphoria hidden. What bullshit.

If I recall you @ threadreaderapp and it automatically copies your thread and posts a link on it. I don’t have an account, but that’s my recollection.

It absolutely baffles me that ‘they’ keep saying it doesn’t exist. I’m neither a scientist nor a doctor but I have eyes and ears and I both know and was a teenage girl.

I was a teenager in the 90s and part of the anorexia and self harm cohort. This is exactly the same thing and you don’t need peer reviewed research to notice it.

My DS and his friends are all blue haired dysphoric pronoun people. DD (a year younger) runs with a different but similar crowd, they all have self diagnosed adhd and autism.

It’s teenage tribalism and anyone with eyes can watch it happening in real time, no need for a scientific classification. The denials are are ridiculous.

Jesse Singal did comment but clearly felt it was almost pointless to do so when all the article proves is that Scientific American is in a right state:

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1694749767526412533

The retraction was due to not making it clear in a specific way that they would publish the results, when they asked the questions of the parents of the teens for a paper they were going to publish.

It is the most technical technicality ever.

And it hasn't actually been retracted. It is published with 'retracted article' printed on it. You can download it below should you want to, proving it hasn't been retracted. Also I believe it is one of the most if not the most accessed articles in recent modern times.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02576-9

If you want a refresher on the situation with the article, he talks to Stella on this podcast:

If you are going to say that a thing is not a thing, then do provide some actual scientific research rather than try to get actual scientific research 'retracted' and pretend it doesn't exist.

To think I used to actually buy Scientific American.

Its the 80s and 90s, and the Dutch project has started. Almost all boys MtF, if a girl appeared it was classed as extremely unusual and unlikely.

Carried on that way into the 00s.

Today? Well, we know what's happening today
MtF is almost all an older phenomenon (the three letter acronym that dare not speak on MN)...those boys from the 80s and 90s who are now Millenial men.

Its vastly FtM...and we know what this all means. The internet, peer to peer, autism, multi factoral causation, ROGD.

SciAm is a disgrace.

This makes me so cross. My autistic child very nearly fell into this at 15/16. As their parent I can categorically say there was no gender discomfort nor cross dressing, no typical play for the opposite sex, nothing whatsoever to hint at deep seated discongruence in sense of gender at all until their body began changing, and they were forced (by their body) to acknowledge their physicality in a way that was deeply confronting and upsetting to a person who lived so much in their mind. A person to whom the body had only ever been an inconvenient vessel for the mind. Just a vessel that needed feeding and evacuating when it could not be avoided. Becoming an adult was confronting, terrifying, and uncomfortable. Trying to avoid that by suppressing what the body wanted to do seemed logical to them.

Those feelings of incongruence melted away somewhere between ages 19 and 21.

I still find it incredible, even now, that the most effective way to safeguard my distressed autistic teen through that time was to ensure that no medical or psychological professional came anywhere near them in regard to their dysphoria; something I only realized / knew as a person working in a related field myself. Listening to "stonewalled" colleagues' conviction and self assurance about gender identity, that if you question your gender you are trans, that these children "had always been" the other gender really, and the need to therefore affirm simply did not resonate with my experiences with my (severely autistic but very academically able, verbal) young person.

The idea that all these girls hid it, when parental observations from those of us with gender non-conforming children suggest that the objections to clothes (for example) start way before the child has any concept of it being wrong or right, just reveals how far you can go wrong if you don’t listen to parents.

Indeed I strongly suspect that genuine gender dysphoria can be created when parents fight against the emerging gender non-conforming behaviour patterns of their children.

But likely many of the members of WPATH are blind to this as their “trans identity” can never be admitted to have been caused by their parents. They argue it was innate and the fact that it survived despite the parents objections is proof of how strong that identity is.

They’ve got it arse about face and admitting it would harm their fragile concept of self, I suspect.

The medics should ideally be listening to parents who genuinely have not observed any early warnings of gender non-conformity, but many of the medics are transitioners and many transitioners from before the onset of ROGD have a poor relationship with their parents, for the reasons mentioned above.

Objectivity is impossible when you are an ongoing patient as well as the medic. A genuine cure for gender dysphoria would be the resolution of that dysphoria and an acceptance of the reality of your sexed body. That this branch of medicine has entirely lost sight of that fact is at the core of this issue. Everything else is noise.

“This is just a fear-based concept that is not supported by studies,” says Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The term ROGD is being used to “scare people or to scare legislators into voting for some of these restrictive policies that take away options for young people. It’s cruel, cruel legislation.”

Funny Marci, because the same could be said about the suicide statistics and the better an alive son than a dead daughter crap. Which isn't supported by studies and is used to scare people into taking away children's sexual reproduction ability before they've even hit adult hood! And parents worried about their children caught up in a social contagion are apparently the bad guys!!!

@BettyFilous I hadn't realised it was that simple 😁 Here you go:

https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1697161067917381645?t=1grk8EO0TnfSTJxkoGJyqQ&s=19

I can see some great comments on here. I need to go now but will be coming back to read them all properly.

Bowers is probably the worst of the worst. Bowers is male, has had a family, has experienced sex. When Bowers gets involved in a young male’s “affirming care” it’s the final act. Bowers knows these males have never experienced orgasm as a result of their preceding hormone treatment, Bowers has said this publicly. Instead of stopping, Bowers commits the final egregious act upon these young people and removes their testes and surgically destroys their penis ruining any possibility of sexual pleasure ever happening. I think Bowers is genuinely evil because of this and should be in prison.

When did Bowers say that? In January this year, Bowers is quoted with saying something quite different.

“There are people in my community who will deny that there’s any sort of ‘social contagion’ — I shouldn’t say social contagion, but at least peer influence on some of these decisions,” Bowers said of the growing number of trans kids. “I think that’s just not recognizing human behavior.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/trans-kids-privacy-gender-identity.html

And here is an even earlier quote, from 2021.

This is not the first time Bowers has made such comments. In 2021, the celebrity gender surgeon who has performed more than 2,000 vaginoplasties acknowledged the possibility that the surge in teenage girls identifying as boys was a social trend.

"I think there probably are people who are influenced. There is a little bit of ‘Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, I kind of want to do that too’," Bowers said in an interview with Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage.

https://thepostmillennial.com/president-of-leading-trans-org-admits-social-contagion-is-driving-surge-in-kids-identifying-as-transgender

Regardless whether ROGD is or is not a 'thing', whether it is a social contagion or a genuine, immutable dysphoria, regardless of any political, philosophical, ideological, psychological, or even medical opinion, there has to be a better solution than chopping up these girls, sterilising them, giving them lifelong endocrine ilnesses and severe and severely premature osteoporosis.

If research is stifled, if research is restricted to only one aspect of the condition and one view of the condition, how are these patients best interests being served?

I did a thread on the original paper, trying to be clever (not my forte) I confused a bunch of people. Sorry.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4812468-rogd-paper-withdrawn?page=2&reply=128788677

There a link at the end to an article by Dr Michael Bailey, the author of the original research paper, on the latest nonsense from SA.

As an aside, isn't a helmuth a flatworm, often found as parasites?