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whydidisavethistomyphone · 9 months

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Scientists say what the facts are

#trans rights #trans problems #facts don’t care about your feelings #science says trans rights

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gxlden-angels · 1 year

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I think it's so funny when Christian flat out reject the concept of being intersex like oh so me and about 2% of the population aren't real but you expect me to believe homeboy's gonna come back after (holy) ghosting us for over 2000 years?

#I plan on coming out to my dad as trans this weekend #And thought about the time I explained what intersex is to my uncle #and how he flat out refused to except it as a real thing #which is fuckin wild #male and female should be used as adjectives not nouns #cause there's so many factors that contribute to biological sex that it'd be easier to say every person is their own sex #but yea i'm medically considered intersex cause of my flavor of PCOS #and other issues #it's just so wild cause you'd think that would be a great 'miracle' for them to brag about #'Look at science say there's female and male but Jesus says in Galatians there is no male and female because we are all one in Christ.'#Like the opportunity was literally right there #oh well #florida gov ronald desantis if ur reading this you know what would be so fuckin funny for you to say right now?#also I'll be back on the book soon I've been Working. got 38.5 hours the past 2 weeks tho let's gooo (limit is 40 as a pt student)#[pt working and full time student not pt student]#bro fundie christians' obsession with sex/genitalia in general is fuckin wild #ex christian #religious trauma

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hue-makes-burgers · 7 months

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i think you guys like captain underpants so i should share some doodles i think…

this bit’s from the book

this line from the book has become like an inside joke it’s so silly how krupp is like ACTUALLY INTERESTED in the ring

extra sillies

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bigbroadvice · 26 days

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I keep seeing this term ‘biological male’ being thrown around. There are lots of reasons why this is an innacurate and unhelpful description, but I’d like to examin just this term for a moment.

What exactly is a ‘biological male?’ The definition of biology is “the physiology, behavior, and other qualities of a particular organism or class of organisms.“ So let’s brake that down a bit. In refference to humans that means organ structures and chemicals that run those organs. So when talking about biological sexes, we’re probably referencing a certain set of average characteristics shared by people with XX chromosomes, XY chromosomes, or other sets of chromosomes which are part of natural human variation like XXY, XYY, XXX, XXXXY, X, XXXXXX, and XXXY (learned about those in biology class. It’s really cool how much more diversity there is to human biology than you generally think about. If we’re basing sex off of DNA, there are indeed WAY more than two sexes).

Now the way that any of those sets of DNA (which are known as genotypes) translate to how the body looks and works (phenotypes), is by making chemicals. Those chemicals are what build all the organs and keep them running the way they do. DNA isn’t the only thing deciding how much of each chemical there is though. Environmental factors like the food we eat, medicine we take, other organisms living inside us like bacteria and viruses, chemicals we absorb from the environment, and even stress massively impact body chemistry, often completely overriding DNA. So sometimes you might have the genotype for one thing and end up with a different phenotype. Like people who were born with tall genes but end up short as adults because during the time they were developing they didn’t have access to adequate nutrition. Their DNA might say one thing but in reality, they turned out as something else. The short person with tall genes is still short, regardless of what their DNA says.

Phenotype can also be directly changed by outside forces, like getting a limb blown off in an explosion, getting your ears pierced, or having surgery. These overide both DNA and body chemistry. A person with the DNA and chemicals to have two arms but had one arm chopped off is phenotypically a one armed person.

When reffering to different sexes, we’re usually talking about generalized groupings of phenotype, like gential organs, bone structure, musculature, hair growth, and fat distribution. These phenotypes are generally determined by chemicals called hormones. Just like any other chemicals, these too are impacted by environmental factors like what we eat and what medicines we take. So when someone takes a medicine that alters their hormone levels, that alters their phenotype. Just like how growing up with healthy foods and vitamins can help kids develop strong and healthy bodies, medicines like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy lead to bodies developing differently. These phenotypes can of course also be altered through surgery by deconstructing and reconstructing different parts of the body like genitalia and facial bone structure. By changing the chemicals and organ structures they have changed the biology.

So what is a ‘biological male?’ A biological male would presumably be someone with the general phenotypes of the group called males. If someone does not have those phenotypes, it wouldn’t make sense to call them a biological male. So according to the definition of biology, a trans woman whose physiology, behavior, and other qualities align with those exhibited by females is not a biological male. She is a biological female.

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keelanrosa · 4 days

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terfs when a study shows literally anything positive about trans people/transitioning: 'hm i think this requires some fact-checking. Were those researchers REALLY unbiased? Because if they were biased this doesn't count and if they weren't knowingly biased they probably were unconsciously biased, woke media affects so much these days. Have there been any other studies on this? Because if there haven't been this could be an outlier and if there have been and they all agree that's a bit odd, why aren't there any outliers, and if there have been and any disagree we really won't know the truth until we very thoroughly analyze them all, will we? Were there enough subjects for a good sample size? Did every single subject involved stay involved through the whole study because if they didn't we should be sure nothing shady was going on resulting in people dropping out. Are we 110% sure all the subjects were fully honest and at no point were embarrassed or afraid to admit they didn't love transitioning to the people in charge of their transition? Are we 110% sure none of the subjects were manipulated into thinking they were happy with their transition? In fact we should double-check what they think with their parents, because if the subjects and their parents disagree it's probably because they've been manipulated but their cis parents have not and are very unbiased. How many autistic subjects were there because if there weren't enough then this doesn't really study the overlap between autistic and trans and if there were too many then we just don't know enough about what causes that overlap to be sure this study really explains being trans and isn't just about being autistic. How many AFAB subjects were there because if there weren't enough this is just another example of prioritizing AMAB people and ignoring the different struggles of girls and women and if there were too many how do we know sexism didn't affect the results. Was the study double-blinded? We all know double-blinded is the most reliable so if this one wasn't that's a point against it even if the thesis literally physically could not be double-blinded. Look i'm not being transphobic, i want what's best for trans people! Really! But as a person who is not trans and therefore objective in a way they cannot possibly be, i just think we should only take into account Good Science here. You want to be following science and not being manipulated or experimented upon by something unscientific, right?'

terfs when they see a study of 45 subjects so old it predates modern criteria for gender dysphoria and basically uses 'idk her parents think she's too butch', run by a guy who practiced conversion therapy, 'confirmed' by a guy who treated the significant portion of subjects who didn't follow up as all desisting, definitely in the category of 'physically cannot double-blind this', completely contradicted by multiple other studies done on actual transgender subjects, but can be kinda cited as evidence against transitioning if you ignore everything else about it: 'oOOH SEE THIS IS WHAT WE'RE TALKIN BOUT. SCIENCE. Just good ol' unbiased thorough analysis. I see absolutely no reason to dig any deeper on this and if you think it's wrong you're the one being unscientific. It's really a shame you've been so thoroughly brainwashed by the trans agenda and can't even accept science when you see it. Maybe now that someone has finally uncovered this long-lost study from 1985, we can make some actual progress on the whole trans problem.'

#science #transphobia #cass review #less 'cass review' generally more 'zucker specifically' because this same problem exists outside cass #have lost count of the number of times i've seen 'well THAT study may have said most trans kids persist but it MUST be wrong'#'there's another study says the exact opposite. that one's right. obviously.'#but cass is why i'm annoyed by it now #normally i don't have a problem with critical observations and questions. yeah check your science! that's good!#there have been some bullshit studies and some bullshit interpretations of good studies! scientific literacy is important!#and normally also am willing to pretend the people pulling reaction 1 on some studies and reaction 2 on others are. not the same group.#but now there's a ton of cass supporters tryna say 'oh the cass review didn't reject or downplay anything for being pro-trans!'#'some studies just weren't given much weight for being poor evidence! not our fault those were all studies with results trans people like!'#…….………….aight explain why zucker's findings are used for the 'percentage of trans kids who don't stay trans' stat instead of anyone else's.#would've been more scientifically accurate to say 'yeah we just don't know.'#'studies have been done but none of them fit our crack criteria sooooo *shrug*'#like COME ON at least PRETEND you're genuinely checking scientific correctness and not looking for excuses to weed out undesirable results #am also mad about zucker in particular because his is possibly the most famous bullshit study #quite bluntly if you're doing trans research and think 'yeah this one seems reasonable' you. are maybe not well-informed enough for the job #there's just no way you genuinely look at the research with an eye toward accurate science regardless of personal bias #and walk away thinking 'hm that zucker fellow seems reasonable. competent scientists will respect that citation.'#that's one or two steps above doing a review of vaccine science and seriously citing wakefield's mmr-causes-autism study #it doesn't matter what the rest of your review says people are gonna have OPINIONS on that bit #and outside anti-vaxxers most of those opinions will be 'are you actually the most qualified for this because ummmm.'#people who agree with everything else will still think someone more competent could've done a much better job #people who disagree with everything else will point to that as proof you don't know shit and why should we listen to you #anyway i'd love a hugeass trans science review with actual fucking standards hmu if you know of one cause this ain't it #……does tumblr still put a limit on how many tags you can include guess me and my tag essay are about to find out.

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monstrous-tra-receipts · 9 months

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#yet this is the ideology thats now made its way to federal law?#and people really see no problem woth how arbitrary and subjective it is?#sure just reject evidence based and peer reviewed science because you like your stereotypes #not at all a clear indication of being a cult #saying i dont believe in gender in left wing circles gets you the same response as saying you think the bible is BS to right wing circles #forcing everyone else to go along with a clearly disingenuine charade is so narcissistic #esp the white male “trans lesbians” who transition socially in adulthood but never get SRS #theyre the loudest lot and theyve drowned out the lgb in the past 10 years #sad really #and all based on a fucking delusional and sexist stereotypes smh

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druidshollow · 8 months

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i have an ancient oc named flight to the sun, homeward descent, but ive recently realized descent might be a kinda sacrilegious term to a society whos religion is all about ascending... so now i need to come up with an excuse for that being her name (read tags for more context if u want lol)

#the easy answer is to make her trans (which i might just do anyways) but i think instead im gonna make it so she changed it as a statement??#i already had it in mind that when she was in schooling to join the iterator project she had a punk phase #and descent as a person is quite wary of the idea of ascension. kinda freaks her out #so maybe when she had that punk phase she changed it as a rebellion of sorts and then it stuck as she grew up #im thinking her birth name was something like flight to the sun thirteen sparks maybe #her choosing homeward descent is basically her saying “idk if ascension is all that when the wholeass world is right here”#it sounds strange for a character whos so unsure of ascension to work on/with iterators #her interest in the iterator project first stemmed from a love of the science but then became a moral issue when she #realized the iterators were much more emotionally intelligent and deep than theyd been intended to me #so she dedicated herself to them and researching their behavioral patterns to help more people understand how human they truly are #druid babbles #this is dumb lol #descent #oc posting

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wickedjr89 · 7 months

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CxlR212J8SA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

#transgender #science fucking backs us up #trans people exist and science fucking SAYS WE DO #omg i'm so angry at transphobes #and i'm beyond stressed right now for multiple reasons #lgbtqia+#queer #lgbt #lgbtq+#lgbt+#transsexual

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rthko · 8 months

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I used to get insecure when reading radical critiques of "born this way" narratives, but I understand it differently now. I'm reading early defenses of homosexuals that concede that their "invert" pathology is worthy of sympathy, and that straight society ought to allow them to have sex (in the right circumstances) so they don't have to be miserable. They go on to claim that while some people who commit homosexual acts are victims of their circumstances, the real perverts are ontologically straight men who commit them by choice.

If I asked every LGBT person I know, "did you choose to be queer," virtually everyone would say no. I have never, to my knowledge, met anyone who would say yes. But if I asked them if they would turn straight/cis if they could, I believe that most, including people who have gone through great hardships on account of their identities, would still say no. The phrase "gay lifestyle" is considered politically incorrect, and indeed there is no one gay lifestyle. But we have also developed culturally distinct circles associated with pleasure as a virtue, creativity, individual dignity and collective care. Many of us learned to look at the straight world not with envy but with relief that we're not part of it.

There are characteristics of our queer identities or behaviors that are a choice. I did not choose to be attracted to men, but I did choose to be promiscuous. I did not choose to be uncomfortable with "male" gender roles, but I did choose to challenge them through gender expression. An emphasis on innateness would imply that the only characteristics of my identity and behavior worth defending are those that are inevitable. It would ask why I still insist on living the way I do when my sexual desires can now just as well be satiated in a legally recognized monogamous marriage.

The subtext of this question, a choice or not a choice, is whether a person is worthy of support. Much like the elusive "gay gene," some trans advocates are searching for the definitive proof of "male brains" and "female brains" that will validate the existence of trans people once and for all. If gender becomes medically or scientifically "provable," perhaps science would then validate trans people. Or, perhaps a brain scan would determine who should or should not consider themselves trans, and create new rationalizations to misgender on "scientific" terms. We need only look back to the sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, often gay themselves, who developed scientific rationalizations for queer behavior in good faith only to have them reapplied to nefarious ends.

Many will insist they support LGBT people in the abstract but not the specifics of queer culture. These are the tendencies that don't have a scientific or metaphysical explanation. It is less often we hear claims that one is born to be flamboyant, promiscuous, left wing, kinky or polyamorous, so these tendencies are superfluous. There is a platonic ideal of a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual or a trans person who follows their natural proclivities and not a step further, and you're not it. So arguments against born this way narratives are not just in defense of those who see themselves as having chosen their gender or sexuality--for what it's worth, I have not knowingly met any. It's that this is a flimsy claim to legitimacy, one that has been used against us, and one that can only be taken so far. I'm not interested in determining who is "faking it." I understand more and more that everyone's body belongs to them, and the steps they take to experience joy and mutual pleasure need no explanation.

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brandyschillace · 5 months

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THE BOOK IS A GO!

Transgender History out 2025

Good morning—GOOD NEWS! Going on 2 years ago, I published my article in Scientific American about #transgenger + #hormone history 🗃️🧪🏳️‍⚧️. I finished the book in Oct, and my editor just wrote to say she loves it and it will publish next winter!

This book almost didn’t happen. It was so hard to write. It *hurt* to write. Watching the news and reading history, it felt the same—rise of fascism and attacks on minorities and LGBTQ. But it’s done, it is written.

THE INTERMEDIARIES tells the story of that science—itself often strange and remarkable—as well as the man, his band of revolutionaries, and the Institute for Sexual Science, both center of the homosexual and trans community and base of operations for the first LGBTQ rights movement of the 20th century.

Sexual and gender nonconformists, what Hirschfeld called the intermediaries, had a right to live, a right to thrive. They also had a right to joy. Science would lead the way, but this history unfolds as an interwar thriller—patients and physicians risking their lives to be seen and heard even as Hitler began his rise to power. They faced abuse, blackmail, and political machinations; they responded with secret publishing campaigns, leaflet drops, pro-homosexual propaganda, and alignments with rebel factions of Berlin’s literati. It’s a story about pioneers. And about hope.

And it all started here:

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the-dangerous-mute-lunatic · 1 year

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Does Aperture Labs support gay/trans rights?? As a bie-enby test subject I sure hope so 🤭🤭

Cave Johnson here.

We here at Aperture Science support all members of the LGBT+. Whether part of our Control Group, a member of the Lab Boys, or a test subject of our renowned Portal gun, you are all worthy of rights and respect!

And whoever says otherwise can kiss my--

#portal #portal 2 #we support gay/trans rights in this household

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dollarstoreartsupplies · 2 months

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okay so steph is definitely a music purist?

we can all agree on that right? like she's a 'said she was born in the wrong generation in middle school' fleetwood mac, david bowie, the mamas & the papas, niche modern indie artists and also chappell roan kind of music listener. obviously. but.... i dont think we've really considered pete's music taste?

pete, who is a science, left-brained kind of kid, so he probably does not actively go out to look for music and is instead just provided music by the people around him?

pete whose older brother is theodore spankoffski and so his earliest and most fond and nostalgic music influences from his childhood would have come directly from ted's cd collection???

basically what im saying is peter spankoffski has the most trashy, early 00's ke$ha, black eyed peas my humps era, all american rejects ass music taste in the world

that boy had bowling for soup's 1985 memorized at age four, his guilty pleasure music is hollywood undead's everywhere i go, ted did his first decent person move in years when pete came out as trans as a kid and stopped listening to grow a pear by ke$ha and pete forcibly made him play it because it's a bop

and then his only friends are a weeb and a theatre kid.

steph gives him the aux cord on a date to be nice, as a sign of trust, and is blasted in the face with the most uncurated mess of j-pop, sondheim, weezer, and like... owl city's fireflies and that's just a fact

#I must clarify this isn’t a dig at any of these songs they all fuck #my source is im a youngest child with a decently older brother and all of my nostalgic music is literally this #my mom had to force my brother to limit what songs he played around me because I was six years old and started saying the word hoe a lot #peter spankoffski #also my hc is Pete is teds full brother so their parents are just Old and Pete stood NO chance #he grew up around Dickhead Era Ted and a dad who forced him to name classic rock bands when they came on the radio #and also my source is my music taste is also the peoples around me because im bad at finding music #nerdy prudes must die #stephanie lauter #starkid #lautski #he also probably really likes train

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drdemonprince · 23 days

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I was never really certain about my transition in the way that most gatekeeping hormone prescribers and curious members of the public demand that a trans person be. I didn’t “always know” that I was not cisgender. I haven’t “always known” anything about myself. Very few truths about me have always remained true, my existence is too interpersonal, contextual, and ever-evolving for all of that. (So is most everyone else’s, I think). I don’t think that the fact I’d eventually choose to exercise my body autonomy at age 30 by taking hormones is a decision I could have foreseen when I was a child. All that I knew about being transgender when I was a kid was a fact that most children intuitively know: gender assignment was a violation of my freedom, of everyone’s freedom in fact, and it was wrong. As an infant and then a child and teenager, people kept imposing labels on me; they kept forcing me and my body into prescribed gendered boxes, and while the specific labels and boxes never really felt like the right ones, the most disturbing part about it all was the forcing. No coerced identity would have ever felt right. Children can tell when secrets are being kept from them, and when adults are restricting their choices. They notice that they and the other children are being lined up boy-girl, boy-girl, without ever being told what a girl or a boy even is. They can see their parents frowning when they reach for the doll with the shimmery hair, or climb atop the neighbor kid on the playground. Kids know that they are forbidden from sitting with their legs spread wide or flicking their wrist, and their gender illegibility is shamed in them, long before they get any answers about what gender means or where it comes from or why it’s so important that they make themselves easy to understand.

Like the cloned children in Never Let Me Go who grow up being conditioned for a life of forced organ donation, children in a cissexist society grow up conditioned to fall within certain gendered boundary lines, and by the time they learn that the reason for this is almost completely arbitrary, they can’t imagine any alternative. Not until some of them hear about gender transition and find the prospect very compelling, for some reason. You can say that reason is because some of us are inherently trans, but there’s absolutely nothing in the way of brain science, genetics research, or even sociological data to back that up. Besides, the search for a biological “reason” that people are transgender or queer runs counter to the goal of queer liberation in the long run. Science only needs to explain the existence of transgender people (or queer people more broadly) if our existence is in some way aberrant or a problem. If queerness is accepted as a form of human diversity that simply exists, then there is no need to excuse it by claiming that it is never a choice. It can be a choice, if a person wants to make it, and hopefully it satisfies them, but maybe it won’t. Freedom to choose means freedom to forever be dissatisfied, to search endlessly for more, and yes, to capable of making a mistake. I would say that viewing myself as transgender was a choice. I decided to break away from the straight, female categories to which I had been assigned, and doing so allowed me to view the legal and societal power structures that had restricted me more clearly. It helped me better understand myself. But that does not mean the actual act of breaking away was always the truest reflection of who I am. The version of me that transitioned was a person on the run — and how a person behaves, thinks, and self-conceives when they are fleeing is not a great reflection of whom they might be if they were safe. If we all lived in a world free from mandatory gender assignment, and where our bodies were not mined for meaning about the kinds of sex we liked, the clothing we should wear, the personality qualities we have, the roles we should play in society, and the connections we are allowed to form with others, who knows who each of us might be. But none of us get to live in that world, or ever gets completely free from the frameworks of heterosexuality and the gender binary. These frameworks shape every legal institution we encounter, every school we attend, every item of clothing we put on, every substance we take into our bodies, every piece of paperwork that ever gets printed about us, and every look another person ever gives us. And so we make due with rewriting and recombining those frameworks as best we can. It should come as no surprise that those us who break away from the binary have to experiment and revise how we understand ourselves quite a bit — sometimes getting things “wrong,” sometimes searching forever for the semblance of something “right.” Sometimes reveling in the “wrongness” of all the available options is kind of the point.

I wrote about my detransition, retransition, and the eternal dissatisfaction that is probably the corest truth of my identity. It's free to read or have narrated to you on my Substack.

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female-malice · 8 months

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Did you know that estrogen weakens the muscles and makes them exactly like a cis woman's? Did you know trans men on T are put in women's leagues still, when the T causes muscles to grow?

As a trans man, educate yourself.

Did you know that estrogen weakens the muscles and makes them exactly like a cis woman's?

When you say "estrogen weakens muscles and makes them exactly like a cis woman" you are regurgitating extreme misogyny. Women are not weakened men. We are not made out of Adam's rib.

When males take estrogen, that does not weaken male muscle mass. Trans-identified males take other medications to suppress testosterone. That has nothing to do with estrogen. Estrogen does not suppress muscle growth at all.

You are thinking like a misogynist. You think estrogen=women and women=weak so estrogen weakens muscles. That's anti-scientific. You understand that right? That's just bigotry. Stop thinking like a misogynist. Stop thinking testosterone=good and estrogen=bad. Take some time to learn about how natural female hormones strengthen and fortify the female body. Educate yourself.

Did you know trans men on T are put in women's leagues still, when the T causes muscles to grow?

There are zero female athletes on testosterone competing in professional women's sports. Testosterone is a banned substance. Gaining an unfair advantage through testosterone doping results in a lifetime ban from professional competition.

Athletes who use cough medicine and heart medication to manipulate their stamina and recovery do not receive lifetime bans. They receive temporary bans because the effects of their doping are temporary.

Testosterone is a lifetime ban because the long-term effects of testosterone are permanent. These decisions by WADA are backed up by thousands and thousands of studies. The science is indisputable. Athletes who engage in testosterone doping permanently exclude themselves from sports. And artificially suppressing testosterone in male athletes does not negate the effects of male puberty.

Women's sports competition is for female athletes regardless of how they identify. Men's sports competition is for male athletes regardless of how they identify. Open sports competition is for everybody regardless of how they identify. Everyone is included as long as they're not doping.

Testosterone suppression might temporarily cause a male athlete to lose their competitive edge against other male athletes. However, it is not female athlete's responsibility to include male athletes who lose their competitive edge. A female athlete is not a male athlete that takes testosterone suppressing medication. A female athlete is a female athlete. Taking medications and cross-sex hormones does not turn males into females. And it does not turn females into males.

Tinkering with your body and hormones is a voluntary activity. When you make a choice, you live with the consequences.

Many people interested in body building use banned substances to change their body. They do this knowing it will bar them from competing in sports. They're okay with this. They don't go around protesting. They don't go around clamoring for inclusion in sports. They make their choice to exclude themselves from fair sports competition and they're fine with it.

Your body modifications are your own choice. Your body modifications are your own responsibility. When those modifications ban you from competitive sports or dull your competitive edge, that's your consequence to deal with.

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opencommunion · 1 year

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Understanding the theory’s ascent from fringe forums to scientific journals to the halls of Congress helps clarify some of the moral panic and pernicious logic employed to restrict the autonomy and rights of trans people today. It also serves as a vivid example of how questionable science can be weaponized to achieve political goals.

A number of studies on trans youth have taken on “misinformational afterlives,” says TJ Billard, an assistant professor of communications at Northwestern University and executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Among them are four papers published between 2008 and 2013 that have together been used to claim that most children “grow out” of gender dysphoria and opt not to transition. All have been shown to have numerous shortcomings. In some, nearly 40% of young people surveyed did not meet the criteria for the official gender dysphoria diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders edition used at the time. In two, researchers classified some subjects as having detransitioned—or reversed their transition—purely on the basis of whether a parent or third party said it happened. A 2018 study found that three of the papers labeled those who had stopped responding to researchers as detransitioners; and in one, a subject who identified as nonbinary was classified as detransitioning.

“There’s a wealth of bad science that is out there, and this science doesn’t stay in journals,” Billard says. Parents unfamiliar with trans issues, who don’t understand gender-affirming health care and don’t have the expertise to read the studies themselves, often fall under its sway.

... When Littman took up the question, she decided to survey parents, who she felt would be easier to reach than trans youths themselves. In her Methods section, she writes that “to maximize the chances of finding cases meeting eligibility criteria”—meaning youths who suddenly became gender dysphoric, according to their parents—she turned to three websites: 4thwavenow.com, a “community of people who question the medicalization of gender-atypical youth”; transgendertrend.com, which says it’s concerned about “the unprecedented number of teenage girls suddenly self-identifying as ‘trans’”; and youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org, a now-private website that was “concerned about the current trend to quickly diagnose and affirm young people as transgender.”

The results were in line with what one might expect given those sources: 76.5% of parents surveyed “believed their child was incorrect in their belief of being transgender.” More than 85% said their child had increased their internet use and/or had trans friends before identifying as trans. The youths themselves had no say in the study, and there’s no telling if they had simply kept their parents in the dark for months or years before coming out. (Littman acknowledges that “parent-child conflict may also explain some of the findings.”)

Arjee Restar, now an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, didn’t mince words in her 2020 methodological critique of the paper. Restar noted that Littman chose to describe the “social and peer contagion” hypothesis in the consent document she shared with parents, opening the door for biases in who chose to respond to the survey and how they did so. She also highlighted that Littman asked parents to offer “diagnoses” of their child’s gender dysphoria, which they were unqualified to do without professional training. It’s even possible that Littman’s data could contain multiple responses from the same parent .... But politics is blind to nuances in methodology. And the paper was quickly seized by those who were already pushing back against increasing acceptance of trans people. ... Many people who are citing Littman’s work probably haven’t even read the study or seen the correction, Billard says: “People are citing a Reddit post in which somebody invoked the idea of Littman and her research.” Littman agrees with this characterization. “It boggles my mind how people are comfortable holding forth on topics that they haven’t actually read papers [about],” she says.

... Lawmakers in more than 25 states have introduced anti-trans bills during 2022 legislative sessions. Politicians writing such legislation have plenty of questionable studies, partisan doctors, and associations that lobby against transgender rights to draw on. Littman’s ROGD study is often a go-to. The Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science wrote in 2021 that many of the “over 100 bills under consideration in legislative bodies across the country that seek to limit the rights of transgender adolescents” are “predicated on the unsupported claims advanced by ROGD.”

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