The fact that transgender identity sometimes spreads among girls through social contagion has been confirmed by yet another study. As PJ Media notes, “A study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior confirms the common-sense conclusion many observers…have long drawn” that the rapid rise in the number of people identifying as transgender is “sociogenic.” “The findings were interesting on several fronts: ‘gender transition’ is driven by social pressure; females are by psychological disposition more susceptible to the ‘trans’ social contagion; and mentally ill youth were more likely than non-mentally ill to ‘transition.'”
This study is not alone. The study concludes:
Results of our study are generally consistent with other recent research about the current surge of gender dysphoria among youth with onset during adolescence or young adulthood. Natal females were affected more often than natal males… There was evidence of immersion both in social media and in peer groups with other transgender-identifying youths….
Youths with a history of mental health issues were especially likely to have taken steps to socially and medically transition…
Parents tended to rate their children as worse off after transition.
The Daily Caller reported on a study with similar results in November: “A study published in the scientific journal Plos One surveyed 256 parents whose children experienced rapid onset of gender dysphoria. The vast majority (86.7%) of adolescents either started spending more time online or were in a friend group with at least one other transgender person prior to identifying as transgender, according to the study,” the Daily Caller noted. “The study was meant to explore growing reports from parents of their children suddenly adopting transgender identities after puberty after apparent peer influence. In 36.8% of the friendship groups reported in the study, parent participants said the majority of its members identified as transgender. Parents also reported a decline in their children’s mental health and in parent-child relationships following adoption of transgender identities.”
“I think the people who are on the far right who say it’s all social influence are wrong. But people on the far left who say there can be no social influence are also wrong,” said Dr. Erica Anderson, a transgender psychologist who works with transgender children. “Adolescents are very susceptible to peer influence, so to suggest there can be no influence on young people is preposterous and flies in the face of everything we know about teenagers.” Anderson supports gender transitions but has been a vocal critic of the trend to push gender transition procedures on kids without psychological screening. “I do not believe that there was this huge hidden number of transgender people in previous generations,” she said.
Students’ identification of themselves as transgender can rise in response to LGBTQ pride messaging from teachers. An Austin public school teacher claimed that twenty out of her 32 fourth-graders “came out” to her as LGBTQ after LGBTQ pride week. On March 28, Libs of TikTok released “internal messages from a 4th grade elementary teacher in @AustinISD. She’s upset that an entire week dedicated to LGBT still wasn’t good enough. Coincidentally, 20/32 of her FOURTH GRADERS are LGBT and have ‘come out’ to her.”
Minor who identify as transgender are often being put on puberty blockers, and — less frequently — are receiving surgical sex-change procedures, such as top surgery. An analysis of insurance claims by Reuters found 56 genital surgeries and 776 mastectomies among patients ages 13 to 17. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia refers children for puberty blockers at ages as low as 8, and for surgical procedures at ages as low as 14.
But these procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort. As a transgender activist conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” That”s because of the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed:
Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to.
She still wants the sex change, but doctors don’t have magical powers, so “sex change” surgery can’t fully give transgender people the body they want. Hence, Chu’s admission that she won’t be happy, even after her sex change. The suicide rate of transgender people actually rises after they get sex changes, according to the Heritage Foundation.
Society, of course, pays the bill for sex change surgeries, which sometimes cost over $200,000, because the Affordable Care Act often requires insurers to cover sex changes and gender-reassignment surgery. So surgeries for people like Chu increase the health insurance premiums all insured Americans pay. Taxpayers end up directly paying for sex change surgeries for prison inmates (when progressive judges find inmates have an 8th Amendment right to a sex change) and for sex changes for federal employees such as soldiers. Under Biden, the Pentagon has paid for some soldiers to get sex changes. The Washington Examiner reported that “taxpayers will now foot the bill for gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel and veterans, with some treatments costing upward of $200,000 under an executive order signed by President Biden.”
Jazz Jennings was the poster child for child sex changes, with his very own TV show celebrating Jazz’s sex change. But things aren’t going well for Jazz, who is now miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Now, Jazz is miserable, and says “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz has experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they said. The FDA has warned that the puberty blockers given to transgender kids as part of their gender transition can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss. Puberty blockers also prevent the increase in bone density that would normally occur during puberty, with some patients experiencing lifelong bone issues, according to the New York Times.
But progressive officials continue to support childhood sex changes. “Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine promised that medically changing kids’ genders will soon be normalized,” reports Fox News:
Meanwhile, the skyrocketing numbers of sex changes are beginning to lead to malpractice lawsuits. Fox News reports:
De-transitioned teenager Layla Jane is suing Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the medical providers who performed a double mastectomy on her when she was just 13 years old after beginning to identify as transgender two years before.
Now 18 years old, Jane is accusing the hospital system of “intentional fraud and concealment” involving her gender transition, alleging the doctors pushed her into the procedure and characterized her gender transition as the only way to treat her preexisting mental health problems….Jane’s lawsuit, according to reports from The Blaze, alleged doctors warned her of an increased risk of suicide if she failed to transition to male, adding that they gave her parents a binary option of living with a “live son” or suffering the consequence of having a “dead daughter.”
Jane’s lawsuit noted a series of health struggles brought on by the “permanent irreversible mutilation,” including inability to breastfeed, increased likelihood of an inability to conceive, and endocrine problems.
Sex-change doctors badger parents into getting a risky sex change for their child by using a manipulative script, asking them “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” (if they have a daughter) or “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?” (if they have a son). Nevermind that these claims are “shoddy” and there is no reliable evidence that getting a sex change will reduce a gender-noncomforming child’s likelihood of committing suicide, as experts such as Leor Sapir have pointed out.
As Fox News reports, Layla Jane’s lawyer
who also represents de-transitioner Chloe Cole [in another malpractice lawsuit], alleged the lines used by doctors at Kaiser Permanente must be scripted since the same “live son” or “dead daughter” binary was allegedly used in both instances.
These scaremongering claims by doctors were wrong. As the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir notes, Scandinavian authorities “have examined the evidence behind the affirm-or-suicide claim and have found it wanting….there is no good evidence that failing to “affirm” minors in their “gender identity” will increase the likelihood of them committing suicide….that claim is based on a small handful of deeply flawed studies that, at most, find loose correlations between “affirming” interventions and improved mental health. Some find no reduction of suicide at all, and a new study claims to find that puberty blockers actually increase the risk of suicide.”
An Ontario woman who lost body parts due to a sex change is also suing the doctors who rubberstamped her sex change.
Meanwhile, The London Daily Telegraph reports that Britain’s National Health Service says transgenderism is just a ‘phase’ for most kids who claim to be transgender:
Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.
NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.
In light of this finding, NHS is no longer going to give minors sex-change surgery or puberty blockers. It is also cautioning against even social transitioning:
NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.
The NHS describes a staggering 40-fold increase in use of “gender identity services” over the last ten years. Because many using these services are just going through a phase, and will not benefit from a sex change, the NHS will take a different approach to treating minors, noting “evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” which is a reason that “doctors should be mindful this might be a ‘transient phase.’”
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan notes, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” are now recommending against “prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors.”
Yet, in America, gender clinics are giving teenagers double mastectomies and other sex-change operations in many states. The Biden administration has promoted puberty blockers, even though the FDA says puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
As the New York Post notes, many girls who get sex changes will “struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors.” They temporarily identify as transgender boys, then get sex changes before realizing they are really just girls.
The number of girls temporarily identifying as “transgender” has skyrocketed. Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to describe this subset of transgender youth, typically biological females who become suddenly dysphoric during or shortly after puberty. Littman believes this may be due to adolescent girls’ susceptibility to peer influence on social media.
A variety of studies suggest that as many as 80% of dysphoric children could ultimately experience “desistance”— or coming to terms with their biological gender without resorting to transition. Which is why many professionals like Evans think it’s wise to hold off on potentially irreversible medical intervention for as long as possible….All these treatments run the risk of side effects that critics argue are too serious for children to fully understand. In the short term, puberty blockers can stunt growth and effect bone density, while the long-term effects are still unknown since they were only approved by the FDA in 1993. Side effects of testosterone include high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots and even infertility.
Two major studies conducted completely separately- 1 in Finland and 1 in Canada — found that 85-87% of teens with gender dysphoria grow out of it during adulthood.
Being “gender affirming” shouldn’t be an excuse for a doctor to commit medical malpractice. But that may be happening in many cases.
The National Review provided a possible example. Doctors affirmed a man’s false belief that he had a female gender identity, and then mutilated his body by giving him a sex change he came to regret.
Plagued by self-hatred, he “heard about transgenderism” in college, and “seized on it as the solution.” A gender-affirming free clinic “immediately affirmed” his female gender identity. He was then given an “incomplete informed consent document to sign.” Later, his doctor told him that he “should really get surgery.” He was given an orchiectomy, but not told that it was castration. After being castrated, he “developed a drug habit” and began “ejaculating blood.” He said that “the gender clinic kept telling me, ‘Oh, it gets better.’” But it didn’t.
He says he was never given an independent psychological evaluation before getting surgery. After surgery, a different therapist diagnosed him with a different condition than gender dysphoria. But by then, he had already been castrated.
Getting a sex change caused havoc in the lives of thousands of people. The National Review gave an example of a woman who transitioned to being a man, and ended up with negative health consequences, “no hair,” and a “body mutilated.”
It’s not just doctors and psychologists who have made mistakes in their zeal to be “gender affirming.” So have judges.
Jamie Shupe gave an example in “I was America’s first ‘nonbinary person.’ It was all a sham.” Shupe is male, as he noted in the Daily Signal. But he wanted in vain to be a woman, due to a condition known as “autogynephilia.” When his therapist expressed skepticism about whether he would actually benefit from trying to change his sex, he filed a “formal complaint” against her, and found a new therapist, who affirmed his new “identity as a woman.” But eventually he changed his mind and declared he was nonbinary, not female:
When the fantasy of being a woman came to an end, I asked two of my doctors to allow me to become nonbinary instead of female to bail me out. Both readily agreed….To escape the delusion of having become a woman, I did something completely unprecedented in American history. In 2016, I convinced an Oregon judge to declare my sex to be nonbinary—neither male nor female.
As a result of this ruling, a “nonbinary option” now exists in many states, even though Shupe’s “sex change to nonbinary was a medical and scientific fraud.” The judge’s ruling was not based on any evidence. As Shupe observes, “the judge didn’t ask me a single question. Nor did” the judge ask “to see any medical evidence….Within minutes, the judge just signed off on the court order,” even though he did “not have any disorders of sexual development.” But three years later, “unable to advance the fraud for another single day,” he “reclaimed” his “male birth sex.”
