Attempts to legitimize the lay anti-trans narrative-slash-conspiracy theory of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” as a genuine health condition are risky business, as specifying particular features of an alleged new clinical phenomenon places it in the dangerous realm of that which can be disproven. Littman (2018), in her extensively criticized paper on this supposed condition, claimed that “clinicians have reported that post-puberty presentations of gender dysphoria in natal females that appear to be rapid in onset is a phenomenon that they are seeing more and more in their clinic”, and cites parental reports that “clinicians failed to explore their child’s mental health, trauma, or any alternative causes for the child’s gender dysphoria.” Zucker (2019), commenting on “ROGD”, asserted:

Over the past dozen or so years, it is my view (and that of others) that a new subgroup of adolescents with gender dysphoria has appeared on the clinical scene. This subgroup appears to be comprised—at least so far—of a disproportionate percentage of birth-assigned females who do not have a history of gender dysphoria in childhood or even evidence of marked gender-variant or gender nonconforming behavior.

Littman, Zucker, and others have further implied that a shift in the sex ratio of adolescents presenting for evaluation for gender dysphoria toward those assigned female is itself indicative of the emergence of an entirely new kind of dysphoria. These assertions – that a clinically distinct new phenomenon has emerged over the past decade, and that this is embodied largely by apparently gender-dysphoric AFAB adolescents assigned female who experience serious psychiatric comorbidities that may be presenting only the appearance of gender dysphoria – are testable. And a recent study from Amsterdam’s VUmc gender clinic puts them to the test. Continue reading “Contra “ROGD”: A recent cohort of youth evaluated at Amsterdam’s gender clinic does not have less intense gender dysphoria or greater psychological issues”