I generally avoid direct criticism of parents who are struggling to raise a child who adamantly claims to be the opposite sex. After all, these are often desperate, distressed parents, just trying to figure out the right thing to do–like I am.

But some of these parents have turned into activists, eagerly promoting pediatric transition, even starting their own organizations with dubious policies–like sneaking free breast binders to 9-year-old girls behind their parents’ backs. And a fair few seem to be capitalizing on the kid-trans-trend to make money or garner media attention, essentially trapping their kids into a transgender identity by parading them in front of TV cameras.

Recently, one of these online moms has been cited a lot by the early transition activists, so I thought I’d take a closer look at what she had to say.

What I found is that….she agrees with me!

Well, not exactly.

But in her attempt to justify the early transition of kids, her epiphany, her resounding conclusion is (boldface emphasis hers):

There have been NO (as in zero, zilch, nada, none) reliable long-term studies that follow transgender kids over time in order to determine how many of them “change their minds.”

That’s right. Gendermom agrees that we just don’t know how many of these socially transitioned, then puberty-blocked, and ultimately sterilized kids will actually grow up to be happy adults with no regrets about what their parents and the “gender specialists” did to them in their tender years. But she has come to a radically opposite conclusion than I have. Somehow, she thinks this uncertainty justifies the social transition of little kids.

And while Gendermom and I agree that we have no way to determine exactly which young kids will identify as transgender adults, what she glosses over, either because she isn’t aware of it or is willfully ignoring it, is that we do have many decades of research, comprising multiple studies, indicating that most kids change their minds: something like 80-98% of them, depending on the study. (More on that data shortly.)

In an accompanying video Gendermom made featuring cute stick figure “trans” kids, she dispenses with the high number of desisters by claiming that studies conducted in the past incorrectly combined groups of kids who were simply “gender nonconforming” with actual “transgender kids.” So, according to her, that research is fatally flawed.

There is nothing in the primary body of research used by gender specialists to justify early transition, a batch of self-referential studies from Holland, that posits an actual criterion for determining which prepubescent child is “truly trans” versus simply “gender nonconforming.” In point of fact, the Dutch research actually strongly cautions against the social transition of young children under the age of 10 for the simple reason that it is impossible to determine who is going to “desist” and who will “persist” with wanting to change sex. And, in the linked study, which is based on the experience of 25 adolescent subjects, early social transition made it much more difficult for the “desisters”–the children who did change their minds–to reclaim their natal sex. [The journal article is behind a paywall; excerpt below from page 16]:

As for the clinical management in children before the age of 10, we suggest a cautious attitude towards the moment of transitioning. Given our findings that some girls, who were almost (but not even entirely) living as boys in their childhood years, experienced great trouble when they wanted to return to the female gender role, we believe that parents and caregivers should fully realize the unpredictability of their child’s psychosexual outcome. They may help the child to handle their gender variance in a supportive way, but without taking social steps long before puberty, which are hard to reverse.

The “Dutch protocol” is constantly used as justification by pediatric transition promoters. But here we see Steensma et al strongly warn against the very trend we see today: parents and other adults doing everything in their power to cement a transgender identity in their young child, thus making it extremely difficult for the child to change their mind.

To take but one recent example, in this recent video that has gone viral on social media, the mom repeatedly insists that her 8-year-old girl “is a boy, regardless.” In fact, in all the recent stories I’ve read, I see no parent entertaining the possibility that their child might change their mind. There is no “might be.” There is no “we know it’s possible s/he will change back.” More and more, we see the label “transgender child” used to define these young kids who are simply exploring who they are.

Why don’t people like Gendermom (whom I have to assume are well meaning and loving parents) realize that socially transitioning their kids–using opposite sex names and pronouns, advocating for access to bathrooms and locker rooms, insisting to anyone who will listen that the child is unequivocally not their natal sex–could actually help to trap them in an identity they would otherwise shed?

What of the 4-year-old girls who are encouraged to wear “packers” and stand-to-pee devices? Can anyone really imagine those kids will abandon these devices a few years later, after all the adults around them have been applauding them for “passing” so well in their school bathroom and gym class?

Gendermom and others subscribe to the notion that a truly transgender child is one who states they are the opposite sex–“consistently, persistently, and insistently,” as the meme goes. But even if we use that criterion, isn’t there an inherent contradiction in claiming that a 3 year old or a 5 year old or a 7 year old is decidedly and already the opposite sex? They haven’t been alive long enough to persist or be consistent at anything—though they certainly know how to insist on what they want, as all young children do.

According to Gendermom’s video, youngsters who are currently being routinely socially transitioned at 2-10 years old, and who say they are the opposite sex are more likely to be “truly trans” than the ones who say they want to be the opposite sex. But the important thing is that these childhood feelings can change later on.

According to this 2008 literature review by Korte et al,

Multiple longitudinal studies provide evidence that gender-atypical behavior in childhood often leads to a homosexual orientation in adulthood, but only in 2.5% to 20% of cases to a persistent gender identity disorder. Even among children who manifest a major degree of discomfort with their own sex, including an aversion to their own genitalia (GID in the strict sense), only a minority go on to an irreversible development of transsexualism.

Gendermom implies that only the much-maligned Dr. Kenneth Zucker has provided evidence that upwards of 80% of gender dysphoric kids “desist” from gender dysphoria and (mostly) grow up to be non-transitioned gay or lesbian adults. Trans activists tend to discredit Dr. Zucker because one of his treatment protocols has been to discourage “gender nonconforming” behavior–like, don’t let Billy wear a dress, and don’t let Judy play with trucks and shave her head. This is a fair criticism. However, just because some of Dr. Zucker’s therapy techniques are questionable, it does not follow that all of his observations of gender dysphoric children published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are worthless.

Besides, a number of other researchers and clinicians apart from Kenneth Zucker have written about the fact that gender dysphoria in young children is most typically a phase. Nancy Bartlett and colleagues, in a review of the literature on childhood gender dysphoria published in 2000, conclude:

To summarize the outcome literature, then, though a significant proportion of adolescents or adults with GID may have childhood histories of GID, very few children with GID go on to develop adolescent or adult GID. The likelihood is relatively high that they will grow up to be homosexual… Ironically, it seems to have been generally accepted in the literature that children with GID are at high risk for adolescent or adult GID… Indeed, this line of reasoning has provided much of the basis for endorsing treatment for children with GID, which is unsettling given that a relatively large body of empirical evidence points to GID in adolescence or adulthood as being an outcome for only a small percentage of children with GID.

Even the Global Action for Trans Equality, an organization that advocates for transgender people, has stated in a 2013 critique of diagnosis codes that

… childhood development is a process of change and exploration. Such a diagnosis, which attempts to establish a concrete definition of a child’s gender identity precisely during the phase of life when essential aspects of identity are most in flux, is likely to create the presumption that the child is transgender, whether or not that is in fact the case.

Anyone who has raised a son or daughter knows that, during the years of fantasy and make believe, a child will frequently pretend to be something they are not–sometimes consistently, persistently, and definitely insistently. The entire medical, political, and media-enabled edifice of pediatric transition rests on a shaky foundation of adults interpreting literally the utterances of children at a stage of life when they are just as likely to claim they are really a dog, a cat, or a train engine. Oh yes, consistently. Insistently. Day in, day out. If you don’t believe this, then you haven’t spent much time around small children—particularly children with obsessive, vivid imaginations.

Do some kids throw throw temper tantrums when reality impinges on their magical thinking? You bet. I’m noticing a pattern in how often these parents of “transgender” kids mention frequent toddler tantrums, a refusal to wear certain clothing, and overall difficult and demanding behaviors. And they tell these stories of exasperating and angry kids as if this is somehow a hallmark that the child’s demands are proof of innate gender identity.

Nobody is denying that certain children would rather be the opposite sex, nor that they even believe they are the opposite sex. What people like me are challenging is the assumption that those desires, ideas, assertions mean these children should be “socially transitioned” in preparation for being pumped full of off-label hormones and, if all goes according to the assumptions these parents keep trumpeting to the media, permanently sterilized.

Let’s be clear. We are not talking about simply allowing children to express themselves. We are talking about something new under the sun: a treatment paradigm that leads, in most cases, to drugging, binding, cutting, and sterilizing minors. And gender specialists and activists are actively lobbying for younger and younger children to be taken at their word and “socially transitioned,” which conditions them to think they can achieve the impossible: change their biological sex.

There is zero, zilch, nada evidence that there is any such thing as a “transgender” 2 or 3 or 5 or 7-year-old child. All we have are adults claiming that if a little girl insists, “Mommy, I’m a boy,” this means she is a boy. There is only this quasi-religious, fervent belief in the idea that someone can be “born in the wrong body.” The growing number of powerful adults who promulgate what amounts to a weak theory based on a fantasy seem to be stuck in the childhood phase of magical thinking themselves.

For the parents who have been hoodwinked into believing that transitioning their kids is the best and most loving thing they can do, I have a question: Which is the path of least harm? The one that leads in nearly every case to irreversible changes, medical intervention, and likely sterilization? Or the one which simply puts off the question of a transgender identity until adulthood?

I want to dwell a bit longer on this question of sterilization. Trans activists don’t tend to talk about what happens to prepubescent kids who go immediately from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones, which is almost certainly sterility, because the sperm or ova cells can never mature. The assumption is that this previously unheard of and truly outrageous consequence is worth it for these kids, who have no capacity to make such a monumental decision when they themselves are still children. And while there are certainly people who will choose not to reproduce as adults, it is still the case that the vast majority of adults—on the order of 95%–have or want to have children.

And before you chime in to say, oh well, adoption is always an option, ask yourself this: in what other context would activists or, even worse, medical doctors, be advocating a treatment that denies children the future choice to have their own biological children?

The likely retort to this argument is: Well, surely sterilization is preferable to my child attempting suicide as a teenager.

But there is no evidence that “transition” cures suicidal impulses and self harm in these kids. Witness the rash of recent trans teen suicides in San Diego, the horrible tragedy of 14-year olds taking their own lives. According to the linked Advocate account, at least two of them were being supported in transition by their parents, friends, and other caring adults.

Just last month, a 16-year-old who was celebrated as a leader in the “genderqueer” and trans communities took her own life, as did a celebrated young activist and the first trans homecoming king in the US earlier this year. Identifying as transgender and being on the road to transition did not prevent these horrific events, nor apparently alleviate the terrible suffering of these teens.

I will here emphasize a point I have mentioned in previous posts: If experiencing strong gender dysphoria made most such children feel life was not worth living, the clinical literature from the time before pediatric transition became so heavily publicized and promoted would show that. There would be multiple accounts of young people insisting that living in the wrong body was intolerable, and that they planned to end their lives because of it. I will dare to suggest that at least some of these attempted and completed suicides we are now seeing are the result of young, impressionable, gender nonconforming people who –yes—are subject to bullying and depression–being encouraged in the idea that they must either transition or die.

Here is some wise advice from an anonymous reader who posted on my Tumblr blog:

The real way to reduce the rate of suicide among transgender teens: 1. Stop telling people that they have to hurry up and transition or they’ll regret it for the rest of their life. They can transition later and have a happy life. 2. Stop glamorizing transgender teens who commit suicide. 3. Encourage them to get good therapy for their problems and think carefully about whether or not they should transition. 4. Encourage them to stay connected to their family, even if their family is skeptical.

It is beyond irresponsible that activists and organizations that push pediatric transition are playing on the worst fears of parents, emotionally blackmailing them into entrusting their children with “gender specialists,” when there is no indication that transition cures the desire to self harm.

Where exactly does a child get the idea that they need to transition now or never? Ultimately, these messages come from adults. We should demand that adults stop promoting the idea that a child’s life will be less meaningful or worthwhile on the basis of how the child looks or what name or pronoun they use.

When I read all these accounts of parents insisting their kids are transgender, I want to ask them:

Have you really examined your behavior, language, and choices to look for all the ways that you reinforce gender stereotypes? Have you considered that it could be you who has put these ideas in your child’s head? Have you examined all the media messages that your child has been subject to since they were born? Have you closely examined the kinds of relationships your child has with people who encourage gender stereotypes?

In Gendermom’s video, she refers optimistically to future research that will settle the matter once and for all. She says “we’ll just have to wait and see.”

But “wait and see” isn’t what is being done with these kids. The innocent looking stick figure children, smiling and playing with toys that match their gender identities, belie a scary reality. In greater and greater numbers, kids are being diagnosed and defined as the opposite sex, at younger and younger ages: fitted with pretend genitalia, encouraged to “pass” as something they are not, implanted with GnRh agonist pumps, and paraded before a prostrate media. No one is “waiting and seeing.”

In the words of Gendermom, once again:

There have been NO (as in zero, zilch, nada, none) reliable long-term studies that follow transgender kids over time in order to determine how many of them “change their minds.”

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