While there are thousands of peer reviewed articles and a multitude of medical organisations that support the acceptance of trans people, there are also a handful of articles and medical professionals that are in opposition. Yet this handful is over-represented in newspapers and television. After hearing mental health professionals inquire about both the Swedish Study and Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria at a training session, I thought I’d address them here.
Literature
The Swedish Study
Actual Name: Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden
How Opponents Use It: “A 2011 long term Swedish study that followed a 30-year trajectory of 324 people who had sex reassignment surgery found that suicide rates 10 years after surgery were 20 times that of the non-trans population… Surely it is the government’s first responsibility to try to prevent suicides rather than to validate emotive claims made by those least capable of assessing their condition with objectivity.” Source.
What’s Wrong About It: The study does not compare suicide rates of trans people before and after surgery. It compares trans people with cisgender people after surgery. It does not take into account that trans people have a high rate of suicidality as a result of discrimination and intolerance before surgery. When this is accounted for, research indicates that the suicide rate goes down after surgery.
The leading author of the 2011 study, Cecilia Dhejne, has also spoken out against the interpretation of her research by opponents. She said “People who misuse the study always omit the fact that the study clearly states that it is not an evaluation of gender dysphoria treatment. If we look at the literature, we find that several recent studies conclude that WPATH Standards of Care compliant treatment decrease gender dysphoria and improves mental health.”
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria
Actual Name: Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports
How Opponents Use It: “Dr. Littman describes the condition experienced by these girls as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD). It develops during or soon after puberty and mainly affects girls with no previous signs of childhood gender dysphoria . According to the study, parents say that many girls do have a history of mental illness, and some are on the autism spectrum. The most controversial element of Dr. Littman’s research is her claim that ROGD spreads via social and peer contagion. While the incidence of gender dysphoria in the general population is quite low – less than 1 per cent – it’s not uncommon for two or more girls in the same friendship group – or even half of them – to begin to identify as transgender. ROGD also spreads by social media according to Dr. Littman; some parents describe their daughters binge-watching YouTube transition videos.” Source.
What’s Wrong About It: The study did not speak to or collect any data from trans youth for this paper on trans youth. The author surveyed 256 parents recruited from websites advocating against the acceptance of trans youth. The children described were 82% assigned female at birth and some were as old as 27. The author appears to conflate the gender dysphoria being new to the parent as being new to the child, calling it rapid onset gender dysphoria.
Following criticism, PLOS One, the journal that published the paper, released a statement stating that it would “seek further expert assessment on the study’s methodology and analyses. We will provide a further update once we have completed our assessment and discussions.”
Brown University, where the study’s author is based, released its own statement saying “After the research paper was published in the Journal PLOS ONE, concerns were raised about the paper’s research design and methodology by leading academics in the field… Given the concerns about research design and methods — not the controversial nature of the subject — the University decided to stop featuring this news story on its news site.”
People
Kenneth Zucker, Susan Bradley and Ray Blanchard
Who Are They: Kenneth Zucker was the former head of the Gender Identity Clinic at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. This was formerly known as the Clarke Institute. Susan Bradley and Ray Blanchard both worked with the clinic.
What’s The Deal: The clinic performed conversion therapy for trans youth. In June of 2015 Ontario passed a law to end conversion therapy in the province. The clinic was shut down months later.
How Opponents Invoke Them: “Let’s say it were possible to take a 10-year-old kid and make them either a well-adjusted lesbian or turn them into a female-to-male transsexual,” Blanchard told Rogan. “I don’t see anything wrong with saying it’s better to make this kid into a lesbian, because being a lesbian doesn’t require breast amputation, the construction of a not-very-convincing false penis, and a lifetime of testosterone shots.” Source.
“We urge them to say, ‘Let’s figure out what other things you can do besides play with that doll,’” Zucker says. “In some situations, we have to work hard with parents’ own issues about gender. Could be a mother who’s had difficulty with the men in her life and has a lot of mixed feelings toward men. That gets translated to the boy, and her fear that he’ll grow up to be like those men causes him to reject being a boy.” Source.
“The trans movement is crossing ethical lines with a particularly vulnerable subset of young people struggling with issues of gender identity,” writes Susan Bradley. “A recent article by Elise Ehrhard in Crisis Magazine, a Catholic periodical, addresses the aggressive approach by adult trans activists in recruiting adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome or other types of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to their cause.” Source.
Paul McHugh
Who Is He: Paul McHugh is the former chief of psychiatry of the John Hopkins Hospital. He shut down the gender identity clinic that performed surgeries in 1979, thirteen years after its first such surgery, and four years after he had become the chief of psychiatry. He retired in 2001. In 2017, John Hopkins Hospital resumed performing gender affirming surgeries.
What’s The Deal: McHugh’s former status at John Hopkins has been used to legitimize his view against affirming medical care for trans individuals in leading newspapers. While he has opined on trans individuals, has never interviewed or collected data from them.
In 2016, The New Atlantis published McHugh’s article “Sexuality and Gender“. The current faculty at John Hopkins disavowed McHugh’s article citing that it “was not published in the scientific literature, where it would have been subject to rigorous peer review prior to publication” and that it “mischaracterizes the current state of the science on sexuality and gender.” While The New Atlantis purports to be a scientific journal, it is not peer reviewed, was founded by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, and publishes articles like “The Population Control Holocaust” in apparent reference to birth control and abortion.
How Opponents Invoke Him: “HRC and other pro-LGBTQ organizations are trying to discredit McHugh because he is the most respected medical and psychiatric authority debunking transsexual “gender change” ideology, which includes recommending “sex reassignment” surgical reconstructions — even minors —of healthy sexual organs to imitate body characteristics of the opposite sex.” Source.
Jordan Peterson
Who Is He: Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He acquired fame after he published YouTube videos advocating against a bill to add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act.
What’s The Deal: Previous to Jordan Peterson, arguments against trans rights centered around the bathroom predator myth. As the sexual predator argument was losing steam in the face of increasing acceptance for trans people, Peterson popularized a new argument: that human rights legislation would require people to use the right pronouns for non-binary individuals. He wrote of pronouns, “These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.” Peterson has never researched trans people.
How Opponents Invoke Him: “In the later years of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, the government made it compulsory for people to use the “Heil Hitler” salute in all public greetings. They risked prosecution, arrest and even death for refusing to do so… Prof. Peterson is facing intense criticism from students, professors and administrators for saying he will not use genderless pronouns (such as “they”) to refer to transgender students, if asked. … Forcing members of private organizations to call transgender people by the personal pronouns of their choosing is a form of conscripted speech.” Source.
Organizations
American College of Pediatricians
Who They Are: The American College of Pediatricians is a conservative advocacy group with an estimated 500 members. It is meant to be equated to the American Academy of Pediatrics which has an estimated 64,000 members.
How Opponents Invoke Them: “Dr. Michelle Cretella is Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians who focused on children’s behavioral health as a general pediatrician. I asked her about the Brown University study, and the increase in children identifying as transgender… “Yes. Regarding transgender identification, social contagion is unleashed on teens via the internet, mainstream and social media, messaging in schools, peer pressure, and sadly, from the medical elites who propagandize gender ideology as science.””
Meanwhile: The evidence-based American Academy of Pediatrics has advocated to support trans youth stating “The American Academy of Pediatrics stands in support of transgender children and adults, and condemns attempts to stigmatize or marginalize them… The AAP supports policies that are gender-affirming for children – an approach that is supported by other key professional organizations.”