{"id":1916653,"date":"2023-04-19T11:10:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T15:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/studies-on-transgenderism-in-kids-show-pressure-social-contagion-the-main-cause\/"},"modified":"2023-04-19T11:17:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T15:17:15","slug":"studies-on-transgenderism-in-kids-show-pressure-social-contagion-the-main-cause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/studies-on-transgenderism-in-kids-show-pressure-social-contagion-the-main-cause\/","title":{"rendered":"Studies On Transgenderism In Kids Show Pressure, Social Contagion The Main Cause"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fstudies-on-transgenderism-in-kids-show-pressure-social-contagion-the-main-cause%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1916653&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Indiana and Idaho recently became the latest states to sign laws banning transgender surgeries and treatments for minors. They join 10 other red states to pass such bills this year alone, while at least a dozen more are considering them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The issue has sparked fierce debate throughout the medical community, with some hospital directors and medical associations demanding more surgical options for children who believe they\u2019re transgender. Many parents and lawmakers, meanwhile, argue that kids are getting caught up in a dangerous, life-altering fad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But talk to medical professionals privately, and they\u2019ll tell you that research on the impact of transgender surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers on children is extremely limited. That appears to be how trans activists want it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Shutting Down Debate<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the first major studies on the issue created a storm of controversy when it was released five years ago. Dr. Lisa Littman of the Brown University School of Public Health <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0202330\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">published<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a peer-reviewed paper in the journal, \u201cPublic Library of Science\u201d (PLOS), that found adolescents who believe they\u2019re transgender are often influenced by their peer group and social media \u2014 what she termed \u201csocial contagion.\u201d The phenomenon was so different from anything documented in previous scientific literature on transgenderism \u2014 in that it came on suddenly in the tween and teen years and was happening to primarily to girls \u2014 that Littman, who holds both an MD and PhD, coined a new term for the condition: \u201crapid onset gender dysphoria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">At first, Brown was happy to celebrate Littman\u2019s groundbreaking study, highlighting it in on the university\u2019s news site. But when the LGBTQ activists began targeting Littman and the school on social media, they took it down and issued a statement apologizing to the \u201ctrans community.\u201d<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PLOS, meanwhile, took the unusual step of announcing it would be putting the study through a second round of \u201cexpert assessment.\u201d As a veteran public health researcher, their reactions took Littman completely by surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI\u2019d heard some inklings online before publication and I thought maybe there\u2019d be, you know, some people who were not pleased, but that\u2019s nothing new in public health,\u201d she <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kzDrJT_X2M8&#038;t=655s&#038;pp=ygUdbGlzYSBsaXR0bWFuIG9mZmVuc2l2ZSB0cmFubnk%3D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">told<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> YouTube personality Marcus Dib. \u201cSo at Brown it was interesting that the first emails I received were, \u2018Congratulations for shedding light on a very complicated topic.\u2019\u2026 There were people who were very upset by the research and were making claims that it was transphobic and they were tagging the university and the journal. \u2026Then it became fraught.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In order to continue her research, Littman left Brown and formed her own gender dysphoria research institute. But the damage to free inquiry on the subject of youth trans treatments was done. Grove City College sociologist David Ayers told me Littman\u2019s name became a cautionary throughout academia even as other experts verified her findings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A psychologist in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Psychology Today<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> basically verified everything that she said,\u201d Ayers said. \u201cSo what we\u2019re seeing is this pattern that is very real. But [the psychologist] hadn\u2019t gotten the memo yet and didn\u2019t realize that the marching orders were, \u2018You have to trash this concept, even though everybody\u2019s literally seeing it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even today, to mention findings like Littman\u2019s is to face speech suppression. At a March 27<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> school board meeting outside of Milwaukee, district resident Steve Broadwell <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fudy0K3YXPU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">offered<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> measured criticism of the LGBTQ curriculum on the basis of expert findings on social contagion and was shut down for spreading \u201chate speech.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thus, few researchers have been willing to take on the subject until Michael Bailey, psychologist at Northwestern, published a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10508-023-02576-9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">study<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> last month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that confirmed Littman\u2019s findings.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Consistent Findings<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Working from the largest sample ever assembled on the issue Bailey surveyed more than 1,600 reports from parents of youth between 11 and 21 who felt their child was experiencing rapid onset gender dysphoria. Though it relied on the accounts of parents who were concerned that their child\u2019s claims to be transgender might not be authentic, the majority described their politics as Left of center and were therefore more likely to be in sympathy with the LGBTQ movement as a general principle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just like Littman, Bailey found that in most of his cases the children did not exhibit signs of feeling like the opposite gender from a young age and their dysphoria came on suddenly as they entered adolescence.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is really inconsistent with what we knew about gender dysphoria until about 10 years ago when these cases became common,\u201d Bailey told me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another key finding that confirmed Littman \u2014 42% of the youth in Bailey\u2019s study were diagnosed with other mental health issues before they began to feel they were transgender. More than 72% had experienced some stressful event that precipitated the belief, including relationship problems, abuse, or the suicide of someone in their circle of family or friends.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThe most common [diagnoses of the children] were depression and anxiety,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cAnd on average parents said that the emotional problems preceded any complaints about gender by almost four years. That\u2019s a long time. So it appears that these youth had longstanding issues. And then, for whatever reasons that we\u2019re trying to understand, came to the conclusion that they were transgender.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bailey\u2019s conclusions dovetail with anecdotal observations from journalists like Brandon Showalter who has covered the issue deeply for The Christian Post and recently contributed to the documentary \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8_SLKQXvT8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dead Name<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">,\u201d which explores the impact a child\u2019s transitioning has on his or her family.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cDetransitioners are now starting to raise their voices and speak about how they were irreversibly harmed,\u201d Showalter told me. \u201cThey will tell you, \u2018I was actually struggling with a lot of other things, none of which were examined by mental health professionals who I thought were going to help me. Instead, I was just affirmed right away and told that I needed to explore undergoing this kind of experimental medicalization like blockers, hormones, or surgery.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Showalter said the medical establishment is \u201cfailing a lot of vulnerable people who are in very real pain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Detransitioners like Chloe Cole say that is exactly what happened to her. Doctors began transitioning her at 12 years old, administering puberty blockers and testosterone. She was then given a double mastectomy at age 15. At 17 she realized she had made a mistake. \u201cI was quite lonely throughout high school, I did end up developing depression. And this was, this is a big thing driving that definitely,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/podcasts\/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast\/transition-of-minors-is-malpractice-chloe-cole\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">she recently told Dr. Jordan Peterson<\/a>, clinical psychologist and host of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast on DailyWire+.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For his study, Bailey went looking for explanations for why adolescents have increasingly looked to transitioning as the solution to their struggles. Once again, his findings confirmed Littman\u2019s hypothesis that children are responding to social influences around them, including peer groups and also social media. That could explain why 75% of the parents in Bailey\u2019s study were seeking advice about their daughters, as girls are historically much more susceptible to peer pressures. And, in fact, 60% of the parents reported that their daughter had a friend who \u201ccame out\u201d as transgender about the same time they did.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThose of us who can remember the 1990s may also remember the epidemic of recovered memories of sexual abuse \u2013 these were typically young women, not adolescents, but young adult women,\u201d said Bailey. \u201cIn therapy they came to believe that their fathers had sexually abused them despite having no memory of that coming into therapy. Most people now believe these memories were entirely false, but depended on suggestion and social contagion. There was also a related epidemic of multiple personality disorder.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The one other major factor the parents cited in their child\u2019s desire to transition was the medical establishment itself. Three hundred and ninety parents had visited a gender clinic or specialist and of those, 52% said they felt pressured to treat their child with hormones, blockers, and surgeries. The rest were an even split between saying they weren\u2019t pressured or weren\u2019t sure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cContact with the gender specialist was an especially strong predictor of child transition,\u201d said Bailey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most alarming about this reality is that another <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10508-023-02588-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">study<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> out of England, published in April in \u201cThe Archives of Sexual Behavior\u201d found that the recommendations healthcare professionals are giving parents to transition their children are not improving their well-being.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt showed conclusively using professional diagnosis that socially transitioned kids weren\u2019t doing any better,\u201d Ayers said. \u201cI\u2019m sure that\u2019s going to be attacked too even though that\u2019s not based on parents\u2019 perceptions, that\u2019s based on political judgments based on referrals of a gender clinic in the U.K., not exactly a bastion of conservatism. Yet parents are still being told they\u2019re not allowed to exercise judgment. They have to basically go along with whatever their child wants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Answering the Critics<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some critics are already arguing that Bailey\u2019s study should be dismissed because a survey of parents who had concerns about their child\u2019s dysphoria represents a biased sample.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Bailey pointed out that studies cited by trans activist groups like The Trevor Project did not recruit families who believe that what they\u2019ve experienced is gender dysphoria.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Indeed, the participants in a study that trans activists often cite were recruited through social media ads targeting youth who already identified as part of the LGBTQ community.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And unlike Bailey\u2019s study, it suffered from conflict of interest issues thanks to funding from the drug companies like Arbor and Pfizer, both of which produce off-label puberty blockers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The issue, Baily said, comes down to whether we believe moms and dads are in a position to assess their own child\u2019s well-being.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOur sample was biased in that these parents didn\u2019t really believe that their kids had actual gender dysphoria. So our results really do apply mainly to that subgroup,\u201d Baily conceded. \u201cThe question is are these parents so biased that they can\u2019t see what\u2019s in front of their eyes watching their children grow up. My inclination is to believe that these parents were on average accurately observing their children. And they saw things that were concerning to them, and that\u2019s very consistent with some other studies<\/span><b>.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ayers argued that it doesn\u2019t make sense to discount the judgment of the people who have the most sustained ability to observe and report on what\u2019s happening with these children \u2014 their parents.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is presently no reason to believe that reports of parents who support gender transition are more accurate than those who oppose a transition,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the parents agree with the Left, we can trust them but when the parents don\u2019t agree with the Left, even when they\u2019re clearly Left-wing themselves, apparently their views are suspect? Is a 25 year old graduate of a liberal education department at a state university, who\u2019s known your child for two months in a better position to tell you what your child needs and what\u2019s really going on than you, their mother?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I asked Bailey if he\u2019s concerned that his own research will be subject to the same cancellation campaign Littman faced. He told me serious scientists can\u2019t let the prospect of backlash daunt them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOne has to have a thick skin,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd one has to realize that there is a lot of controversy out there and try not to take premature positions. But that\u2019s my foremost identity and goal is to be a scholar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indiana and Idaho recently became the latest states to sign laws banning transgender surgeries and treatments for minors. They join 10 other red states to pass such bills this year alone, while at least a dozen more are considering them. The issue has sparked fierce debate throughout the medical community, with some hospital directors and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":1916654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[10470,4247,15038,4150,5127,4039,12837],"class_list":["post-1916653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-contagion","tag-kids","tag-main","tag-pressure","tag-social","tag-studies","tag-transgenderism"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1916653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1916654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1916653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1916653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1916653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}