Research
Studies in Contradiction to Popular Arguments & Trends
Research cited by transgender activists in support of their ideology has proven to be flawed, inaccurate, or downright deceptive. GLSEN's research list for the Model School District Policy on Transgender Students cites only three references: two were undertaken by GLSEN itself and one is a collection of anecdotes. Their 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report was conducted entirely on adults, and the summary of the report states that “respondents in this study were not randomly sampled… Therefore, it is not appropriate to generalize the findings in this study to all transgender people” and caveats that “the current experiences and needs of transgender youth often differ from those of adults in a number of key areas… and many of these experiences or needs could not be adequately captured.” Yet GLSEN cites this survey in support of its K-12 school policy model.
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When one digs into the research and researchers cited by transgender activists, such as the 27 doctors behind the task force that wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics statement that supports gender affirmation, one inevitably finds that the writers have financial incentive to drive children to gender clinics for transition. In the AAP statement, for example, the committee chair and the head consultant both work for gender clinics.
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Please find below reputable, peer-reviewed, expert research and testimony on gender theory. We're not at all nervous about you investigating the authors or references. Please do.
What's Wrong With the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?
(Public Discourse)
The Medical Harms of Hormonal and Surgical Interventions for Gender Dysphoric Children (The Heritage Foundation)
When it comes to treating young people who believe they are the opposite sex, who either suffer from gender dysphoria or self-identify as transgender, physicians have been instructed by their professional associations to provide "affirmative care." Transition-affirming therapies are virtually untested and inflict lasting harms: decreased sexual function, increased health risks, and sterility, just to name a few. Instead of providing parents with medical information and evidence-based studies, parents are told that these risky treatments will prevent their child from committing suicide, blurring the line between “informed consent” and “coercion.”
Dr. Michelle Cretella on Transgenderism: A Mental Illness is Not a Civil Right (TFP Student Action)
The Terrible Fraud of 'Transgender Medicine' (Teens 4 Truth Conference)
At the Teens4Truth Conference, Ft. Worth, TX, Nov. 18, 2017. A physician who was in the Johns Hopkins Univ. Hospital group where "transgender medicine" was developed describes the lies, bad medicine, and fraud behind that movement. Quentin Van Meter, MD, FCP is a pediatric endocrinologist. He is a Fellow of the American College of Pediatricians and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
If you only read one thing:
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Paul W. Hruz, Lawrence S. Mayer, and Paul R. McHugh, "Growing Pains: Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria," The New Atlantis, Number 52, Spring 2017, pp. 3-36.
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More research is needed to resolve these unanswered questions. At the same time, research into how and why gender dysphoria occurs, persists, and desists must also continue, as it could elucidate new ways to help people cope with gender dysphoria with less permanent and drastic treatments than sex reassignment. In light of the many uncertainties and unknowns, it would be appropriate to describe the use of puberty-blocking treatments for gender dysphoria as experimental.
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GENDER IDENTITY DYSOPHORIA (GID) & RAPID-ONSET GENDER DYSPHORIA (ROGD)
Littman, Lisa (2018). Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330
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Conclusion: Rapid-onset gender dysphor​ia (ROGD) describes a phenomenon where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood. ROGD appears to represent an entity that is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate AYAs from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope.
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American College of Pediatricians Statement on Gender Dysphoria in Children (November, 2018). https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children
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The treatment of GD in childhood with hormones effectively amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable of providing informed consent. There is a serious ethical problem with allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young to give valid consent themselves; adolescents cannot understand the magnitude of such decisions.
Ethics alone demands an end to the use of pubertal suppression with GnRH agonists, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents. The American College of Pediatricians recommends an immediate cessation of these interventions, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies. Healthcare, school curricula and legislation must remain anchored to physical reality. Scientific research should focus upon better understanding the psychological underpinnings of this disorder, optimal family and individual therapies, as well as delineating the differences among children who resolve with watchful waiting versus those who resolve with therapy and those who persist despite therapy.
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Cretella, Michelle A., MD, Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Summer 2016; v. 21 no. 2, http://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/cretella.pdf
Gender dysphoria (GD) in children is a term used to describe a psychological condition in which a child experiences marked incongruence between his experienced gender and the gender associated with his biological sex. There is no rigorous scientific evidence that GD is an innate trait. Moreover, 80 percent to 95 percent of children with GD accept the reality of their biological sex and achieve emotional health by late adolescence. The treatment of GD in childhood with hormones effectively amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable of providing informed consent. There is a serious ethical problem with allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young to give valid consent themselves.
Drescher, Ethical issues raised by the treatment of gender-variant prepubescent children, Hastings Cent Rep. 2014 Sep;44 Suppl 4:S17-22. doi: 10.1002/hast.365, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25231780
“gender dysphoria in childhood does not inevitably continue into adulthood, and only 6 to 23 percent of boys and 12 to 27 percent of girls treated in gender clinics showed persistence of their gender dysphoria into adulthood.”
Jeffries, The Transgendering of Children: Gender Eugenics, Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (2012) 384–393, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539512000982
This article argues that the emerging practice of transgendering children should be seen as a form of gender eugenics which has similarities with the practice of sexual surgeries carried out as a result of eugenics ideas in the early twentieth century. In the earlier period those suffering severe poverty, homosexuals, criminals, people with mental health problems and disabilities, and gypsies were sterilized. Presently, in Australia, children as young as 10 who are identified as suffering from ‘gender identity disorder’ are, with the connivance of the Family Court, placed on puberty delaying drugs. These drugs, if they are followed at age 16 with cross-sex hormones, sterilize the children. The similarities between earlier eugenics practices and the transgenderism of the present include the origin of the practices in the ideas of sex scientists, psychiatrists, biologists and endocrinologists, one of the target groups, lesbians and gays, support by ‘progressive’ sections of society, including some on the Left and some feminists.
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Steensma, Thomas & Biemond, Roeline & de Boer, Fijgje & Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy. (2011). Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study. Clinical child psychology and psychiatry. 16. 499-516. 10.1177/1359104510378303. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49738851_Desisting_and_persisting_gender_dysphoria_after_childhood_A_qualitative_follow-up_study
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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. This attitude may guide them through uncertain years without the risk of creating the difficulties that would occur if a transitioned child wants to revert to living in his/her original gender role.
GENDER IDENTITY & SPECIAL EDUCATION/COMORBID DIAGNOSES
Campo, Psychiatric Comorbidity of Gender Identity Disorders: A Survey Among Dutch Psychiatrists, American Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 160, Issue 7, July 2003, pp. 1332-1336, http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.7.1332
These data suggest that there is little consensus, at least among Dutch psychiatrists, about diagnostic features of gender identity disorder or about the minimum age at which sex reassignment therapy is a safe option. Therapy options proposed to patients with gender identity disorder appear to depend on personal preferences of psychiatrists. These results underline the need for more specific diagnostic rules in this area.
De Vries, Autism Spectrum Disorders in Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents, J Autism Dev Disord. 2010 Aug; 40(8): 930 -936, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2904453/
Increased rate of autism in children referred to gender clinics. In most gender dysphoric children, gender dysphoria will cease when they reach puberty, whereas adolescents with a GID will likely pursue their wish for sex reassignment into adulthood (Cohen-Kettenis and Pfäfflin 2003; Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis 2008; Zucker and Bradley 1995). Likewise, in children under age 12 with co-occurring ASD the gender dysphoria alleviated and in adolescents between age 12 and 18 their GID persisted.
Fuss, Gender dysphoria in children and adolescents: a review of recent research, Current Opinion in Psychiatry: November 2015 – Volume 28 – Issue 6 – p 430–434 doi: 10.1097/YCO.0000000000000203, http://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/Abstract/2015/11000/Gender_dysphoria_in_children_and_adolescents___a.6.aspx
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder hold more rigid views of gender.
Gerrit, Gender Identity and Autism Spectrum Disorders, Yale J Biol Med. 2015 Mar; 88(1): 81–83, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345542/
A summary of literature treating gender identity in patients on ASD spectrum; “critical shortcomings in our current understanding.” “In a study of pre-pubertal male and female children with gender dysphoria followed-up approximately 10 years later, only 27 percent of children with gender dysphoria remained gender dysphoric at follow-up. Of those individuals who no longer expressed gender dysphoria at follow-up, a significant portion (all female and half the male participants) expressed a non-heterosexual sexual orientation. Thus, gender concerns in neurotypical children prior to puberty may represent a developmental process related to both gender and sexuality for many individuals."
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Glidden, Gender Dysphoria and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of the Literature, Sexual Medicine Reviews, http://www.smr.jsexmed.org/article/S2050-0521(15)00004-9/pdf
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Very little knowledge exists about treating gender dysphoric people who are also on the autism spectrum.
Jones, Brief Report: Female-To-Male Transsexual People and Autistic Traits, J Autism Dev Disord (2012) 42:301–306, http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2011_Jones_transsexualautism_JADD.pdf
The association between GID and ASD in transwomen is complex.
SEX REASSIGNMENT
Dheine, Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden, PLoS One. 2011; 6(2): e16885, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group. (Largest sample size of any study to date.)
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Dr. Michelle Cretella, On Trangenderism; A Mental Illness Is Not a Civil Right. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwBVzsNPsnHRwSKNfnwmBBKDrJH?projector=1
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HOMOSEXUALITY
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Andrea L. Roberts, M. Maria Glymour, and Karestan C. Koenen, Does Maltreatment in Childhood Affect Sexual Orientation in Adulthood? Arch Sex Behav. 2013 Feb; 42(2): 161–171. Published online 2012 Sep 14. doi: 10.1007/s10508-012-0021-9
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Numerous studies document an association between childhood physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence in childhood and same-sex sexuality. Epidemiological studies find a positive association between childhood maltreatment and same-sex sexuality in adulthood, with lesbians and gay men reporting 1.6 to 4 times greater prevalence of sexual and physical abuse than heterosexuals. Women and men in this sample were most likely exposed to sexual abuse that was qualitatively different. Because men are the principal perpetrators of sexual abuse of both boys and girls (Holmes & Slap, 1998; Vogeltanz et al., 1999), most men in our sample were likely exposed to same-sex abuse, while most women were likely exposed to opposite-sex abuse; thus, it is difficult to generalize from our findings to sex differences in response to environmental exposures more broadly.