When someone says to me that “God doesn’t make mistakes” I reply that they are right that God made me trans to test you to see how you treat people who are different… did you pass?
One of the reasons I am an activist is because I believe I was put on this earth for a reason and that is to teach acceptance of those who are difference, whether it is because of a disability, their race or religion, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, or if they are tall or short, or because of their weight, or whatever sets us apart.
Did you pass the test?
Update 1:45 PM
Well it didn’t long for the anti-trans people to start to attack the withdrawn of the paper since I wrote this at morning.
Here is the anti-trans reply.
‘He made me transgender on purpose’: Breast-removal surgery could boot Mormon student from Brigham YoungThe church, to put it mildly, is not a friend of LGBT people. The church was one of the major funders of the battle to overture marriage equality, so as you may expect Irvin had a battle on their hands.
Washington Post
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
August 24, 2018
Starting at age 11, they prayed for breast cancer. So distressing were the markers of their femininity that Kris Irvin — who identifies as a man and uses the pronouns they, them and their — would have welcomed abnormal cell growth in their “crappy and dysfunctional body.”
Irvin knew of no other remedy for the physical and emotional agony that seemed to intertwine in their breasts, as they knew of no word to describe what they were experiencing.
Since they were 3 years old, Irvin said, they were certain that they were male. “But I didn’t know the word ‘transgender’ until I was 28,” said Irvin, who is now 31 and a student at Brigham Young University, a school bound so tightly to the Mormon faith that enrollment rests on evaluation by religious leaders. That requirement could place Irvin’s education in jeopardy.
[…]
With that, Irvin also envisions public strife that could test foundational church rules about gender. Irvin, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, studies English at Brigham Young, which enrolls 30,000 undergraduates in Provo, Utah, and they hope to be an editor for a publishing company specializing in young-adult novels. They live with their husband and 10-year-old son about 30 minutes away in Bluffdale, Utah.
Irvin sent him an email the next day, laying out their reasoning for seeking the procedure and saying that they felt they were being forced to choose between their well-being and their faith. They also pointed out what they observe to be a double standard: that surgery performed to reduce physical pain or conform to a cosmetic ideal would be permitted, but surgery aimed to cure gender dysphoria would not.My thoughts exactly.
[…]
“It says that God knitted us together in the womb,” they wrote. “If God does not make mistakes, and we are created in His image, then it stands to reason that He made me transgender on purpose and for a reason.”
One of the reasons I am an activist is because I believe I was put on this earth for a reason and that is to teach acceptance of those who are difference, whether it is because of a disability, their race or religion, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, or if they are tall or short, or because of their weight, or whatever sets us apart.
Did you pass the test?
Update 1:45 PM
Well it didn’t long for the anti-trans people to start to attack the withdrawn of the paper since I wrote this at morning.
Here is the anti-trans reply.
Response to Julia Serano’s critique of Lisa Littman’s paper: Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Study of Parental ReportsgdWorkingGroup
Roberto D'Angelo
August 27, 2018
Lisa Littman is a physician and researcher in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health. Her groundbreaking publication examining the proposed phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria has been aggressively criticised by trans activists. Activists argue that Littman’s paper and the actual notion of ROGD, are transphobic. We find this response perplexing. Littman is attempting to examine the possibility that some young people who come to believe they are trans may be doing so for complicated reasons, and that transitioning may not always be an appropriate treatment in these cases. This does not in any way imply that trans identity is not legitimate. The paper focuses on a particular subgroup of people identifying as trans and is not a reflection of trans experience in general and therefore cannot be generalized to apply to all trans people.
We believe that Littman’s paper is fundamentally supportive of the trans community. If Littman has correctly identified a subgroup of people identifying as trans, this will contribute to ensuring that those individuals who will actually benefit from transitioning receive the appropriate support. It will also help identify a group of individuals who have serious mental health needs that would be bypassed or missed if their trans claims were not understood in the complex light that Littman is exploring. The trans community lobbies powerfully for the human rights of those who are gender diverse. Littman’s paper is entirely consistent with these aims in that it raises questions about how the human rights, including the right to appropriate mental health care, of a subgroup of trans youth can be met.
So here is what Julia Serano wrote…
Everything You Need to Know About Rapid Onset Gender DysphoriaRoberto reply was…
Medium
August 22, 2018
Who invented the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria?Zinnia Jones from Gender Analysis has written two excellent articles chronicling the origins of the phrase “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Basically, it originated in July 2016 on three blogs (4thwavenow.com, Transgendertrend.com, and YouthTransCriticalProfessionals.org) that have a history of promoting anti-transgender propaganda. The term was intended to explain some parents’ observations that 1) their children came out as transgender seemingly suddenly, often during puberty, and 2) their children also had trans-identified peers and interacted with trans-themed social media. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for reluctant parents to presume that their child has adopted a trans (or LGBTQ+ more generally) identity as a result of undue influence from other children and/or outside sources — hence the recurring accusations about transgender agendas, peer pressure, and trans identities supposedly being “trendy.” ROGD takes this presumption one step further: It asserts that any gender dysphoria these adolescents experience represents an entirely new phenomenon that is wholly distinct from the gender dysphoria that transgender people have historically experienced (e.g., as described in the DSM-5, the WPATH Standards of Care, and many decades of past research).
Who invented the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria?Zinnia Jones from Gender Analysis has written two excellent articles chronicling the origins of the phrase “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Basically, it originated in July 2016 on three blogs (4thwavenow.com, Transgendertrend.com, and YouthTransCriticalProfessionals.org) that have a history of promoting anti-transgender propaganda. The term was intended to explain some parents’ observations that 1) their children came out as transgender seemingly suddenly, often during puberty, and 2) their children also had trans-identified peers and interacted with trans-themed social media. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for reluctant parents to presume that their child has adopted a trans (or LGBTQ+ more generally) identity as a result of undue influence from other children and/or outside sources — hence the recurring accusations about transgender agendas, peer pressure, and trans identities supposedly being “trendy.” ROGD takes this presumption one step further: It asserts that any gender dysphoria these adolescents experience represents an entirely new phenomenon that is wholly distinct from the gender dysphoria that transgender people have historically experienced (e.g., as described in the DSM-5, the WPATH Standards of Care, and many decades of past research).
Parents were sourced from sites which are allegedly anti-trans and which invented and promote the idea of ROGD
These websites (4thwavenow.com, transgendertrend.com, youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org) and the parents who frequent them did not invent the term ROGD. It was proposed by Littman herself. The first appearance of the term rapid-onset gender dysphoria was in the recruitment information for Littman’s study that was posted on these websites in the summer of 2016. The term seemed to resonate with the parents and it has become more widely used since that time.
Serano argues that this was a methodological flaw, as it involved asking these parents questions that already assume the legitimacy of ROGD as a phenomenon, in effect allowing Littman to obtain the answers she wanted to find. It is, in fact, standard practice to contact groups, services or websites which might provide access to the subjects you believe will be relevant to your study. Many of the frequently quoted studies of trans populations utilized trans-affirmative support groups and websites to find study subjects, and so Serano’s argument would imply that these studies suffer from the same flaw or bias.
Further, Littman undertook an observational, qualitative study to examine what parents on these sites were reporting as ROGD. The abstract of Littman’s study states “The purpose of this study was to document and explore these observations and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria, which is inconsistent with existing research literature.” The intention was to document this phenomenon as reported by parents and this is exactly what her paper reports. The sampling method she used is a legitimate methodology that is consistent with the purpose of the study. She concludes that ROGD appears to represent a distinct entity and that more research is needed. It would be unreasonable to conclude that the study provides irrefutable proof that ROGD is a distinct entity, and Littman does not make this claim anywhere in the report.
No, ROGD has been around a long time and it was picked up by the right-wing mainstream media a couple of years and they gave it the fancy name.
To my brother when I came out to him he thought it came out of the blue and he asked how long did I feel this way and I told since I was 7 or 8. It was not Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria but rather “Rapid Onset of Coming Out”
Serano wrote…
But what about the shifting demographics, YouTube videos, and “cluster outbreaks”?[…]
I have already alluded to two of these: ROGD proponents frequently harp on the fact that “ROGD kids” tend to have other trans-identified peers, and spend lots of time immersed in transgender-themed social media. The clear implication is that said peers and social media are somehow causing or contributing to the gender dysphoria and trans-identification they experience. But here’s the thing: I’d bet that children who have regular old gender dysphoria also tend to have transgender friends and spend lots of time on trans-themed social media. Hell, I’m an adult, and if I had to make a guesstimate, I’d probably say that somewhere in the ballpark of 25% of my close friends are trans-identified. (That figure probably goes up to 60–70% if you broaden it to LGBTQ+-identified.) When I was first coming to terms with being trans, there was no social media, but I eagerly read everything and anything that I could find on the subject. And when I transitioned in the early 2000s, I spent tons of time on trans-focused email groups (the social-media-equivalent of the time).
I can understand how straight cisgender people might jump to the conclusion that A (trans friends and social media) causes B (gender dysphoria and trans-identification). But from a trans/LGBTQ+ perspective, it seems clear that these people are ignoring the crucial element C — the fact that trans/LGBTQ+ people are highly stigmatized, face harassment, and our perspectives are largely discounted and not readily accessible in society at large. This (aka, C) is what leads trans/LGBTQ+ folks to seek one another out (regardless of age) for mutual support, shared understanding, and the exchange of relevant information and ideas.
To which Roberto replied,
Correlation does not imply causationI have to answer yes to “is a possible,” however, she didn’t study that; she studied the parents so how can you say it is a possible cause of gender dysphoria in children. I could possible say that it is something in the water that cause the cluster of children with gender dysphoria.
Littman found a high proportion of the young people in her study had a number of friends in their friendship group who were trans-identified and that the majority had experienced an increase in their usage of the internet and social media prior to announcing that they were trans. Serano argues that the correlation between these factors and the self-identification of young people identifying as trans does not mean that it caused their trans identification. This is correct. Correlations such as these, however, warrant further investigation to determine whether there is, in fact, a causative link. This is in fact how the aetiologies of many conditions have been discovered, leading to the development of effective prevention strategies or treatments.
Littman’s findings in this area raise the possibility of social contagion in relation to ROGD, a notion which Serano argues strongly against. Whilst Serano’s arguments are plausible, it is also plausible that social contagion is a factor in some cases of trans, particularly as it has been associated with numerous other social phenomena. They include mental health issues such as suicide and deliberate self-harm and it also appears that more complex behaviors such as obesity, bulimia, and other eating disorders can spread by social contagion. Whilst Littman’s data does not prove that social contagion is operative (and she makes no claims of this kind), her qualitative research design did elicit information that is highly suggestive, particularly that the young people were using language that was scripted or wooden and that parents believed had been copied verbatim from online sources.
The operation of social contagion in relation to adolescent gender dysphoria is a possible explanation for the dramatic change in the demographics of young people presenting to gender clinics. Serano claims there are no reliable statistics confirming that there has been an increase in the numbers of natal female adolescents seeking treatment. This is incorrect. This has been reported by the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria at the VU Hospital in Amsterdam and similar data is also available from Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service.
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