ROGD (Part 1)

Nothing on the internet goes away.

The internet is forever.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a research study on 'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' and paper was pulled from a peer review website, well the debate is still heating up. The right-wing media is crying censorship, First Amendment rights, and all the other usual right-wing talking points.

Many Newspaper Reports Back Up That Blockbuster Study About Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria
Reading tens of thousands of media articles about ‘all things transgender’ has left me siding with the Brown University study’s conclusions.
The Federalist
By Jamie Shupe
September 4, 2018

The battle to protect the limited credible science behind medical transgenderism is trying to claim another high-profile victim. Lisa Littman, a Brown University researcher, recently published important research on rapid-onset gender dysphoria. It was suddenly yanked from public view on Brown’s website to appease those who say they worry her findings might “invalidate the perspectives” of transgender people.

Was Littman’s pioneering study of ROGD (Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria) really junk science, as transgender activists claim? Or was it just formal academic validation of what news articles have been displaying for years? My own four-year-long research project to analyze tens of thousands of media articles about “all things transgender” has left me siding with Littman and the study’s conclusions.

Lots of Other Reports Corroborate Littman’s Findings
Littman’s study centers on the social contagion of teens who suddenly develop gender dysphoria. These are kids who previously showed no signs of discomfort with their bodies declaring to their parents and the world that they are actually transgender.

The article goes on and on about how children learned about trans on the internet or from trans friends, but nowhere in the article do they mention anything about the fact that the children were not interviewed for the study which questions the  methodology of the study which is at the root of the problem.

Study Draws Transgender Ire: Peer Pressure and Prior Psychiatric Illness Linked to Gender Issues in Teens
Breitbart
By Dr. Susan Berry
3 Sep 2018

A new study that has drawn criticism from transgender activists finds most teens “come out” as transgender after belonging to a peer group in which multiple friends identify as trans.
Additionally, the study shows most young people announcing they are transgendered have already been identified with at least one mental health disorder.

In the study –  published at PLoS ONE –  that focused on teens who are predominantly female, Lisa Littman, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, found 87 percent of the young people were reported by their parents to have “come out” as trans after increased time spent on social media and the Internet and after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria among their groups of friends. Most of the teens who ultimately identified as transgender also showed increased popularity with peer groups afterward.
[…]
For her study, Littman recruited 256 anonymous parents of children – who suddenly became gender dysphoric in adolescence – to participate in an online, 90-question survey.

The author goes on to talk about how the subjects were recruited…

Littman posted links to her survey on websites for parents who had reported the rapid onset of gender dysphoria – such as 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend and youthtranscriticalprofessionals.

4thWaveNow, a group of “parent-skeptics who question medicalizing gender-atypical youth,” celebrated the study:

Squashing research risks injuring the health of an unknown of troubled adolescent girls…

These media reports do not question the medically validity of 'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' which is not listed as a medical disease or a psychiatric disorders in the ICD-10 or the DSM V. ROGD is a made up disorder by conservatives.

Second, none of the articles question the methodology of the study.

The reason the paper was pulled not because of the subject of the research but rather the quality of the research which I will talk about this afternoon.