Being Trans Is Not a Craze Among Youth, Study Finds
No, being transgender is not a craze, a trend, or a contagion — right-wing rhetoric notwithstanding, say the authors of a new study on the subject.In the past few years, a variety of sources have contended that somehow, external factors are leading young people to come out as trans.
They have ranged from scientists to journalists to supposed comedians like Bill Maher. And this argument has been picked up by anti-LGBTQ+ politicians.But two scientists who authored study published this month in Pediatrics say they have evidence that social pressure is not producing a phenomenon that a 2018 article characterized as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” or ROGD.“There’s been a lot of discussion, not so much within pediatric gender medicine or among researchers, but more so among political pundits and in the political arena of this notion that many adolescents are coming to identify as transgender due to social contagion,” says the study’s lead author, Dr.
Jack Turban. “There hasn’t been much convincing evidence put forward to suggest that this is true, but the one piece of tangential evidence people have pointed to is the so-called sex ratio.”That’s the ratio of youth who were assigned female at birth coming out as trans versus those who were assigned male at birth, Turban explains.
