A New Resource for Families with Trans-Identified Children: The Gender Dysphoria Support Tool
Family and Friends Survey & Parental Survey
Genspect recently released a new resource to assist parents of trans-identified children.
In the press release Genspect explains, “We consistently receive messages from parents whose voices have been ignored during their child’s gender clinic assessments. Despite being invited to participate in the diagnostic process, their crucial insights are routinely dismissed in favor of immediate affirmation. To help families advocate for thorough, evidence-based care, we have developed two complementary tools based on DSM-5-TR criteria.”
The resource includes:
The Family and Friends Survey- This assessment gathers observations from family members and others who have known your child well over time. When multiple observers share similar perspectives, their collective insight becomes harder to dismiss.
The Parental Survey- This detailed questionnaire helps identify underlying factors that warrant investigation before any irreversible interventions are considered.
Hermes Postma, a Dutch filmmaker, is the author of the surveys. In an interview with Genspect he recounts what prompted him to develop them. Postma recalls reading a few articles about “gender” and seeing some early documentaries in Holland. He was also familiar with the scandal surrounding the Tavistock clinic. But it became personal for him when his own son announced that he was transgender.
“I was completely shocked. It made no sense at all. Trans? He looks like a goth or a rocker- he could pass for a member of Joy Division!… I kept wondering why he was saying he was transgender. It was very strange, not just for me, but for everyone around us.”
Postma continues, “It became clear to me that my son’s situation closely aligned with what Lisa Littman described as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)…. So I started thinking about how we could capture this. Our family was in crisis and I worried that when we shared our emotional story in the office, we would get brushed aside. Just like the poor parents in the books, they would bring us in for a few appointments, pretend to listen, then proceed with a medical transition.”
Postma decided to create the family survey, using the diagnostic criteria from the DSM, as a way to document a lack of early gender non-conforming behavior or signs of gender dysphoria, making a diagnosis of gender dysphoria as outlined in the DSM impossible.
Postma explains, “By using the survey, I was able to invert the process and shift the burden of proof….Without a family survey, a parent can be dismissed as conservative or biased. But when there are eight family members and a general petitioner whose observations conflict with the child’s view, it becomes much harder to do that.”
As described in the interview, once completed, the survey can be sent to individuals and organizations such as health care providers, schools, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. to put them on notice of parental concerns, and even serve as evidence for potential lawsuits.
Genspect’s press release including links to the surveys can be found here.
The interview with Hermes Postma can be found here.
Too late for my fully medicalized daughter, but I am all for anything that will prevent the tragedy that occurred in my family from happening to other families. Thank you for all you do to end this bleak era of medicalizing kids (and adults) for gender identities.
This is a good idea and a step in the right direction. But I’d like to share from my very own personal experience that even a child who fits every single one of the DSM5 criteria for gender dysphoria can simply outgrow this. I did, in my early 20’s. And there are studies that show about 90% of such kids simply outgrowing their gender dysphoria. More attention needs to be given to those studies.