Happy ROGD Awareness Day 2024

(said no one ever)

This post was first published in PITT on August 16, 2023. We are pulling it out and dusting it off to again offer readers the opportunity to share the story of how they were informed their child was “born in the wrong body” and/or first heard of ROGD. Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

In addition to that, we want to pause and, well, “enjoy” isn’t the right word, so perhaps “appreciate” all the progress that’s been made in calling attention to this medical scandal just since last year. Some highlights:

• First and forecast, the Cass Review. This has had a dramatic impact on gender affirming care in Europe and our time is coming in the U.S.

• The fun J.K. Rowling is having. Her tweet on July 17 is a perfect example: “If calling me 'transphobe' and 'fascist' was going to scare me out of speaking up for women's rights, it would have happened years ago. Whatever the square root of not giving a fuck is, that's where I am.” History should remember her as a hero for women’s rights, up there with Susan B. Anthony.

• The Supreme Court case. In June 2024, the Supreme Court agreed to address the issue of gender affirming care. They will hear a case that challenges a Tennessee law preventing minors from receiving puberty blockers, hormones, or surgeries if it's intended to help them "identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex". And the ACLU is losing their collective minds.

• The NY Times published this in July, 2024 “Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?” Sure, they published a guest essay from Jack Turban too, but he came across as an idiot.

• Law suits are starting, against Planned Parenthood no less.

• The Olympic controversy - A person with XY chromosomes and DSD (differences in sexual development) but, nevertheless, a man, was allowed to pummel women in Olympic boxing because his passport declared him female. And people around the world were horrified and seem to be waking up to how long and how often this has been occurring.

• A whistleblower at Texas Children's Hospital exposed the illegality of gender affirming care.

• A Consensus No Longer - The American Society of Plastic Surgeons becomes the first major medical association to challenge the consensus of medical groups over “gender-affirming care” for minors.

We hope that by the time ROGD Awareness Day 2025 rolls around we will be writing that the U.S. has joined much of the rest of world in banning “gender affirming care”, that health care providers are providing services for detransitioners, that the number of children/young adults identifying as trans has taken a dramatic downturn and that no one is ever again told that that they were born in the wrong body and that the “fix” is lifelong medication, surgery and sterilization.

From 2023:

I’m too young for this but in my parent’s generation everyone could tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot. The closest approximation for my age might be recalling where I was when I learned of the Challenger explosion or, of course, September 11th.

In the PITT community we can all remember exactly where we were when we were informed that our child was “born in the wrong body”.

Today, on ROGD Awareness Day, I invite you to share your story. I’ll go first. Feel free to share yours. That is what PITT is for.

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When I was informed she was trans…. Hold please while I find the email. Aha, here we go:

“Mom, I can’t come home [from university] for nana’s birthday next week but I have some news to share. I am transitioning and will be starting testosterone to lower my voice and make myself look like a man. T will start now. Next summer I’ll be getting top surgery to have female breast tissue removed. I’m not asking for your permission, I’m telling you. Once you accept this, you can visit me at school to meet the new me.”

And when did I learn about ROGD……

This shocking announcement set my husband and me into a spiral of—depending on the day or even hour—disbelief, incredulity, anger, outrage, despair, rage, and sadness—and this cycle played on repeat. My daughter had never been a tomboy and was not attracted to women. But she was away from home for the first extended period of time, socially awkward and lonely. It also set me off on a binge of research. I looked up every article I could find on the topic. I contacted the author of those articles. I spoke to Dr. Laura, Edwards, Abigail Shrier, and Sasha Ayad. I read Lisa Littman’s study. And then I found a name for what was happening to my 18-year-old daughter—ROGD. And here’s the funny part: I sent the article to her doctors and asked if they were familiar with it and if they had any concerns about her sudden self-diagnosis and the seriousness of the “treatment” plan. If you are on the PITT site, you can guess what happened next.

These memories are painful. It’s hard to revisit the mental distress from that time for both our daughter and for us. It’s humiliating and infuriating to recall how we were treated by her doctors.  But maybe ROGD Awareness Day is a good thing because, if you aren’t enraged by an ideology that encourages young people to medicate for life and remove healthy body parts, then you are unaware.