When I studied psychology in the '80s, it was well understood that that transsexualism (not the current "transgender" term) was a mental health problem, not biological in origin. I don't understand how have we become so confused? How has this become a social justice issue? How have medical practitioners, therapists, educators, and ordinary people with good intentions been drawn into this ridiculous ideology? Why don't more people speak out against it? Who stands to profit by providing gender affirming care (I think we know!), and how do we hold them accountable?
From Wikipedia:
Transsexualism was included for the first time in the DSM-III in 1980. "Gender Identity Disorder" was a term created in the DSM-III in regard to transsexuals, and the categories were "GID/Children Transsexualism"; "GID/Adolescent and Adult, Non-transsexual type" and "GID/Not Otherwise Specified".
The classification of transgender people into distinct groups has been attempted since the mid-1960s. The most common modern classifications in use are the DSM-5 and ICD, which are mainly used for insurance and administration of gender-affirming care.
I appreciate all that parents do to educate themselves and fight the process of social and medical transition (and all the forces that push this path). But what can we do to stop the grooming? The men lurking on video games and chat rooms trying to catch our children?
For too many, too much science is already settled, which means don't ask any questions, well this is intellectual terrorism. There is nothing, that should never be un-questioned. What is wrong with too many of us? How did we ever get to a point where science is ever settled? It is weak and pathetic.
It is akin to "my truth" which is saying I will do whatever in the hell I want to do and you can't stop me.
Do not be like this, be a voice of reason, a person who loves and seeks truth no matter where truth takes you.
This is an excellent essay! Thank you for writing it.
"it is self-preserving, money-making propaganda that we are all adopting wholesale under the guise of social justice. It's not harmless and it is not about social justice. We are confusing an entire generation and it’s having a real, irreparable, harmful effect on way more people than you realize." Yes!!
"And now, we cannot face asking these questions because, if we were wrong – and transgender is a mental condition, not a biological one – we just gave our kids experimental hormones and allowed surgery on their healthy bodies to treat a mental illness. Then the doctors are liable. The therapists are liable. The activists would have to admit that they might have a mental illness, and that they are not a new gender. The pharmaceutical companies and gender identity clinics would be on the hook, sued out of existence, and deprived of their revenue stream. " Absolutely.
It is my great hope that the revenue stream is killed very soon.
Evolutionary Biologist Colin Wright offers to help:
We focus on the medical impacts on one's health. We are sending notice to the "friends" who have been actively encouraging and providing guidance to his trans behavior. We are engaging 24 years old "trans" son while refusing to accept the name change or identify change. For example, we went into a store and someone said, "here is your sister". I responded, "it the brother, my son". "my son likes to be girl-like" etc.
You handled your son's news so much better than I did. It took me at least a year to see how awful the affirmation was and now 2.5 years later my son is still suffering and in the awful delusion. I pray that the tide is turning and I agree that the therapist and doctors that sent our kids down this path are going to find it hard to live with the damage they have caused
How true that it is easy to accept the affirmation narrative, until they come for your child. Unfortunately for myself and too many others, that is the wake up call. Until they came for my child, I thought, it is a phenomena that is affecting just 0.1% of the population. Another lie of course but it made me think it was nothing I should be concerned about. No need to investigate anything.
To be fair to all of us who didn't pay attention until it was too late, it was hard to realize that there was another side to the story because all media was reporting the same thing. I trusted the media until that point. Not that they never made mistakes - but that they at least tried to be fair. I had no idea that they were taken over by ideology. It was hard for any of us to be aware of the full scope of the issue because we all had to search it out on our own through alternative channels after we followed our instinct that something doesn't add up.
I saw the date of the original post and was overwhelmed with anger. Three and a half years ago... 3.5 years ago parents on PITT were writing their essays, passionate and intelligent essays that clearly lay out how insane the "affirmative care" is, how backwards and cruel. Three and a half years of PITT, years of detransitioners, parents, whistle blowers fighting ... When will it end??!!!
I truly believe GD is not biological; it IS mental. I know, I’m living with one; my beautiful and smart daughter who has been indoctrinated in this social contagion since middle school, more than a decade ago. She’s been on therapy for more than eight years now.
The problem is, her life coach and psychiatrist are both affirming (hate this word). She made sure they are.
So I’m looking for a good and non-affirming psychotherapist; hard part is convincing her. I want to ‘fire’ the current ones; they’re not helping even if my child tells me they are!
I'm so glad this essay was reposted. It is excellent. It gives me a bit of hope that those parents who were bamboozled before are seeing gender identity and medicalization in a new way. How many more kids will be "transed" by parents who don't understand what it really happening? We certainly need more discussion, and we need the truth to come to the surface in all areas in which is was hidden or surpressed.
I don't know why this parent didn't discover "Gender dysphoria is not one thing", published in 2017. What the parent is describing in their son is autogynephilic gender dysphoria.
One last thing ROGD parents need is a fetish thrown at their children by adult practitioners of the fetish. This is exactly the same phenomenon of how Trans Kids were created--by mentally ill men who repeat the familiar line of "I always felt this way" in order to justify their existence. Just look at the history of the WPATH and their founders--you will struggle finding even a couple who were not pedophile, BDSM activists, eunuch erotica writers and so on. Stop normalising fetish. It is disgraceful for you to come here and talk to vulnerable parents as though you are some kind of an authority on the subject. I'm for free speech, so of course, I am not going to tell anyone not to post, but what you are doing is shameful.
Who is "normalizing" anything? The issue is that autogynephilia, which has always existed but in the past was indulged in by cross-dressing males mostly in private, is now being labeled "Trans!".
Teen boys and young men are being told that if they are aroused by dressing as a woman, then they actually ARE women and must medically alter their bodies to accommodate this.
The sexologists like Michael Bailey and many others, including Genspect, who claim that there are not ROGD boys, but only AGP boys. It takes a special kind of sick to suggest that AGP is a sexuality one is born with.
Please don''t diagnose other people's children based on a few lines in an essay. You (or anybody else) have absolutely no way of knowing what specifically caused their son's distress.
And it is very obvious that what the son is experiencing is autogynephilic gender dysphoria. The marker, in addition to the cross-sex identification, is the bisexuality (in this case, it is pseudo-bisexuality).
This article is called "Parents Deserve Answers before Medicalizing Gender Identity" and solicits public comment.
So please stop policing what other people have to say.
Autogynephilia is a fetish. Keep fetish private, keep fetish shameful, and for goodness sake, stop bringing ROGD boys into it. The fact that you got reinforcements from Genspect means nothing. You can say what you want, no one is policing. We can also say what we want--keep your fetish away from children and from their parents. Everyone can see through you.
"ROGD boys" are very obviously autogynephilic. Even Blanchard noticed when he was doing his research, that there was somehow some relationship between autogynephilia and "computer nerdiness".
What is happening with "ROGD boys" is a replay of "gender identity" ideology. An alternative myth created to be more palatable than autogynephilia. This is completely understandable, given how much autogynephilia has been caricatured as the devil:
I don't believe PITT is choosing to keep parents in the dark. They welcome submissions. Please write an essay about this topic and send it to them. They published one of my essays recently, and I brought up autogynephilia. https://www.pittparents.com/p/reasons-kids-say-they-are-trans-or
"Adolescent boys can't somehow catch autogynephilia from porn." sounds like "nobody becomes trans from watching tiktok" - and with as much proof. Blanchard is just one researcher. He may be right on some issues, but not all. There is no hard data to support your statements about ROGD boys. Trans identity for many of the kids , boys and girls, is Goth 2.0 ( listen to Dr Az Hakeem). If these young people were left the f alone without either medical intervention or labels like "autogenophile", most would outgrow it just like other teen identities.
Be careful in who you listen to. AGP is becoming a cult within a cult. Those who are researchers think that AGP is found mostly in European heritage - suggesting it's a biological trait.
" AGP is found mostly in European heritage" how exactly did they research that? Such statement would require a pretty large study using DNA - no such studies have been done as far as I can tell. Did the say that based on most of their patients being white? Without any type of data to support the "European heritage" statement, it sounds pretty much like "it's a white dude thing". Gender craze also affected more affluent white kids than other kids. I am sure you don't think it means transgender identity is genetic.
However scientific studies that show a link between ethnicity and heightened risk for certain mental health disorders are readily apparent, for example with schizophrenia and Ashkenazi:
In case it is useful, here is my memo on the topic that tries to illustrate the research in one article. It includes concerns about girls at the top, but illustrates autogynephilia starting in the middle:
I agree with Blanchard, that autogynephilia is the result of some inborn defect for "erotic miss-learning", which clusters with specific other paraphilia, namely "stuff-fetishism" and masochism.
Stuff fetishism and autogynephilia in particular, correlate very strongly, which is further described here:
I would emphasise to parents that if they have a teenage son with autogynephilia, it's not some fault of their upbringing. Autogynephilia can be observed throughout history, and was observed as "Eonism" in previous centuries.
On the subject of porn, however, I do think porn can magnify or warp existing propensities in a way that is harmful (and this not something that is reserved for autogynephilia). But the propensity exists despite porn.
What you and Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu fail to see is that there is no inborn defect for "erotic miss-learning" or Erotic Target Identity Inversion. It's a theory, there are no reproducible studies that support the notion of an inborn defect. It's a paraphilia that has an underlying cause(s). It's a delusion.
Autogynephilia is a paraphilia, an atypical sexual interest, where a male is aroused at the idea of being a woman.
It is possible to have this arousal, without being deluded that one is in fact a woman.
The studies that we do have on autogynephilia, is that it clusters with specific other paraphilia, such as "stuff fetishism". This clustering is quite striking, resulting in near identical accounts of autogynephilia across continents:
This informs the opinions of experts such as Ray Blanchard, to believe that autogynephilia is the result of innate erotic miss-learning. I am sure that they have other information that also informs their opinion regarding this.
There is other contextual information, such as autogynephilia running in families, that further contributes to this idea.
I have contacted PITT, but for a while Genspect have not been replying to my messages.
As you can see, the fact that sons have an unusual paraphilia, autogynephilia, that explains their cross-sex identification is quite the inconvenient truth.
I think it is politically better for Genspect not to mention it. Parents also seem OK blaming perennial causes, e.g. "videogames", for what is obviously autogynephilia:
When I studied psychology in the '80s, it was well understood that that transsexualism (not the current "transgender" term) was a mental health problem, not biological in origin. I don't understand how have we become so confused? How has this become a social justice issue? How have medical practitioners, therapists, educators, and ordinary people with good intentions been drawn into this ridiculous ideology? Why don't more people speak out against it? Who stands to profit by providing gender affirming care (I think we know!), and how do we hold them accountable?
From Wikipedia:
Transsexualism was included for the first time in the DSM-III in 1980. "Gender Identity Disorder" was a term created in the DSM-III in regard to transsexuals, and the categories were "GID/Children Transsexualism"; "GID/Adolescent and Adult, Non-transsexual type" and "GID/Not Otherwise Specified".
The classification of transgender people into distinct groups has been attempted since the mid-1960s. The most common modern classifications in use are the DSM-5 and ICD, which are mainly used for insurance and administration of gender-affirming care.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_transgender_people
This trans agenda is being pushed by surgeons and pharma who are making $ Billions by maiming our children for life! It must be stopped.
So good. Thank you for this. I just may share it with my daughter who is enabling her FTM sister.
I appreciate all that parents do to educate themselves and fight the process of social and medical transition (and all the forces that push this path). But what can we do to stop the grooming? The men lurking on video games and chat rooms trying to catch our children?
For too many, too much science is already settled, which means don't ask any questions, well this is intellectual terrorism. There is nothing, that should never be un-questioned. What is wrong with too many of us? How did we ever get to a point where science is ever settled? It is weak and pathetic.
It is akin to "my truth" which is saying I will do whatever in the hell I want to do and you can't stop me.
Do not be like this, be a voice of reason, a person who loves and seeks truth no matter where truth takes you.
This is an excellent essay! Thank you for writing it.
"it is self-preserving, money-making propaganda that we are all adopting wholesale under the guise of social justice. It's not harmless and it is not about social justice. We are confusing an entire generation and it’s having a real, irreparable, harmful effect on way more people than you realize." Yes!!
"And now, we cannot face asking these questions because, if we were wrong – and transgender is a mental condition, not a biological one – we just gave our kids experimental hormones and allowed surgery on their healthy bodies to treat a mental illness. Then the doctors are liable. The therapists are liable. The activists would have to admit that they might have a mental illness, and that they are not a new gender. The pharmaceutical companies and gender identity clinics would be on the hook, sued out of existence, and deprived of their revenue stream. " Absolutely.
It is my great hope that the revenue stream is killed very soon.
Evolutionary Biologist Colin Wright offers to help:
https://x.com/swipewright/status/1854463035756122553?s=46
Full Speech and Transcript: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/president-trumps-plan-to-protect-children-from-left-wing-gender-insanity
This cannot come soon enough.
Very comprehensive write-up!
We focus on the medical impacts on one's health. We are sending notice to the "friends" who have been actively encouraging and providing guidance to his trans behavior. We are engaging 24 years old "trans" son while refusing to accept the name change or identify change. For example, we went into a store and someone said, "here is your sister". I responded, "it the brother, my son". "my son likes to be girl-like" etc.
You handled your son's news so much better than I did. It took me at least a year to see how awful the affirmation was and now 2.5 years later my son is still suffering and in the awful delusion. I pray that the tide is turning and I agree that the therapist and doctors that sent our kids down this path are going to find it hard to live with the damage they have caused
How true that it is easy to accept the affirmation narrative, until they come for your child. Unfortunately for myself and too many others, that is the wake up call. Until they came for my child, I thought, it is a phenomena that is affecting just 0.1% of the population. Another lie of course but it made me think it was nothing I should be concerned about. No need to investigate anything.
To be fair to all of us who didn't pay attention until it was too late, it was hard to realize that there was another side to the story because all media was reporting the same thing. I trusted the media until that point. Not that they never made mistakes - but that they at least tried to be fair. I had no idea that they were taken over by ideology. It was hard for any of us to be aware of the full scope of the issue because we all had to search it out on our own through alternative channels after we followed our instinct that something doesn't add up.
I saw the date of the original post and was overwhelmed with anger. Three and a half years ago... 3.5 years ago parents on PITT were writing their essays, passionate and intelligent essays that clearly lay out how insane the "affirmative care" is, how backwards and cruel. Three and a half years of PITT, years of detransitioners, parents, whistle blowers fighting ... When will it end??!!!
Exactly..... enough is enough!!!!!!
Right? I've been in it from before we had PITT.
Prior to PITT we had 4thWavenow.com founded by Denise Caignon. Her daughter made "the announcement" in 2014. We were a few years later than that...
It should have ended with the work/exposure done by Denise - including about infamous UCSF gender therapist Diane Ehrensaft
"EPISODE 84 - Denise Caignon from 4thWaveNow: The View from Behind the Scenes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmphx7taSpY
Amen.
I truly believe GD is not biological; it IS mental. I know, I’m living with one; my beautiful and smart daughter who has been indoctrinated in this social contagion since middle school, more than a decade ago. She’s been on therapy for more than eight years now.
The problem is, her life coach and psychiatrist are both affirming (hate this word). She made sure they are.
So I’m looking for a good and non-affirming psychotherapist; hard part is convincing her. I want to ‘fire’ the current ones; they’re not helping even if my child tells me they are!
God help us🙏
Do it, dont pay for sth that it against you. I did the same.
I'm so glad this essay was reposted. It is excellent. It gives me a bit of hope that those parents who were bamboozled before are seeing gender identity and medicalization in a new way. How many more kids will be "transed" by parents who don't understand what it really happening? We certainly need more discussion, and we need the truth to come to the surface in all areas in which is was hidden or surpressed.
I don't know why this parent didn't discover "Gender dysphoria is not one thing", published in 2017. What the parent is describing in their son is autogynephilic gender dysphoria.
https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/
Similar account here:
https://since2010.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-autogynephilia-using
I also don't know why PITT is choosing to keep parents in the dark regarding this issue.
One last thing ROGD parents need is a fetish thrown at their children by adult practitioners of the fetish. This is exactly the same phenomenon of how Trans Kids were created--by mentally ill men who repeat the familiar line of "I always felt this way" in order to justify their existence. Just look at the history of the WPATH and their founders--you will struggle finding even a couple who were not pedophile, BDSM activists, eunuch erotica writers and so on. Stop normalising fetish. It is disgraceful for you to come here and talk to vulnerable parents as though you are some kind of an authority on the subject. I'm for free speech, so of course, I am not going to tell anyone not to post, but what you are doing is shameful.
Who is "normalizing" anything? The issue is that autogynephilia, which has always existed but in the past was indulged in by cross-dressing males mostly in private, is now being labeled "Trans!".
Teen boys and young men are being told that if they are aroused by dressing as a woman, then they actually ARE women and must medically alter their bodies to accommodate this.
The sexologists like Michael Bailey and many others, including Genspect, who claim that there are not ROGD boys, but only AGP boys. It takes a special kind of sick to suggest that AGP is a sexuality one is born with.
Please don''t diagnose other people's children based on a few lines in an essay. You (or anybody else) have absolutely no way of knowing what specifically caused their son's distress.
Exactly.
Autogynephilia isn't a diagnosis.
And it is very obvious that what the son is experiencing is autogynephilic gender dysphoria. The marker, in addition to the cross-sex identification, is the bisexuality (in this case, it is pseudo-bisexuality).
This article is called "Parents Deserve Answers before Medicalizing Gender Identity" and solicits public comment.
So please stop policing what other people have to say.
Autogynephilia is a fetish. Keep fetish private, keep fetish shameful, and for goodness sake, stop bringing ROGD boys into it. The fact that you got reinforcements from Genspect means nothing. You can say what you want, no one is policing. We can also say what we want--keep your fetish away from children and from their parents. Everyone can see through you.
"ROGD boys" are very obviously autogynephilic. Even Blanchard noticed when he was doing his research, that there was somehow some relationship between autogynephilia and "computer nerdiness".
What is happening with "ROGD boys" is a replay of "gender identity" ideology. An alternative myth created to be more palatable than autogynephilia. This is completely understandable, given how much autogynephilia has been caricatured as the devil:
https://since2010.substack.com/p/part-7-rogd-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria
"Even Blanchared?" We don't need another pedophilia apologist as a guide.
Thank you!
I don't believe PITT is choosing to keep parents in the dark. They welcome submissions. Please write an essay about this topic and send it to them. They published one of my essays recently, and I brought up autogynephilia. https://www.pittparents.com/p/reasons-kids-say-they-are-trans-or
Thanks, I will apply to write a submission.
Your article is factually incorrect regarding autogynephilia.
"Kids are exposed to fetish porn, too, which has led to paraphilias such as autogynephilia for boys"
Adolescent boys can't somehow catch autogynephilia from porn.
"Adolescent boys can't somehow catch autogynephilia from porn." sounds like "nobody becomes trans from watching tiktok" - and with as much proof. Blanchard is just one researcher. He may be right on some issues, but not all. There is no hard data to support your statements about ROGD boys. Trans identity for many of the kids , boys and girls, is Goth 2.0 ( listen to Dr Az Hakeem). If these young people were left the f alone without either medical intervention or labels like "autogenophile", most would outgrow it just like other teen identities.
I hope to learn more. I will stand corrected. Please let me know how I can change that sentence/section to reflect a more accurate reason.
I cannot know all the reasons in depth. My aim was to highlight how many there are. (And my daughter medicalized, so I write more about the girls.)
Be careful in who you listen to. AGP is becoming a cult within a cult. Those who are researchers think that AGP is found mostly in European heritage - suggesting it's a biological trait.
" AGP is found mostly in European heritage" how exactly did they research that? Such statement would require a pretty large study using DNA - no such studies have been done as far as I can tell. Did the say that based on most of their patients being white? Without any type of data to support the "European heritage" statement, it sounds pretty much like "it's a white dude thing". Gender craze also affected more affluent white kids than other kids. I am sure you don't think it means transgender identity is genetic.
This is Chinese whispers now. The idea that AGP is found in mostly European heritage was speculation.
Given that other mental health conditions also affect ethnicities in varying degrees, this was speculation with scientific grounding.
BINGO!!
I don't think transgender identity is genetic at all.
Autogynephilia has for a long time been considered as the result of some innate defect, this isn't new.
It seems to run in families, for example, it is no surprise that the "Wachowski brothers" became "Wachowski sisters".
And what you are referring to is Bailey speculating on twitter -- not a "cult".
Just as anorexia runs in families too?
I have no idea about anorexia.
However scientific studies that show a link between ethnicity and heightened risk for certain mental health disorders are readily apparent, for example with schizophrenia and Ashkenazi:
https://www.haaretz.com/2013-11-26/ty-article/.premium/ashkenazi-gene-increases-schizophrenia/0000017f-e04b-d75c-a7ff-fccfa3e10000
In case it is useful, here is my memo on the topic that tries to illustrate the research in one article. It includes concerns about girls at the top, but illustrates autogynephilia starting in the middle:
https://transpolicy.substack.com/p/trans-memo
This is the part that quotes Blanchard on how autogynephilia develops:
https://transpolicy.substack.com/p/trans-memo#footnote-anchor-12-138909302
I agree with Blanchard, that autogynephilia is the result of some inborn defect for "erotic miss-learning", which clusters with specific other paraphilia, namely "stuff-fetishism" and masochism.
Stuff fetishism and autogynephilia in particular, correlate very strongly, which is further described here:
https://since2010.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-autogynephilia-using
I would emphasise to parents that if they have a teenage son with autogynephilia, it's not some fault of their upbringing. Autogynephilia can be observed throughout history, and was observed as "Eonism" in previous centuries.
On the subject of porn, however, I do think porn can magnify or warp existing propensities in a way that is harmful (and this not something that is reserved for autogynephilia). But the propensity exists despite porn.
What you and Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu fail to see is that there is no inborn defect for "erotic miss-learning" or Erotic Target Identity Inversion. It's a theory, there are no reproducible studies that support the notion of an inborn defect. It's a paraphilia that has an underlying cause(s). It's a delusion.
Autogynephilia is a paraphilia, an atypical sexual interest, where a male is aroused at the idea of being a woman.
It is possible to have this arousal, without being deluded that one is in fact a woman.
The studies that we do have on autogynephilia, is that it clusters with specific other paraphilia, such as "stuff fetishism". This clustering is quite striking, resulting in near identical accounts of autogynephilia across continents:
https://since2010.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-autogynephilia-using
This informs the opinions of experts such as Ray Blanchard, to believe that autogynephilia is the result of innate erotic miss-learning. I am sure that they have other information that also informs their opinion regarding this.
There is other contextual information, such as autogynephilia running in families, that further contributes to this idea.
Totally agree!
Please do write for Pitt. Your work has helped me understand the male pov much better.
I have contacted PITT, but for a while Genspect have not been replying to my messages.
As you can see, the fact that sons have an unusual paraphilia, autogynephilia, that explains their cross-sex identification is quite the inconvenient truth.
I think it is politically better for Genspect not to mention it. Parents also seem OK blaming perennial causes, e.g. "videogames", for what is obviously autogynephilia:
https://www.pittparents.com/p/how-a-seemingly-innocent-gift-led
I would gladly write something however.
Absolutely!!