From August through September 2022, a survey was circulated within private forums to parents of sons with Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. These private groups were formed to provide support for parents who are skeptical of their son’s sudden self-diagnosis as “trans,” and generally cautious about the popular model of “affirmation” offered by therapists, schools, and medical practitioners.
Excellent post and comments thread. A component I'm not seeing addressed (not saying it's not out there; but I'm not seeing it) is the role of environmental endocrine disruption from Day 1 (and subsequently nonstop) in boys' lives.
Babies and children are all massively affected by chemicals, plastics, herbicides/pesticides and every imaginable pharma products via our water supply. This tsunami of toxicity by necessity damages males. The pharma we give them adds insult to injury. The biological feminization of males due to environmental factors isn't being addressed enough.
Parents naturally look inward for causes when the causes are outside. We don't blame a bird when its young are eaten by a predator. Our kids are being deliberately attacked by predators daily in schools (ideology funded and driven by globalism), by medicine/psychology, and by all media. As a result, families MUST BECOME more on-the-ground activist than they are currently.
Even though I'm the parent of a girl, I found this data super interesting. Gifted, gifted, gifted....we hear a lot about the autistic cohort, but nowhere near as much about the gifted ones. Mine falls into the gifted cohort. When she had her educational testing done (we thought she might have ADHD), the psychologist pointed out that many gifted kids, due to being out of the box thinkers, tend to be more fluid in their identities at this age and not want to be pigeonholed. The ironic thing is that they don't realize how much they pigeonhole themselves far too soon and go down this path that will completely foreclose options to them later. We have got to start addressing the gifted kid correlation more.
Can someone please give me a referral for a therapist that specializes in gender identity issues and trauma that will not just affirm my son and believe that "he is the best expert on himself". I need to find someone so that medicalization can be stopped or delayed. The therapist shouldn't be an openly anti trans type, because then my 18 yo son won't even talk to them. My son agreed to delay medicalization for 6 months if I can arrange appropriate therapy (hope!). Please, if anyone has a referral- it can be video sessions so location isn't a big issue, but we are in Illinois.
I was a transvestite for many years. My ideation -- fantasy -- ranked up when I was 12 or 13. Internet back then was dial up modems and America Online. None the less, I did talk to other transvestites via the internet. I didn't "come out" more openly -- pursuing it -- in my mid twenties. Though I confessed to certain people at 21.
I identify a lot with the "intelligent, socially awkward, poor at sports" attributes. The "coming out" opened new social avenues for me. Like it or not, it was a shared hobby with other people and one that had sexuality associated with that were unavailable to me in the more normal spheres.
I've given it up now. And I never messed with my body. But on the other hand, it was a time before internet saturation, before a cultural and political drive to push this, and before the insane isolation policies of Covid.
I wish I could give some support for these boys.
Some tools I would recommend that were very helpful to me -- that even though I occasionally would don a dress or a wig I NEVER took a pill of estrogen or testosterone blocker -- was some of the men's rights movement. Robert Bly, William Farrell, and today I would recommend Jordan Peterson. Men's esteem have taken a beating for decades, and when one feels that one cannot be a man without being evil, then why not change? A potential solution is to learn you can be good as a man. My ultimate solution that led to me ending it forever was relating to my wife -- I could do MORE good as a man. My "hobby" didn't make me better at relating to other people, in spite of the conceit that it could.
It should be clear at this point that the so called “experts” in Academic Medicine working at Children’s hospitals are either Completely Incompetent or Extremely Malevolent towards kids. (They’re probably Both).
Thanks for posting. So many unknowns even in good surveys.
What we have always known is that pre- and puberty are times of confusion, development, and experimentation for kids trying to sort out emerging sexuality. For example, erections in locker rooms around other boys has never been the hallmark of boys being homosexual, but now, any level of "same-sex attraction" makes a boy think he's gay. Girls, too. When my granddaughter was eight, she told me she was gay because her BFF was a girl. She had no idea what "gay" meant, because she was still not sexually aware, but her school had already planted that seed. As bad as it is now, I expect the trans market to increase as more schools intentionally introduce "gender" confusion beginning with pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. Vulvas are "usually" found on bodies of girls; penises are "usually" found on bodies of boys' "people with those types of reproduction systems." By the time this generation of five-year olds get to adolescence, they will honestly be able meet the clinical definition of gender dysphoria that they have thought they were another gender for years. I hope and pray that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I'm not. We need to take back the narrative between sex and gender and explain the difference. Never affirm a lie, but share the truth in a loving, compassionate way.
These feel like kids who are *in their heads* too much, and out of contact with their bodies. I think this is why puberty is curative for many: it puts you right into contact with your body. If I had a son like this I'd be tempted to hike the Pacific Crest trail, or surf, or build a cabin with him.
We have made too many changes to 'normal' babyhood & childhood and removed some of the key inputs (carrying on body is key) needed for development, and the reliable launch of a stable bio-psycho-social selves. We don't have enough alloparents. Too many devices and distractions. Not enough nature. Too much relying on one overburdened parent instead of 'the village' -- which is an insurance policy for a hard/weird kid, that *somebody* will "get" them in the larger group.
I think many of these kids have functional deficits due to these constrictions and social changes. Certain kids probably need more reinforcement of lessons, modeled by numerous adults, so they are more affected by being isolated... those with a dyslexia for emotional learning, and a need for extra modeling that isn't received. This lack results in a lack of a firm "me," in anxiety, etc.
All these conditions are WAY UP.
Boys need a lot more time to hit developmental milestones than girls too. Girls are thinking about social things years ahead of boys, front-loading unanswerable questions (=anxiety). Boys can be uniquely sensitive to early disruptions, too, due to their 'extra-young' neurobiology. Last, boys are robbed of nurture by our culture's macho, tough it out, don't-cry values that are imposed on them.
We need to overhaul modern practices, and re-imbue things that help kids FEEL, Ground in their bodies, and Launch with emotional stability/ basic self confidence. Because that USED to be the norm. All this mental distress in the young is a new condition of humanity.
Maybe early "school" is too big a stress on later-to-develop boys? Lining up in lines, 'behaving' when they can't really do that yet? Maybe we really do need grandmothers to have enough mature modeling and lap time, to learn to regulate our very sophisticated brains?
I am getting more and more concerned about this notion of "giftedness". What again is the definition of this? Most kids are clever, and parents generally feel that their child is clever. But what evidence that these kids are more than normally clever?
Before we all move on to other articles, I have to thank the authors and to point out that the IQ data is SHOCKING:
OBSERVED VS. EXPECTED
<90: 0.81% vs. 25.24% = 0.03X the expected rate
90-110: 1.61% vs. 49.52% = 0.03X
110-130: 16.13% vs. 22.96% = 0.7X
130-145: 33.87% vs. 2.14% = 16X
145-160: 41.13% vs. 0.13% = 312X
>160: 6.45% vs. 0.003% = 2,150X
Two thousand times elevated rate! If this survey is anywhere near accurate, it's screaming to us that male ROGD is a disease of the high-IQ, period.
Fine, assume parents exaggerate. Claw back a whole SD. We still get shockingly elevated rates, and the higher the IQ the more elevated:
OBSERVED VS. EXPECTED
<90: 1.61% vs. 25.24% = 0.06X
90-110: 16.13% vs. 49.52% = 0.33X
110-130: 33.87% vs. 22.96% = 1.5X
130-145: 41.13% vs. 2.14% = 19X
145-160: 6.45% vs. 0.13% = 49X
>160: nope
To summarize the clawback data, gifted = 47.58% vs. 2.27% = 21X.
This fits with what Littman's original paper found six years ago, a 19X elevated rate for gifted kids (male and female).
Excellent post and comments thread. A component I'm not seeing addressed (not saying it's not out there; but I'm not seeing it) is the role of environmental endocrine disruption from Day 1 (and subsequently nonstop) in boys' lives.
Babies and children are all massively affected by chemicals, plastics, herbicides/pesticides and every imaginable pharma products via our water supply. This tsunami of toxicity by necessity damages males. The pharma we give them adds insult to injury. The biological feminization of males due to environmental factors isn't being addressed enough.
Parents naturally look inward for causes when the causes are outside. We don't blame a bird when its young are eaten by a predator. Our kids are being deliberately attacked by predators daily in schools (ideology funded and driven by globalism), by medicine/psychology, and by all media. As a result, families MUST BECOME more on-the-ground activist than they are currently.
It may be that their characters are more “elastic “ and they are open to new ideas.
And the autistic community thought the "treatments" of past generations were barbaric! At least ABA didn't render one infertile!
Even though I'm the parent of a girl, I found this data super interesting. Gifted, gifted, gifted....we hear a lot about the autistic cohort, but nowhere near as much about the gifted ones. Mine falls into the gifted cohort. When she had her educational testing done (we thought she might have ADHD), the psychologist pointed out that many gifted kids, due to being out of the box thinkers, tend to be more fluid in their identities at this age and not want to be pigeonholed. The ironic thing is that they don't realize how much they pigeonhole themselves far too soon and go down this path that will completely foreclose options to them later. We have got to start addressing the gifted kid correlation more.
Can someone please give me a referral for a therapist that specializes in gender identity issues and trauma that will not just affirm my son and believe that "he is the best expert on himself". I need to find someone so that medicalization can be stopped or delayed. The therapist shouldn't be an openly anti trans type, because then my 18 yo son won't even talk to them. My son agreed to delay medicalization for 6 months if I can arrange appropriate therapy (hope!). Please, if anyone has a referral- it can be video sessions so location isn't a big issue, but we are in Illinois.
I was a transvestite for many years. My ideation -- fantasy -- ranked up when I was 12 or 13. Internet back then was dial up modems and America Online. None the less, I did talk to other transvestites via the internet. I didn't "come out" more openly -- pursuing it -- in my mid twenties. Though I confessed to certain people at 21.
I identify a lot with the "intelligent, socially awkward, poor at sports" attributes. The "coming out" opened new social avenues for me. Like it or not, it was a shared hobby with other people and one that had sexuality associated with that were unavailable to me in the more normal spheres.
I've given it up now. And I never messed with my body. But on the other hand, it was a time before internet saturation, before a cultural and political drive to push this, and before the insane isolation policies of Covid.
I wish I could give some support for these boys.
Some tools I would recommend that were very helpful to me -- that even though I occasionally would don a dress or a wig I NEVER took a pill of estrogen or testosterone blocker -- was some of the men's rights movement. Robert Bly, William Farrell, and today I would recommend Jordan Peterson. Men's esteem have taken a beating for decades, and when one feels that one cannot be a man without being evil, then why not change? A potential solution is to learn you can be good as a man. My ultimate solution that led to me ending it forever was relating to my wife -- I could do MORE good as a man. My "hobby" didn't make me better at relating to other people, in spite of the conceit that it could.
It should be clear at this point that the so called “experts” in Academic Medicine working at Children’s hospitals are either Completely Incompetent or Extremely Malevolent towards kids. (They’re probably Both).
Did the survey ask whether there is a father in the home and how engaged he is with the children? I would love to see data on that.
Thanks for posting. So many unknowns even in good surveys.
What we have always known is that pre- and puberty are times of confusion, development, and experimentation for kids trying to sort out emerging sexuality. For example, erections in locker rooms around other boys has never been the hallmark of boys being homosexual, but now, any level of "same-sex attraction" makes a boy think he's gay. Girls, too. When my granddaughter was eight, she told me she was gay because her BFF was a girl. She had no idea what "gay" meant, because she was still not sexually aware, but her school had already planted that seed. As bad as it is now, I expect the trans market to increase as more schools intentionally introduce "gender" confusion beginning with pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. Vulvas are "usually" found on bodies of girls; penises are "usually" found on bodies of boys' "people with those types of reproduction systems." By the time this generation of five-year olds get to adolescence, they will honestly be able meet the clinical definition of gender dysphoria that they have thought they were another gender for years. I hope and pray that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I'm not. We need to take back the narrative between sex and gender and explain the difference. Never affirm a lie, but share the truth in a loving, compassionate way.
These feel like kids who are *in their heads* too much, and out of contact with their bodies. I think this is why puberty is curative for many: it puts you right into contact with your body. If I had a son like this I'd be tempted to hike the Pacific Crest trail, or surf, or build a cabin with him.
We have made too many changes to 'normal' babyhood & childhood and removed some of the key inputs (carrying on body is key) needed for development, and the reliable launch of a stable bio-psycho-social selves. We don't have enough alloparents. Too many devices and distractions. Not enough nature. Too much relying on one overburdened parent instead of 'the village' -- which is an insurance policy for a hard/weird kid, that *somebody* will "get" them in the larger group.
I think many of these kids have functional deficits due to these constrictions and social changes. Certain kids probably need more reinforcement of lessons, modeled by numerous adults, so they are more affected by being isolated... those with a dyslexia for emotional learning, and a need for extra modeling that isn't received. This lack results in a lack of a firm "me," in anxiety, etc.
All these conditions are WAY UP.
Boys need a lot more time to hit developmental milestones than girls too. Girls are thinking about social things years ahead of boys, front-loading unanswerable questions (=anxiety). Boys can be uniquely sensitive to early disruptions, too, due to their 'extra-young' neurobiology. Last, boys are robbed of nurture by our culture's macho, tough it out, don't-cry values that are imposed on them.
We need to overhaul modern practices, and re-imbue things that help kids FEEL, Ground in their bodies, and Launch with emotional stability/ basic self confidence. Because that USED to be the norm. All this mental distress in the young is a new condition of humanity.
Maybe early "school" is too big a stress on later-to-develop boys? Lining up in lines, 'behaving' when they can't really do that yet? Maybe we really do need grandmothers to have enough mature modeling and lap time, to learn to regulate our very sophisticated brains?
Thank you for all your commitment in putting this together.
Has there been anything similar conducted for girls?
I am getting more and more concerned about this notion of "giftedness". What again is the definition of this? Most kids are clever, and parents generally feel that their child is clever. But what evidence that these kids are more than normally clever?