How a principle about transgender contagion went viral

The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. However it arrived at precisely the time individuals with dangerous intentions had been in search of science to buoy their opinions.

The outcomes had been in step with what one would possibly count on given these sources: 76.5% of oldsters surveyed “believed their youngster was incorrect of their perception of being transgender.” Greater than 85% stated their youngster had elevated their web use and/or had trans associates earlier than figuring out as trans. The youths themselves had no say within the research, and there’s no telling if they’d merely stored their mother and father at nighttime for months or years earlier than popping out. (Littman acknowledges that “parent-child battle may additionally clarify a few of the findings.”) 

Arjee Restar, now an assistant professor of epidemiology on the College of Washington, didn’t mince phrases in her 2020 methodological critique of the paper. Restar famous that Littman selected to explain the “social and peer contagion” speculation within the consent doc she shared with mother and father, opening the door for biases in who selected to reply to the survey and the way they did so. She additionally highlighted that Littman requested mother and father to supply “diagnoses” of their youngster’s gender dysphoria, which they had been unqualified to do with out skilled coaching. It’s even doable that Littman’s information might include a number of responses from the identical guardian, Restar wrote. Littman informed MIT Expertise Overview that “focused recruitment [to studies] is a very widespread apply.” She additionally known as consideration to the corrected ROGD paper, which notes {that a} pro-gender-­affirming mother and father’ Fb group with 8,000 members posted the research’s recruitment info on its web page—though Littman’s research was not designed to have the ability to discern whether or not any of them responded.

However politics is blind to nuances in methodology. And the paper was shortly seized by those that had been already pushing again in opposition to rising acceptance of trans individuals. In 2014, a couple of years earlier than Littman revealed her ROGD paper, Time journal had put Laverne Cox, the trans actress from Orange Is the New Black, on its cowl and declared a “transgender tipping level.” By 2016, payments throughout the nation that aimed to bar trans individuals from bogs that match their gender id failed, and one which succeeded, in North Carolina, price its Republican governor, Pat McCrory, his job.  

But by 2018 a renewed backlash was nicely underway—one which zeroed in on trans youth. The talk about trans youth competing in sports activities went national, as did a heavily publicized Texas custody battle between a mom who supported her trans youngster and a father who didn’t. Teams working to additional marginalize trans individuals, just like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Household Analysis Council, started “printing off payments and introducing them to state legislators,” says Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist on the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. However it arrived at precisely the time individuals with dangerous intentions had been in search of science to buoy their opinions. The paper “laundered what had beforehand been the rantings of on-line conspiracy theorists and gave it the resemblance of great scientific research,” Branstetter says. She believes that if Littman’s paper had not been revealed, an identical argument would have been made by another person. Regardless of its limitations, it has grow to be a vital weapon within the battle in opposition to trans individuals, largely by means of on-line dissemination. “It’s astonishing that such a blatantly bad-faith effort has been taken so significantly,” Branstetter says.

Littman plainly rejects that characterization, saying her aim was merely to “discover out what’s occurring.” “This was a really good-faith try,” she says. “As an individual I’m liberal; I’m pro-LGBT. I noticed a phenomenon with my very own eyes and I investigated, discovered that it was completely different than what was within the scientific literature.” 

One purpose for the success of Littman’s paper is that it validates the concept that trans youngsters are new. However Jules Gill-Peterson, an affiliate professor of historical past at Johns Hopkins and writer of Histories of the Transgender Little one, says that’s “empirically unfaithful.” Trans youngsters have solely lately began to be mentioned in mainstream media, so individuals assume they weren’t round earlier than, she says, however “there have been youngsters transitioning for so long as there was transition-related medical know-how,” and kids had been socially transitioning—residing as a distinct gender with none medical or authorized interventions—lengthy earlier than that.

Many trans individuals are younger youngsters once they first observe a dissonance between how they’re recognized and the way they determine. The method of transitioning isn’t easy, however the rationalization of their id may be.