Trans identity as a fad for teen girls
When I was in graduate school, there were a number of self-destructive body-oriented fads that were rife among teenage girls, the most popular at the time being cutting and anorexia. Those days, it appears that embracing a trans identity is following a somewhat similar pattern, as described here by a parent:
My teenage daughter has decided that she is “trans”. So have all her friends. Not some of them. Not most of them. Every. Single. One.
She had never heard of trans, and had no signs of gender dysphoria, until she was moved to a new, cool trans-friendly school by her unsuspecting, politically liberal parents. There she met a group of geeky (or dare I say nerdy?), smart, slightly (but not very) gender nonconforming, artsy kids. As I understand it, they all discovered “trans” together. The old “cis” friends were swiftly discarded in favour of this exciting new peer group.
Exploring “trans stuff” online with friends is a source of great interest and excitement—a real social event…
Bonding with friends, searching for their identity and place in life, working out their sexuality, separating from family—these are all normal developmental tasks for teens. For many, youth subcultures can be a natural part of that. Some are harmless. Some, like drug use and extreme dieting, not so much. But in the case of the latter, sensible adults usually intervene to help steer the young people in the right direction. Not in the case of trans. Here we have adults steering kids down a dangerous path, which involves permanent, life altering drugs and surgeries for which there is no good evidence base.
For many of these kids, LGBTQ+ is a youth subculture. It really is as simple as that. Recent surveys have been identifying skyrocketing rates of “trans” or “queer” identification in young people. One found that an astonishing 39% of young adults in the US aged between 18-24 identified with the label LGBT—the figure for teens <18 may well be even higher. Of course this figure includes gay and lesbian people as well as those identifying as trans. Another poll, which looked only at gender, found that nearly 10% of US high schoolers identified as “gender diverse”. Yet another survey gives a lower figure of 1.8%. Whichever figure is correct, this is a huge explosion in numbers over a very short period of time. As endocrinologist Dr Will Malone asks; “How do we reconcile these numbers with 2013 data reporting the prevalence of adult gender dysphoria to be a rare 2-14 in 100,000?”
This is a very different pattern from the traditional trans personal history. It was a much more rare situation that involved a perception very early in life – much earlier than the teen years – of being trapped in a different body. There was nothing and no one promoting the idea, either, unlike today, and so it didn’t take on the aspect of a fad.
There was always a problem with LGBT promoters once we got beyond LG. The appeal to heterosexuals of good will was, “I was born this way, and I shouldn’t have to deny my basic sexual identity.” That has always been a decent selling point among moral and compassionate people.
How does bisexuality fit into that, other than turning somebody’s omnivorous sexual appetites into a virtue?
Now people promote LGBQTA. A recent poster celebrating “International Asexuality Day” claims, “Asexual prople may have no libido, or low libido, or typical libido. Asexual people may be favorable towards having sex, indifferent towards having sex, averse towards having sex, or repulsed towards having sex.” I think that covers all of us by definition. Please teach your kids to choose A over T. They can still be in the in-group.
Of course there are teenage fads but no one can give sex-altering drugs EXCEPT physicians, unless the erosion of the profession by nurse practitioners and others of that ilk have been so empowered. I personally despise all these so-called practice extenders and see them as part of the erosion of medicine. You want a “barefoot doctor” or an educated physician?
The issue here is pediatricians, among the least-paid and most liberal MDs. They are the ones giving the sex-hormone blockers, pushing the trans movement. You think surgeons or ENT docs are dishing this shit out? Unless, and this is a possibility, the injectors are the former “Pain managers” who happily and profitably dispensed opiates?
https://youtu.be/LI_Oe-jtgdI
Something I wrote in a comment box somewhere (maybe here).
When I was a wee lad, it was “Hey Mom and Dad, I’m a vegetarian”. That got old, so then it was “Hey Mom and Dad, I’m a lesbian”. Both of these were easily reversible, barring some possible embarrassment.
“Hey Mom and Dad, I’m a boy” isn’t quite so reversible.
Note the new WH Press Sect.
As a father of 2 former teenage girls, I know how vulnerable they are to societal and peer pressure. What the Ds have done to promote this trans thing is once again showing how evil these people really are. Then add in the leftist teachers pushing this on such impressionable teen girls. We need a divorce…the northeast and west coast can go their own way then leave the rest of us the hell alone.
Physics guy-
You said what I’ve been saying for some years: “We need a divorce…the northeast and west coast can go their own way then leave the rest of us the hell alone.”
The Union is not worth its salvation. That was Lincoln’s huge mistake in 1861, cost 600,000 young men’s lives (mostly farmers in the Southland, on whom their families depended for food), and so destroyed most of the South.
Something that began to dawn on people around 1955 about which nothing has been done: extended nonage has huge pitfalls.
My great-great grandfather had about five years in a rural school house, about six months with a tutor, and an apprenticeship as a turner. He was earning a living from age 12 and married at 20 (early for that era), though his first child was not born until he was 28 (late for that era). Another great-great grandfather quit school and started working at age 14 (first job was in a sawmill), married at age 25, sired his first child at age 26, founded the business that made him prosperous at 30. As late as 1928, men were more often than not working by age 15, and colleges and universities cadged about 6% of each cohort.
physicsguy; Cicero:
A great deal of what’s pushing it even further, however, is social media, and is driven by the teenagers themselves. Adults definitely have a role, and in particular I think the medical and therapy professions are gravely at fault, but the thing has also taken on a teenage life of its own.
Anybody remember the Slenderman attempted murder? Does not take much to get some kids ‘way out on some other galaxy.
Neo– IIRC, the detransitioner named Helena who was featured on Bari Weiss’s Substack went into some detail about Tumblr as the platform that introduced her to the trans “community.”
Cicero:
The Northern states and the Northeast of the 1840s – 1860 was nothing culturally like the NE/Acella Corridor/West Coast of today. A lot of midwestern Union rural people fought and died in the Civil War.
Misplaced history IMO.
I’ve said for awhile that teen girls are nut jobs. Whatever the “in” thing spreads amongst them worse than head lice.
Back in my high school days, “Sibyl” was in, as was Sylvia Plath. Girls were convinced they either had multiple personality disorder, or they wallowed in depression. Late on, it was anorexia. In seventeenth century Salem Massachusetts, it was witchcraft. Today it’s this trans s***.
Plus ça change…
It is nicer when it’s less destructive. At least in my high school days, they were wasting their parents’ money going to mental hospitals.
Our daughter, who is a therapist, recently announced that she is not accepting trans clients anymore. Therapists who want to help their clients are being sabotaged by the medical profession/academia/social media. It becomes impossible to steer a middle ground where the young women can explore all their options including the possibility that it’s a feeling that may change with time. There is intense pressure to “go all in” – with drugs and even surgery.
On the other hand, most parents want their daughters “cured.”
The therapist is caught between those two opposing forces. A therapist who is conscientious cannot go along with the trans agenda and is unable, in this environment, to deliver for the parents. It’s a lose, lose proposition.
Our daughter is more and more disillusioned by n her profession. So many have jumped on the trans agenda bandwagon – what are they thinking?
Erma Bombeck once said that the two hardest years of her life were the year she was 13 and the year her daughter was 13.
Erma Bombeck once said that the two hardest years of her life were the year she was 13 and the year her daughter was 13.
Her’s is a voice I miss.
Re:JJ
They are not thinking. This is purely emotional and political.
Lee hit the Salem witch trials right on the mark.
Bitcoin may be a real store of value, or not, but NFTs are absolutely a tulip bulbs craze without the pretty flowers.
In time, even dysfunctional fads fade from popularity.
But without positive, grounded, parental role models of both sexes, both girls and boys development is easily derailed and the next unhealthy fad finds fertile ground.
physicsguy,
“What the Ds have done to promote this trans thing is once again showing how evil these people really are. Then add in the leftist teachers pushing this on such impressionable teen girls. We need a divorce…the northeast and west coast can go their own way then leave the rest of us the hell alone.”
Firstly, they won’t leave the rest of us the hell alone. Ideological fanatics by definition are incapable of an attitude of live and let live.
Secondly, China and Islam would be delighted with a dismembered America. To withstand the totalitarianism of China and Islam requires a healty society (as Jordan Peterson points out) which consists of both the innovative and the common sensical. Those on the left excel at innovation. The right at remaining grounded in reality. There are good people on both sides of the ideological divide. That currently the left has more fully embraced evil does not obviate the comparitive banality of evil present on the right.
Thirdly, no legal remedy exists for a fundamental ideological antipathy that has embraced evil. It must be met and its dominance eliminated… from both sides.
The greater the evil, the greater the sacrifice required of good to defeat it. While understanding that mankind’s fallen nature ensures that evil, will in time reappear. Which is why the struggle between good and evil has always held humanity’s ‘attention’.
Our daughter is more and more disillusioned by n her profession. So many have jumped on the trans agenda bandwagon – what are they thinking?
The mental health trade has a number of fractions. One fraction embraced psychosurgery. Another embraced psychoanalysis. Another embraced repressed memory hoo ha. Another embraced the notion that every woman with problems has an alcoholic father. There’s a small fraction who fancies dissociative disorder (three faces of Eve) exists. DSM gets more and more bloated with each iteration. For all our investment in the helping professions, the suicide rate seems to bounce around a set point, varying by demographic segments but never declining long-term.
Affluenza. This is all just too stupid.
PA Cat:
Helena Kirschner is the woman you mention who detransitioned and her story is fascinating and heartbreaking. She describes a subculture that I barely new existed but that has a very strong influence on many teen girls. She never felt any sense of gender dysphoria growing up and liked typically feminine things. But she did have some emotional problems that she thought would be solved by becoming trans.
She describes a subculture on Tumblr revolving around fan fiction where nobody would pay any attention to the opinions of “cis het white girls”. So with the support of her new community she decided that she must actually be a gay boy. She started taking testosterone in very high doses when she turned 18 but fortunately for her she never had any surgery.
The testosterone played havoc with her emotional stability and led to a breakdown. At 19 she realized that she had made a huge mistake and began putting her life back together. I highly recommend reading her essay “By Any Other Name”. Her story is not unique. As Neo mentioned, transitioning for many young girls is actually a form of self harm. In a few years I think we will see thousands of lawsuits against medical professionals who pushed vulnerable girls into making disastrous irreversible decisions. We will wonder how could we have possibly done this to our children.
Even as a child, I took comfort in black humor, so it’s no wonder that I kept trying to think of something funny as I scrolled through these comments.
No such luck. This is just awful and pathetic.
“But without positive, grounded, parental role models of both sexes, both girls and boys development is easily derailed and the next unhealthy fad finds fertile ground.” — GB is on the money as usual.
This shit stops when parents act like adult parents.
When theirs is a stable marriage.
When Christian faith is foundational to the household values.
When peers are “sifted” through parental screens & social media is kept at bay.
When the schoolhouse knows there’s real accountability that slices both ways.
I could go on…but I reckon y’all get the point.
Thank you for all the great comments.
Yes, the medical community has abdicated it’s responsibilities.
The LGB community has done no favors for the transgendered community, nor has the TG community helped the LGB community. Transsexuals have been ostracized and booted from the TG community. Which is good, as that community has lost its MIND.
Important to note, even though it’s obvious, that the transgender community is doing all this “outreach” and “grooming”—and all this fomentation of hatred for anyone that opposes, or even questions, their perverse and destructive agenda—in order to “HELP”!!!
Like communists.
Like “progressives”.
Like antifa.
Like BLM.
Like the Democratic Party.
Which is why so many of the earnest, if feeble-minded, liberals and moralizing, if cockamamie, “perfectionists” get sucked in to these destructive scams.
Seems that the post-modern ethic and philosophy—unless we’re already up to post-post-modern (or have we hit post-post-post-modern, I can’t keep up)—if one really, truly wants to help people and save the world/planet, then the first step is to do as much as possible to damage the former, emotionally AND NOW physically…while working unceasingly to destroy the latter.
Seems counter-intuitive but then…”intuitive” MEANS white, patricarchal, oppressive, colonialist, sexist, racist, zionist…ergo…
And so, VOTE Democratic Party! Help the needy! Save the World!!
On ONT at AoSHq this link
Perfect description of grooming
https://pitt.substack.com/p/saga-of-sage?s=r
“we will see thousands of lawsuits against medical professionals who pushed vulnerable girls into making disastrous irreversible decisions.”
The trans change support from the medical professionals won’t end until such lawsuits are won by those whose lives have been harmed.
Fantasy testimony: “I was a confused teen minor, you were the adult who’s job it was to help me. I was too young to vote, too young to drink, too young to drive (for some) – and far too young and too immature to know about my own sex life. Your support for my youthful delusions has caused me irreversible harm…”
$100,000 and more awards will quickly make the hospitals more careful.
The teen-age brain starts to change around age 13
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/04/29/teen-brain-mom-voice/3311651253694/
For children who are transitioned, the damages will be for loss of fertility, loss of healthy body parts, reduction in lifespan, and (in some cases) loss of intimate function. The judgments are going to be far larger than $100k.
Lawsuits will stop doctors and drug companies, or at least cause them to implement more procedural controls. There are so many people sincerely and fully committed to this ideology, though, that I struggle to see a clear end game. How will adults who encouraged children to undergo transition procedures admit error? If a parent, or uncle, or teacher, or other adult in authority signs on to a quack ideology and causes a child they care about to be permanently mutilated and sterilized, most adults aren’t going to be able to just say “whoops, my bad” and get on with their lives.
I suspect that some will soothe their consciences by blaming the whole thing on doctors and drug companies. I’m afraid that a lot more, though, will never give up the fight, or find some backwards rationalization that allows them to keep believing. I fear this is going to be a much longer and much uglier fight than any of us would like.
I wonder if the author has considered the association, if any, betwixt her politically liberal ideology and , much to her chagrin, what her daughter is experiencing.
Since the mom is liberal, I will venture to guess that if asked she would not see any association at all.
Thus is the liberal mindset; reality takes a seat way way back on a bus driven by a utopian fantasy of a “perfect” society.
The trans change support from the medical professionals won’t end until such lawsuits are won by those whose lives have been harmed.
That is what ended the “Recovered Memories” hysteria. Malpractice insurance vanished for the psychologists involved and the whole thing collapsed.
I am curious about the mother who is describing her “teenaged daughter.” Then she says “she was moved to a new, cool trans-friendly school by her unsuspecting, politically liberal parents. ” Is the mother describing herself?
Elliot Page – Macho Man of Hollywood.
Mike K:
Unless she’s describing a situation in which the father and his new wife moved the child to the new school, I conclude that she would be describing herself as part of the couple making the decision. I see her tone as ironic, as in “I was a good little liberal and look what happened to me and my family.”
I doubt there’s many teens who don’t go through some form of an “awkward” period unless they’re very lucky and I don’t think there were many high school teachers who openly promoted self-destructive behavior. Today there are teachers from elementary through high school openly militant about promoting alternative gender identity–at times it seems quite “in your face”.