Wouldn’t it seem that this study Dr. Littman undertook (with all academic rigour) would be applauded? Just the opposite. The gender activists pounced and tried to prevent her work from going forward, claiming these young girls were simply becoming the boys they always were; even though nothing like ROGD has ever happened anywhere, in any culture, in any era, ever. (I always like to remind folks — especially young people who have grown up in this brave new world — that “trans” wasn’t even “a thing” 20 years ago, and now…“everyone is trans.”)
Genuine gender dysphoria is an extremely rare condition, affecting only .2 per cent of the population, and, if found in children, was found almost exclusively in boys beginning around five years of age. It’s amazing what grooming can do. The grooming is everywhere. I inform young people that the laws, dictionaries, entertainment, schools, education, some religions, courts, media, news, hospitals, medical profession, psychological profession just changed everything right before they were born.
Dr. Littman discovered that one major contributing factor was social contagion. If a young lady in question had a social group where one or more of her girlfriends were thinking of “transitioning,” suddenly, all of them wanted to transition together.
Another ubiquitous element was smartphones. Many other findings, besides Dr. Littman’s study, mark the beginning of a young person (girl or boy) wanting to begin “transitioning” to the other sex (puberty-blocking hormones, changing name, changing dress, etc.) at when they got their first smartphone. It’s estimated that youth spend eight hours a day with their screens, imbibing all kinds of life-altering messages that powerful lobbies and advertisers want them to embrace and assimilate. And sometimes, it’s just other young people creating how-to videos.
How many meaningful hours a day do youth spend talking with parents, or even talking (sans technology) with siblings and friends? How much input do they get a day (through media or elsewhere) about God and how to achieve His amazing plans for them?
The gender activists immediately play the suicide card if anyone dares question a young person’s desire to transition. This is not true. That rare .2 per cent of the population with true gender dysphoria do have a higher suicide rate then the rest of the population, but they also always have other attendant pathologies such as severe depression, bi-polar disorder, etc. In fact, those who go through with transitioning (thinking it will solve all their problems) are 19 per cent more likely to commit suicide after transitioning. Also, if you keep telling a young person they have only two options, transitioning or suicide, how do you think they’ll react?
What did the supposedly scads of “trans” youth of yesteryear do when there were no drugs and surgeries? Once people know there’s an option, we demand it, we have to have it, we believe we can’t live without it. But the simple fact remains: one cannot change his/her sex. Every cell of our bodies is gendered.
Do an online search for “detransitioning” youth. These are tender young people who were rushed into irreversible damage. Yes, the radical and invasive interventions done to developing bodies, from hormones to surgeries are irreversible, despite the lies told to youth and parents that they are not. Those detransitioning almost instantly regretted the choice they’d made, and began to try to reconstruct themselves as the young man or woman they were by nature. Such young people are livid. Most were offered exactly zero therapy to find out what was going on in their lives. This is child abuse on a massive scale from trusted, “expert” adults across multiple professions. The lawsuits are just beginning.
So how do we help today’s young people experiencing gender confusion? Good therapy. No, not “conversion therapy,” just good therapy: bestforchildren.org, genderresourceguide.com, and for a slew of amazing educational resources? Contact me on Twitter!
(Sr. Helena Raphael Burns, fsp, is a Daughter of St. Paul. She holds a Masters in Media Literacy Education and studied screenwriting at UCLA. HellBurns.com. Twitter: @srhelenaburns.)