Peer Pressure

Saw this article over at WSJ and it sparked some thoughts that I've been having for a while.  The whole LGBTQ movement has had some unbelievably major successes in the last few decades and our society is much better for it.  I've written previously about the shift in our culture as a result of the gay rights movement and I truly believe that it is the most significant and swiftest shift in culture in human history.  And I'm in full agreement with equality for all.

But I saw the article at the link and it did a good job in laying out a concern I've had.  The article is titled "Peer Pressure and 'Transgender' Teens".  It describes the work of Dr Lisa Littman in asking questions and conducting research on the issue of teenagers in some cases bowing to peer pressure and actually coming out as a transgender.  Of course, she's been highly criticized by the PC crowd, but the issue remains.

Now I've not been in any teen groups to know how they think.  And it's been quite a while since I was a teen and I fully admit that there weren't any issues like this when I was a kid.  At least I didn't know about them if they were there.  But I've seen some teen groups in my work in the community, and I see the peer pressure to fit in.  I've seen and heard of teen groups in which one or more teens come out as gay or transgender or bisexual or whatever, and there seems to be a propensity for at least a large degree of sympathy (or maybe empathy) and I sometimes wonder if there isn't some amount of identification that leads to some sort of unconscious mimicking and in turn that results in teens adopting a role that maybe isn't true to them.  Maybe I'm wrong about this but it seems to me that there are an awful lot of teens who are announcing that they are something that in a different era wouldn't have even been on the table.  Or maybe it was always there and I didn't see it.  Don't know.  But I do know that it's an important subject for parents to consider as they help their teens navigate through some difficult years.  When my kids were teenagers, I just don't remember all of the ancillary problems that do nothing but add to what are already highly emotional years.  Glad I'm looking at the rear view mirror for that task.

Anyway, the article is thought provoking.  If I were a current parent, I'd want this kind of info to help me deal with issues that are complicated and fraught with missteps.  In case the link doesn't work I'll copy the whole thing below.

"Peer Pressure and ‘Transgender’ Teens

Ideologues try to suppress a study on the increasing prevalence of ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria.’

By Jillian Kay Melchior

Sept. 9, 2018 

If your teenage daughter suddenly declares herself transgender, should you assume she’s mature enough to make decisions that will permanently affect her health, fertility and future? Or could she be influenced by societal and peer pressure? Physician and researcher Lisa Littman doesn’t have the answer, but transgender ideologues are trying to silence her for even asking the question.

Dr. Littman’s study about transgender-identifying teens was published in the open-source, multidisciplinary scientific journal PLOS ONE last month. Her interest had been piqued in 2016, when she noticed an uptick in parental reports that teens had suddenly insisted their gender identity didn’t match their sex, although they’d shown none of the common prepubescent signs of the condition, known as gender dysphoria. She spoke to a clinician who’d observed the same trend. “When the characteristics of a population seeking care for a condition substantially changes, the responsible thing to do is to start asking questions about what might be contributing to these changes,” Dr. Littman says.

Since little is known about such “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” the first step for researchers is to describe it and introduce topics for future inquiry. Dr. Littman surveyed 256 parents, whom she found online, collecting information about the teens’ mental health, friend-group dynamics and social-media use. Dr. Littman’s findings suggested these young people may have been driven in part by “social and peer contagion.”

Nearly 70% of the teenagers belonged to a peer group in which at least one friend had also come out as transgender. In some groups, the majority had done so. Nearly 65% of teens had spent an increased amount of time online and on social media, and parents reported that pro-transgender YouTube videos and blogs might have been influential.

Declaring oneself transgender carried social benefits, the parents reported. Among parents who knew their children’s social status, nearly 60% said the announcement brought a popularity boost. “Being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens,” one parent wrote.

Not all social pressure was positive. Many respondents said their children’s friends frequently mocked or derided people who were not gay or transgender. “To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories within this group of friends,” one parent observed. Parents often said that children who had second thoughts about being transgender feared social repercussions. “[My child] couldn’t face the stigma of going back to school and being branded as fake or phony . . . or worse, a traitor or some kind of betrayer,” one reported.

Dr. Littman’s critics claim that because she found survey participants primarily from three websites where parents discussed their concerns, the study is biased and scientifically unsound. Dr. Littman

Dr. Littman’s detractors also accuse her of bigotry. Her work “negates the experience of many transgender youth,” according to Diane Ehrensaft, of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic at the University of California San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital.

Transgender activist Brynn Tannehill calls Dr. Littman’s research “a naked attempt to legitimize anti-transgender animus with a veneer of academic responsibility.” And Zinnia Jones, founder of the website Gender Analysis, called rapid-onset gender dysphoria a “hoax diagnosis” perpetuated by those who would deny transgender children “acceptance and affirmation.” The motto of Ms. Jones’s website: “The personal is empirical.”

The effort at suppression had an effect. PLOS ONE’s editor-in-chief, Joerg Heber, announced the journal would subject the study to “further expert assessment on the study’s methodology and analyses.” Spokesman David Knutson told me: “Any time there’s a lot of reader concern or a lot of people talking about it, it warrants a second look, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” adding that this is “basically how science works.” Mr. Knutson would not elaborate about what specific concerns prompted the review or what it would entail.

Brown University, where Dr. Littman is an untenured professor, has also backed away from her paper. It took down a news release and attendant social-media posts about the study and posted a statement from Bess Marcus, dean of the School of Public Health, acknowledging “concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.” The university updated its statement Thursday, emphasizing that "this is not about academic freedom as some news outlets have made it out to be” and “this is about academic standards.”

Cass Cliatt, Brown’s vice president for communications, tells me Brown was merely “reacting to PLOS ONE.” It doesn’t censor controversial research, Ms. Cliatt says, but in this case, “it’s a question about the science. We believe strongly in academic freedom, but we have to be a responsible academic institution.”

The reaction to Dr. Littman’s study is especially overwrought given the modesty of her conclusions. She argues for more research and counsels caution in the meantime. Parents and physicians aren’t infallible, she writes, but neither are teens, “particularly in the almost universally tumultuous period of adolescence.” Consequently, “it is incumbent upon all professionals to fully respect the young person’s insider perspective but also, in the interests of safe diagnosis and avoidance of clinical harm, to have the awareness and humility themselves to engage with parental perspectives and triangulate evidence in the interest of validity and reliability.”

When teens sought treatment for gender dysphoria, the parents reported, clinicians often took the complaint at face value and failed to consider whether anything else might be going on. As for Dr. Littman’s critics, they equate caution with bias, even hatred, and encourage teens to go through hormone therapy or surgery—drastic interventions whose effects are irreversible."

Ms. Melchior is an editorial page writer at the Journal.