A Springer Nature journal has rescinded the acceptance of a paper criticizing the publishing giant’s controversial retraction last year of an article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, leading an associate editor to resign, Retraction Watch has learned.
According to emails we obtained, the blocked paper was slated to appear as a commentary in a special issue of Springer Nature’s Current Psychology that aimed “to stimulate discussion of all aspects of the ‘unpublication’ of scientific articles.”
“This is the only time I’ve had an accepted paper overruled in 4 years” as an associate editor at this journal, Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida, one of two guest editors of the special issue, told us by email.
Ferguson resigned from Current Psychology’s editorial board on August 29, a decision he said “pretty much sums up my feelings” about the publisher’s handling of the manuscript.
The aborted commentary, a draft of which Retraction Watch has seen, excoriated Springer Nature for pulling the article “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases,” which was published in March 2023 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
As we explained last year in a story preceding the much-criticized paper’s retraction:
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) is, the article stated, a “controversial theory” that “common cultural beliefs, values, and preoccupations cause some adolescents (especially female adolescents) to attribute their social problems, feelings, and mental health issues to gender dysphoria,” and that “youth with ROGD falsely believe that they are transgender,” in part due to social influences.
In the canceled commentary, which contained several instances of opinion and conjecture, Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a coauthor of the 2023 paper, argued that retractions are “increasingly a vehicle for scientific censorship.” He laid out the details of how his work was withdrawn and speculated about the publisher’s motivations.
“I was critical of Springer Nature, because I believed its decision to retract my 2023 article was made for ideological rather than ethical reasons,” Bailey told us by email. “Furthermore, I criticized other actions by Springer Nature and its journals, such as Nature Human Behaviour, which deemphasize scientific integrity for the sake of identity politics. This recent experience does nothing to dampen that criticism.”
Bailey described himself in the commentary as “tenured, thick-skinned, and annoyed by present trends in academia away from academic freedom and towards identity politics.” Other academics have made similar points in the past, highlighting the risks to democracy when activists attack scientists over research they find politically unacceptable.
According to the author, Ferguson had invited him to contribute to the special issue on retractions in Current Psychology in June 2023. Bailey submitted his paper two months later. In October, editor-in-chief of the journal Richard Ferraro told Bailey by email that two of three reviewers had recommended acceptance, but noted that “the Reject review aligns with my thoughts to an extent” and asked for a revision.
Bailey replied that he would not make the changes suggested by Ferraro, but was “willing to consider very specific modifications” that Ferguson had recommended. On December 18, Ferguson wrote to Bailey, in part:
This is a tricky issue and I know you (and I) want you to have your chance to get on the record with this. I also think this is an important message to get into the public. Although it’s true you could publish this in [the Journal of Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science, a title published by the Society for Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science, which Bailey co-founded in 2021], I think there are some advantages of you publishing this with Springer/Nature, not the least of which is that it weakens censorship efforts by tackling it directly at the source. Put bluntly, perhaps, I see value in publishing a criticism of Springer/Nature’s censorship in Springer/Nature.
(The retracted paper was since republished in the Journal of Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science, drawing flak from the LGBTQ community.)
Bailey said he submitted a revision of his manuscript on March 27 and that it was accepted on May 21. In July, however, the paper had still not been published, and Bailey asked Ferguson for an update.
“Well it’s done and scheduled for the special issue, so there’s no plan (that I know of) to squish it,” Ferguson responded, adding that the paper had been “switched to a ‘commentary.’”
Ferguson added: “Do I suspect they feel a bit embarrassed by your article…maybe…but they seem to have done the ‘right’ thing.”
Then, on August 29, Bailey received an email from Ferraro, one of the journal’s two editors-in-chief:
Dear author,
You have submitted a manuscript to a special issue in Current Psychology, Retractions and Their Discontents. The guest editors had in principle accepted your manuscript and based on their recommendation, we also provisionally accepted your manuscript. As the Editors-in-Chief of Current Psychology, the final responsibility for the content of the journal, including its special issues, lies with us.
Upon further review and after careful consideration following conversations with the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group, we have decided not to proceed with the publication of your manuscript. What you have submitted appears to be an opinion piece, rather than an original research article and therefore not suitable for publication. We have therefore rescinded the accept decision.
Best regards,
F. Richard Ferraro
Lauren S. Seifert
Co-Editors-in-Chief of Current Psychology
Ferguson said he was informed of the decision to withdraw the acceptance of the commentary that same day.
“Apparently some kind of ‘Integrity Group’ at Springer got a hold of it, decided to squash it, and used the excuse that this was because it was an opinion piece (of course there are zillions of opinion pieces in all manner of psychology journals including, I am sure, many others Springer publishes),” he told us. “So I think it was this Integrity Group that [prompted the retraction], pretty much supervening all the actual scholars involved.”
Teresa Krauss, Publishing Director at Springer Nature, told us:
Springer Nature expects all submitted manuscripts – whether original research, commentaries, or editorials – to contain factual and accurate information as part of our commitment to maintaining the validity of the scientific record. Journal editors can contact the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group for advice on any manuscript under consideration. In this instance, RIG was consulted due to concerns about the accuracy of some statements in the manuscript.
After examination of these concerns, the Editors were advised that they may want to review the manuscript again. After further careful consideration, they took the editorial decision to rescind the initial acceptance decision.
Editor’s Note (1500 UTC, 9/5/24): We have edited the headline and first paragraph of this story to attribute opinions about what occurred in this case. We have asked Springer Nature for details of the exchanges between the RIG and the editors of the journal in order to better understand what happened, and will update with anything we learn.
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Springer Nature is seriously attempting to pollute science with ideologies, including communist, Marxist, socialist, and wokeist ideologies.
I get that you consider certain perspectives that you disagree with as “woke-ism.” But could you please provide examples of Springer Nature promoting Marxism and socialism?
“ In the canceled commentary, which contained several instances of opinion and conjecture”
So in other words, a commentary.
It is disheartening to see a major publisher prioritize ideology over science. Are they aware of how they are undermining the essence of scientific inquiry, and the harm they are thereby causing to society?
They don’t care! Look at their recent email to our colleagues: “The research landscape was dominated by western researchers 20 years ago. Today, China produces some of the most impactful and the highest volume of research papers and India is third in volume. As can be seen in our first Editor Diversity report, our Editorial Boards still reflect the diversity seen in the research landscape 10 years ago and we are actively trying to change this. As well as supporting journals with recruitment needs, there are many resources to support Editors-in-Chief to recruit more diverse boards. We also strongly encourage all editors to use more diverse reviewers to support your peer reviewing.”
This type of current controversy over the “suitability” of research papers critical of concepts dear to the leftist/woke “guardians-of-truth” is what prompted me to leave academia years ago. At that point I had realized that psychology, political “science”, and all the other behavioral sciences had become compromised by political activists and “true believer” ideologues who passionately believed they already knew “the truth” about all the research topics in these fields. In other words, these truth gangsters were saying, “…. no research is necessary because we already know the true nature of these social and psychological processes.” I had studied to become a research psychologist to discover the underlying mechanisms of human psychological and social functioning, but the marketplace of ideas in the general public had changed in the intervening years and the “truths” I thought would better humanity apparently had losr their value. A significant swath of the population preferred “feel-good” beliefs over whatever science had to offer. The leftist/woke religion offered its adherents happiness, and to hell with what the behavioral scientist heredicts say. I have never regretted leaving the contentious environment of academia, for, as in a bad marriage, there comes a time where you realize the strife is not resolvable by appeals to rationality, truth, and logic because it is all raw, human, irrational passion. Unfortunately for science, it signals that humanity is now entering The Dark Ages 2.
You nailed it! Very sorry that talented people like you leave science just to be replaced by idiot woke ideologists.
As a clinical psychologist and researcher, Current Psychology was one of the last journals I had real respect for. They were open-minded and put scientific methodology above political ideology. My fellow researchers and I lament how the psychological research field is collapsing (when it comes to publishing anything that threatens the left-wing narrative).
Before jumping to conclusions, folks might want to do a web search for “J. Michael Bailey” or “Michael Bailey psychology” or “Michael Bailey Northwestern University” to obtain some context about his academic history and prior controversies.
At the very least, there are historical questions as to how rigorously he has followed proper research protocols and practices.
He was a department head who was removed from that position.
Thanks. Reading about him and his “controversies” actually confirmed my suspicion that Springer Nature censured Bailey because of their nasty ideologies. Alice Dreger: “These critics, rather than restrict themselves to the argument over the ideas, had charged Bailey with a whole host of serious crimes,” but that “what they claimed about Bailey simply wasn’t true.”
Dreger, Alice Domurat (2015). Galileo’s middle finger: heretics, activists, and the search for justice in science. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 9781594206085. pp. 9-10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey
Michael Bailey was the subject of vilification and lies by transgender activists who did not like his publication on autogynephilia. This is a well-established condition whereby men gain sexual arousal through the thought of themself as a woman or by dressing as a woman. Transgender activists deny that this condition exists because it sullies and discredits their claims to actually be women. However there are support groups for sufferers of this condition and thorough academic work documenting it.
People who whistle-blow tend to be, as you say, controversial. That you question Bailey’s rigor, in the face of the absurd, nonsensical stuff being churned out by the for-profit, pro-transgender lobby, would make me laugh if it weren’t so sad. I’ve googled him, I’ve researched his work, and my conclusion is that he makes sense and his work is rigorous. Not perfect: rigorous. The same cannot be said for those pushing the insane idea that we can be born in the ‘wrong’ body and that modern medicine can correct that. There’s no research that supports this notion, and those pushing it are doing so for financial and political, not scientific, reasons.
Contrary to most of the comments lamenting the supposed “woke,” “leftist” culture supposedly taking over science, it’s clear from even a cursory look at the original author’s record that it’s he who is motivated by ideology and bias, not the publishers
How can evidence-based science be “motivated” by ideology and bias?! Was Galilei motivated by ideology when he said the earth orbits the sun?
Because people’s ideology or bias might knowingly or unknowingly select data that supports their beliefs. It’s why double-blind studies have the most trust. The format limits bias more than others.
Yes I know that (elementary school knowledge) but when I say “evidence-based science”, it inherently means that “selection bias” and some other forms of bias are already taken care of to a good degree using methods like randomization etc.
You’re arguing from your conclusion. Yes, if selection bias has been eliminated, then there is no selection bias.
The question is, was selection bias eliminated? Were other sources of error controlled for?
That Wikipedia article you link to explains that the “data” here are a long way from being objective or double-blinded. They interviewed, not the adolescents, but their parents. How many parents are objective about their adolescent children, on any subject? Never mind “my child isn’t really trans,” parents are famously biased about their children’s abilities.
The claim isn’t “many parents whose children say they’re trans don’t believe them,” or “many transgender people’s parents don’t believe that they’re trans”–those are both hypotheses about the parents, with different assumptions, for either of which it would make sense to interview the parents as well as the children. The claim is “many adolescents who identify as trans are wrong” with the crucial assumption–not fact–that parents are the best authority about their children.
@Vicki,
1. The selection bias is not supposed to be “eliminated”. Nor did I say it is “eliminated”. I said “it is taken care of to a good degree”.
2. I didn’t post any links. If you mean Galileo’s link, which Wikipedia article talks about the data being far from double-blind or objective? Couldn’t find them in that link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey
3. If you believe the study is wrong due to bad methodology, go conduct the perfect study and prove Bailey wrong. No room for any (political or ideological) irritation or retraction.
4. Vicki: “The claim is “many adolescents who identify as trans are wrong” with the crucial assumption–not fact–that parents are the best authority about their children.”
me: Can you answer these 2 important questions?
1. What’s wrong with that claim? That claim actually seems worth investigating. It may be true, and if it is true, the irreversible surgeries and hormone therapies will be a mass slaughter. So why do you think it is a bad claim?
2. If it isn’t a fact, then who else is the best authority about parents’ children?
If you bothered to read past your own biases, you’d change your mind about that.
It’s amazing to me that so many here can complain about the woes of a supposedly ‘censored’ author who still managed to publish his commentary, get an article in Retraction Watch and get covered by major media outlets. What a plight.
As for ROGD, a position statement from over 50 psychological associations, including America, Portugal and Puerto Rico, dismiss the concept due to a lack of empirical evidence and it’s potential for harm when used in clinical setting.
>dismiss the concept due to a lack of empirical evidence
Isn’t the issue here the fact that there is clearly a concerted effort on the part of various researchers and publishing staff to prevent the accumulation and publication of such evidence?
I mean, a quick Google Scholar search on ROGD or kids awareness of their own gender dysphoria comes up with plenty of results, and there are extensive media ecosystems that exist to prop up ROGD supportive views.
As opposed to being some plot, this rather seems like something the scientific community has looked at and decided was unfounded.
The issue here is that if a researcher touts that they found something radical, that might shake up the field of how we treat and look at transchildren’s issues, we expect the research to show this.
This is true for these children’s request for medical or mental healthcare: we simply expect this “researcher” to have researched the children she is talking about and whose healthcare, their mental struggles she is now villifying, denying and suggesting they don’t actually exist and should be discouraged from being treated in the way we do.
But when we literally see that no children were interviewed, no doctors, just parents, found on biased websites (huuuge confirmation bias problem right there), and that surveys typically aren’t considered methodologically sound ways to gather information, scientific journals should do their job and say “Hey, maybe not publish this, because it lacks the rigorous standards set out for research papers.”
These surveys further, also, not being limited to a single participant and being capable of being filled in by the same person multiple times, and, merely for not being spread through something like the record-set of patients of, let’s say, a gender clinic, can also not be validated when it comes to how reliable the answers given are, given you can’t be fairly sure these people are actual parents of transpeople.
The issue here is that there is clearly a concerted effort to once again reintroduce a flawed term that PLoS One in the earlier ROGD piece said should not be taken for a formal diagnosis nor a direction of treatment of transchildren, since the research never interviewed transchildren.
Would you feel happy if I were to shout something about some bodily ailment you have by talking about everyone around you not dealing with that ailment?
I bet you don’t. And that’s the problem that transpeople have with it.
Sometimes, when people ask me how to recognize transphobic research, remarks or politicians, I tell them to replace transchildren/transpeople with any other minority and see if the piece becomes massively racist with that simple change.
If it does, it’s typically transphobic.
I am the parent of a child who had NO early life confusion about her sex or “gender”, but started questioning “gender” in adolescence after sustained use of Tumblr platform and under influence of peers. I speak to hundreds of parents who tell the same story. This is ROGD, but I think it would be better termed ‘adolescent onset gender dysphoria’. We have seen other contagions such as TikTok Tourette’s syndrome. Why is it so unbelievable that this is a social contagion?
Dysphoria often arises as a result of the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, as you admit yourself with the term ‘adolescent onset gender dysphoria’. A four year old female child is more similar physically to a four year old male child than those same two children would be a decade later. Additionally, puberty often leads to an increase in gendered treatment. I found once I grew breasts that I was no longer treated as a child but as a woman, with all the misogynistic baggage that entailed.
I do think that ROGD isn’t worth the time of day, but that’s because I see it as being bog-obvious stuff on the same level as how I didn’t realize I was gay until I found out lesbians existed as a 12 year old. And I got the same arguments at the time about how my parents understood me better than I did myself, that it was a phase, that I was confused and seeking attention but would eventually find a boy I liked and realize I was being silly.
Instead I got a wife.
I’m not saying all teenagers who say they’re trans will be trans in the long run, and I am against underage surgery. But I do think enough of them will, and they will remember this not as parental concern but as the time they got argued with about their own identity by someone who didn’t have to live in their brain.
You know the symptoms of gender dysphoria are mostly ones that can be kept to oneself. Wishing you were another gender but keeping it to yourself, because you have a feeling that others will see you as less or you’ll be punished, is very possible. Plus other signs can be recognized in hindsight when kids can do weird things and it’s just being kids.
That and what the lesbian said, puberty kind of makes the whole sex characteristic thing a lot more prevalent. Combined with the fact that being gay was described as a phase that was being spread to straight kids, there are pretty good reasons to think “hey maybe this is biased”
Lastly, I came out at 15 to my mom and she was confused but always tried to be supportive. Me and her are incredibly close today. She saw no signs either, and honestly I see comments like yours and am grateful that my mom didn’t try to claim I was a ROGD kid, because I know I fit the description. The trans “contagion” got to me because I thought that I could not and ever be another gender, and only needed to see others do so prove it. It was the same way with my sexuality, I denied that I felt anything until I was shown that others feel it too.
Littmans study, if you actually read it, barely had any statistically significant results, but one of them was the distance between kids and their parents. The information I just shared is not something my mom would think of because honestly? I wouldn’t want you make her feel upset about something she couldn’t control. I can only imagine the lack of information parents who have strained if not inexistent relationships with their children would have.
I’ve been trans for about a decade now and on hormones for five years. I think that’s good enough for most people when it comes to believing I’m transgender.
Ok, so I’m going to do a little thought experiment and I would like you to answer truthfully and honestly.
I grew up in the 90’s, being born in 1988. If words, images, or media in general have such a massively strong, powerful influence over children, as you claim they do, how come all the cis-gender, super-straight normative imagery/media I grew up with completely failed to keep me cis-gender and straight?
TikTok’s Tourette syndrome is not a contagion: It is merely people being absolutely awful people trying to popularize themselves by stating they have something that they don’t have, don’t understand, and mischaracterize as something funny or distinctive quirk.
A contagion is like the flu: When you ACTUALLY catch something and you then have it as well.
With the whole “faking mental problems or other bodily problems” that actual, very real people can actually have, people didn’t get Tourette’s syndrome. They don’t become transgender because of media.
Because here is the thing: People with Tourette almost always have it because they were born with it (yes I know, there can be brain-injuries suffered due to severe accidents that can also cause it). People who are transgender, like me, are transgender because they are born that way.
The reason it is so unbelievable to see this as a contagion is this:
When I use the last moment the amount of referrals were counted (which is what Littman is sort of concerned about while it’s not even actual treatment) in my country, The Netherlands, there’s an amount of a little over 5600 referrals (so not diagnoses) to a gender clinic.
That’s all children combined, corrected for double referrals because of how transchildren tend to enlist themselves at multiple treatment options merely to know which one is faster, due to the tremendous waiting lists.
My country recently reached a total of 18.000.000 citizens (that’s million, to be clear, the character used to denote thousands is not a comma in Europe).
If we were to take this 5600, we are looking at little less than 0,03% of our total population.
When I use the National Bureau for Statistics, (CBS) and look at the amount of people below 18, that’s a number of about 3.303.345 .
Be advised that I’m lumping together everyone from 0 to 18 years. After all, transchildren can appear from the age of 3-4 years of age, even though the group of patients knowing that early in life is one of the smallest there is.
When we use that referral number of a little over 5600, we are looking at a little bit over 0,6% of all children.
Each year, less than 100 transchildren receive the treatment with puberty blockers or hormones. Less than 100.
Partially, yes, this is down to treatment capacity being well below required standards to help everyone in a timely manner.
The current waiting time for adolescent children between referral and intake is 3,5 years. 3,5!!
So if this were to be a societal contagion, do you honestly believe a transchild is holding up a charade for at least 3,5 years from the moment parents decided to listen well to the concerns their child has over their body’s development?
Do you honestly believe a whole set of doctors (because of the multidisciplinary nature of a gender clinic a single doctor can’t decide on treatment on their own) then, after the intake completely fails to do their job of assessing the child’s mental health, and mental capacity and capability to endure the treatment that at first consists out of puberty blockers?
Drugs that, by the way, have been in use for over 40 years for cis-gender children but are typically deemed “irreversible” by the worlds biggest non-experts in this field who typically are anything but doctors, but actually masters in law converted to journalists/researchers (Abigail Shrier), or people who lack any credentials of EVER working with transchildren? (I’m talking about Hilary Cass who has leaned heavily into the ROGD-trope).
Because here is the thing: I as a transwoman probably would not fit the definition of “early life confusion” to the degree that I know some transpeople have had it. It wasn’t overly obvious to my parents, but I also quickly learned to suppress the feelings I had.
Not because of my parents, but because of the outside world explicitly letting me know certain behaviors were not wanted in boys. Because I was confused, and typically mirrored my experiences to that of my identical twin brother, reasoning it “away” out of the idea that he was doing fine so it probably was part of life right?
But when puberty started I quickly found out it wasn’t part of life: none of the other boys experienced becoming a man the same as I did. I understood nothing of the fear of my voice dropping in frequency, of getting a beard.
This is why I always hate it when I hear people say “But it might change in puberty!” Which, yes, it CAN do for some transchildren, and this is why sometimes, a gender clinic that is in doubt whether a child would persist, let’s the puberty part of the child’s birth sex have it’s way and monitor the child even more closely in terms of mental health, to watch for any decline to intervene should the child mention it does not like the developments.
The fact that you speak to hundreds of parents that tell the same story is literally that: meeting like-minded people because of not acknowledging the trans-identity of said child and desperately searching for a scientific sounding basis in order for you to further deny her existence as a transperson.
I am now going back to the contagion-theory and going to use the flu-strain that gave my country an ass-kicking in 2018-2019: over 400.000 people got symptoms from the flu that disrupted their life to the point where they stayed home, a number known because these people called into their general practitioner’s office for advice over some of the symptoms.
Around 100.000 people (as a separate category from the aforementioned 400.000) were hospitalized because of breathing issues or other bodily issues exacerbated by the strong flu strain.
That is a little less than 2,8%! 2,8% of the total population (using the 18 million citizens again so not completely accurate but numbers barely differ) versus less than 0,03% of our total population!
Are you still readily admitting that it needs to be believable that transchildren are “getting the transgender virus” by peer influence or social media?
In the first 6 months of 2024 alone, the amount of people severely injured due to the use of a type of electric bicycle in The Netherlands that is typically bought illegally because it is easier to modify so it reaches speeds of 50km/h and sometimes even slightly higher than that, has risen dramatically.
These first 6 months alone saw 115 people ending up on ER’s throughout the country after an accident, typically severely injured, and often risking life-long consequences of their accident.
A little below 50% of those people is in the age range of 12-15 years of age. That is about 54 children. That, with exceptions of lower and higher numbers, is very close to transchildren being treated each year.
But because the amount of severe injuries have been rising so sharply, doctors have been begging government to take action and ban the bike, or set an age limit and a mandatory helmet-requirement.
Yet, somehow, the identity and the wish for treatments for and by transchildren keep getting condemned for being socially contagious, dangerous and problematic in almost every sense of the word, yet the first transchild to ever end up on the ER due to puberty blockers or hormones has yet to happen.
And them I’m leaving out the mere fact that these drugs are not exactly uniquely used in transchildren.
Sorry that it’s such a booklet. I know that transphobia is typically ill fought by outsciencing someone, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Greetings from a transwoman who hopes you are not actively dissuading your child from seeking mental healthcare.
And what of the potential for harm in a clinical setting of amputating young girls’ breasts, putting them on puberty blockers, and watching as they develop osteoporsis, lose the ability to experience sexual pleasure, become infertile, and spend the rest of their lives as medical patients? You don’t mention Europe in your list of 50 psych associations that dismiss the concept of ROGD: could that be because European doctors have seen the light and dialed WAY back on the gender affirmation platform for children? And we’re the ones who are lagging behind the science? Could it be that the combination of profiteering and the explosion of social media have combined in a toxic way and young girls are a primary victim of this?
Any medical “professionals” who agree to, let alone promote, gender-transition operations should get life imprisonment for these catastrophic permanent damages.
Good riddance. Michael Bailey has done a lot to harm trans people by popularizing Blanchard’s typology. ROGD is pseudoscience based on a survey of queerphobic parents without talking to their kids or medical professionals.
You clearly don’t know the meaning of pseudoscience. How can something based on a survey be considered pseudoscience?
Queerphobic?! You attach “phobic” to anything to fight it.
Actually the correct form of survey is talking to the parents not medical professionals.
Medical professionals? “medical” professionals don’t find even one bit of physiological difference or anomaly in the body of transgender people. So if Bailey asked “medical” professionals, they would already tell him that there is no such thing as “trans” in the medical world. At least not known yet.
If you don’t believe psychiatrists and psychologists are medical professionals, I can’t argue with that. You’re approaching the argument from a different set of initial assumptions than the person you are arguing with, because they are the ones whose wheelhouse gender dysphoria belongs to so the argument against it based on physical realism is completely antithetical to even an argument on this paper because it is not about physical realism, it is about psychology and belief and about perception from someone outside of the actual issue. Asking the parents about it is like asking husbands what it is like to be someone’s wife. You might be able to get some interesting information, but you cannot make the conclusion from the husband’s perspective about what is going on with the wife, especially if they are not trained to accurately gather data or draw conclusions. This is literally a paper entirely about feelings and emotions drawing a hard line conclusion based on that, so if you are arguing against gender dysphoria because of its basis in human psychology and emotion in the first place then it is entirely hypocritical to argue for the conclusion of this paper based on the emotional reaction of the parents. To the parents it may appear to be “rapid onset” but for parents of someone who is gay, when they come out of the closet it would equally seem just as rapid onset like they woke up one day and decided to be gay, even if it was something developing over time that they couldn’t or wouldn’t identify and vocalize.
The argument against physical realism of gender dysphoria completely ignores the actual existence of intersex people, and the progressive deterioration of the Y genome. XX/XY formalism is simply probably inaccurate because those are not the only genetic combinations, and if you actually kept up on research papers in the field you would know that it is entirely possible that the Y chromosome will entirely disappear or mutate so we cannot rely strictly on this as a basis for our gender norms. Moreover, external genitalia is an extremely weak indicator as, pretty obviously, there are several issues a person could encounter with their external body not connecting with their internalized self image. Especially in a society that traumatizes most males at birth by literally cutting off part of their sex organ through circumcision, is there really any wonder why people would have significant body image issues, even men? They are literally scarred from birth for the crime of being born a man, and for some this non-consensual act becomes a literal penectomy and unwanted reassignment surgery. But instead people are lobbying against the person’s own wishes for their own body, but when it is their parents decision society in America has no issue with genital surgery unless it is done to a female baby, in which it is considered genital mutilation and highly illegal. What about if a religiously devout 13 year old decides he wants to be circumcised at confirmation for his beliefs? Should that be allowed or disallowed because he is too young? Or is it only okay if someone else makes that decision for him? It’s a ridiculous hypocrisy and a testament to just how pathetically misaligned people’s morals and priorities our in the political landscape of modern day America.
Pseudoscience is by definition, like science. A survey could easily be pseudoscience, like polling, which you would know if you knew anything about psychology, because the wording and presentation of questions, the order they are made in, and even the identity of the interviewer or the potential of the answers being seen by others can be highly influential on the answers that people give. Not to mention that poor sampling can lead to massive statistical errors with extrapolation, including where it is done and who it is done with.
Of course the biggest issue that would pretty much invalidate any argument like this is the issue of education and social climate. It is easy to say, gender dysphoria didn’t exist in the past like it does now, because we never heard about it, and these kids didn’t believe they were another gender until someone else put that idea into their head. They also didn’t know what water was until they learn about it, but that doesn’t stop them from being thirsty or feeling better when they drink it. Without knowledge it is impossible to put a name to what you are experiencing. Plenty of people, especially in the autism spectrum on the Asperger’s side, experience strong emotions without realizing what is going on because they lack the social development to understand what they are feeling and be able to place a name to it. Likewise, people with gender dysphoria or homosexual attraction can end up in the same position where they are fighting against what they are feeling because they have been indoctrinated against believing in its existence, or against allowing themselves to feel that way. I don’t think it is any coincidence that gender dysphoria and same sex attraction seems to be unusually represented in the autistic population, but no matter what people do they cannot prevent the proliferation of knowledge and these people will eventually realize what they are feeling and either choose to or not to act upon it. But that is their decision and trying to influence it in any way will almost always backfire.
Where an argument could be made, to play devil’s advocate as is my burden, is that autism seems to have some sort of relation to the mirror neurons and an over-excitation, so it would be worth doing research into the effect of this in the sense that perhaps there is some sort of interpersonal feedback loop leading to the perpetuation of one person’s emotions developing in another like a virus. However most of this stuff seems to propagate over the internet which I would think could make this generally impossible, but that is something for qualified people to research.
To begin my conclusion, the best argument I have seen against it is that gender affirming surgeries should never be completed before someone is 18. I genuinely think it’s irresponsible to allow anyone to make these decisions for children, even themselves, and I personally don’t think it should really matter because children shouldn’t be seeing each other naked or engaging in sexual activity because it is basically guaranteed to be regretful for one or both parties and originates from a biological imperative that we no longer need to rely upon as a society. However I understand the viewpoint of a child, because I was one before, and at that age interpersonal relationships, especially romantic or sexual ones, seem to have an outsized importance because you have literally nothing else going for you in life as you are basically a slave until you are 18, and you think you will be free after that even though you are just looking forward to another kind of servitude. THIS is why “non-binary” is celebrated, because it doesn’t force a person with gender dysphoria to choose. The gender binary inherently creates a system whereby someone who feels gender dysphoria must choose one or the other, leading to a system where gender affirming surgery is required for a person with gender dysphoria to feel “right.” It is actually ironic, because the cultural rallying against the gender non-binary and transgender beliefs has created a system whereby someone suffering from gender dysphoria MUST have genitals that match their identity of either male or female, instead of being more accepting of a world where a man with a vagina or a woman with a penis can exist and feel okay about who they are. The other ironic conclusion of this is that for parents who desperately don’t want their children to be gay, they are essentially forcing them to choose one or the other, whereas someone attracted to male bodies could conceivably date a man with a vagina and even have babies, or vice versa with a female and female with a penis, instead they are forced to pick one or the other based on outward presentation so it will almost always just end up being the traditional gay relationship, because that is actually more acceptable than transgender or non binary. Of course the biggest thing I have to say, is who cares? You shouldn’t. Their lives don’t effect you. You want to argue against something? Argue against gender surgery before 18 and that’s it. Don’t argue against the institution of transgenderism because you are just arguing against something that actually exists. But if you are going to do that, you need to be willing to argue against circumcision and gender affirming surgery at birth, because these are all decisions that no one should be making for another person. The unintentional consequence of course will be creating more legitimately intersex people because they were not gender chosen at birth to fix an intersex characteristic, but we will also have a lot less baby boys having their penises chopped off for literally no reason.
Of course all this is to say I do ultimately disagree with retraction of the article. I think the article argues against its own conclusions well enough, and only people who are not very critical thinking would be swayed by the conclusion drawn, and they will be swayed by anything so it doesn’t matter. These ideas will spread regardless, but at least if they are exposed to the open they can face the criticism of critical thinking rather than being censored like a thought crime or like it’s an idea too dangerous to get out. I mean he’s literally just saying what we already know. Anecdotal evidence says parents don’t believe that their children are transgender, and people will use that as evidence against gender dysphoria until the end of time. Nothing even controversial there except the belief that random people surveyed know anything about anything.
@Please gag me, I read the rest of your comment and found it good. I don’t agree with most of it, but I liked your way of reasoning. That’s a point to start discussion. 🙂 Sorry I called you woke community. I take my word back. You do have a good critical thinking.
Your comment was very eloquent and reasonable up until the point where you claimed that sexual relationships between minors always have “regretful” consequences, as well as any decision regarding sex and/or gender apparently. That part needs a big “citation needed” asterisk. I’m always surprised at how otherwise rational people seem to believe so strongly in that. What do you believe happens at 18, that it suddenly changes one’s maturity?
Hah! If ROGD is pseudo-science, then what gender clinics are pushing is anti-science. Medical professionals pushing it are also pushing up their bank balances: they are not dispassionate or objective.
Again: How come hormones and puberty blockers are used so widely in cis-gender people cause you not to scream “big pharma!” there? I mean, those groups are bigger! Way bigger even!
The underlying basis for the ROGD model is nothing more, or less, than that a person’s psychology can be influenced by their social environment. In many times and places, it would be commonplace to believe in the intercession of Saints. Today, not as common.
In the modern world, the social environment of adolescents consists in large part of social media.
Therefore, any thoughtful person (without need for double-blind, randomized, controlled studies) should know to a certainty a social media environment that heavily promotes a model of “gender spectrum,” that celebrates “non binary” as a very special and wonderful thing, etc. must by definition be having significant influence on many young girls.
Straightforward and gold. Nailed it.
ps. Besides common sense, there are also several studies showing that media have the greatest influence on people’s attitudes.
okay so as 99% of all population are cisgender and the majority of those lives in hetero relationships, in a family, has media showing that lifestyle then there shouldnt really be much trans people around after all society influences and pushes cis-hetero lifestyles.
Im gonna reccommend a book.
Its called Self made man. A rather butch lesbian decided to dress up as a man and basically try to live as a man, moving for that. Not taking any hormones, just clothes, interactions etc.
The rule was that drag was 24/7 , so she didnt change when she was alone either.
It worked so well she was surprised.
know what happens after 1,5 years?
She got really massively depressed, started drinking so much until she noticed that whoops, she had developed gender dysphoria, her expression and the way she was treated was incongruent with her self (and likely body mind map)
theres also a nice book about female russian soldiers in ww2. These too reliably talk about how they feel degendered, not like a woman and how that felt distressing for them. Theyd suffer through it because not fighting wasnt an option, but the lack of regular baths and clothes that would fit and wont make em look like a teenager was something that a large percentage of them shared.
Men who get testicular cancer can get an implant, a lot have emotional stress because having only one ball makes them feel “less like a man” -and thats not even visible from outside (unlike hairloss)
the same exists for women who had to have mastectomies bc of cancer, or loose their hair, or the large nr of arab women who grow a visible lil musctache.
So clearly how our body is and how society treats us affects our mental health strong enough that it causes the type of distress thats gender dysphoria because something that feels its a part of your sexed body is missing, irrespective of whether anyone else knows it.
So theres no reason not to assume that cant be true for trans people. purely theoretically.
then ofc theres the fact that every embryo starts the same and only when theres a working SrY gene (on the y chromosome or on another in case of crossing over)the body will start to differentiate into a male phenotype. If the gene is there but broken or if the receptor is broken enough (well one. either T receptor (cais) or the receptor in your brain that starts it, or if your body cant produce the hormone then the fetus will turn phenotypically female (XY man, swyer syndrome is one possibility)
in a study they found point mutations in the sex hormone receptors for trans people, not enough to break it but it might be possible that those lead to trans people being really happy when they get the hormones they need.
idk if you heard of a young gay man, in the UK that cracked enigma…
as a thank you they threw him into court and then the punishment was “chemical sterilisation”
Well chemical ssterilisation is a name for Testosterone blocker or inhibitors. GnaH agonists or well, just spironolactone or enough estradiol, because the body will turn off the T production because of feedback loops (same reason why bodybuilder on gear get tiny nuts, just there its high T that causes that reaction.)
so the T blocking for cis men kills the libido, makes erections really hard to keep up, causes tiredness, edema and massive depression.
which then ended alam touring.
women who have PCOS and virilize often suffer emotionally from that, growing hair everywhere, dryiness, bad skin, band mental health.
trans people want that treatment. and ist in use since 60 years now. since then it helped and theres a ton of clinical observation to show it.
and yeah maybe the numbers have risen. Look at the numbers of left handed people. Look at the number of gay people after the horrible laws were repealed.
ofc theres been trans people before. (theres a cool book about trans youth in the american wildwest around 1890 upward)
but for lack of hormones or for the cultures that were not okay with gender nonconformity a lot of them just didnt get old, because of really undhealthy coping.
Depressing that this keeps happening. But kudos to the editor for resigning in protest.
You want science to be overrun by ideological scientists who want nothing more than to abuse their academic (sounding) credentials without the academic accountability to spread falsehoods about a marginalized community?
You want someone to be capable of actively campaigning against human rights through an academic, scientific sounding paper that a troublesome amount of people will readily believe because “this person is a scientist, so I believe it?”
Because for as much as people love to shout to me (I’m a transwoman) that “I need to do my own research and then you will find out!” when I try to counter transphobic remarks or arguments, the same people are surprisingly gullible in believing the WRONG scientists…
Sort of like how Hilary Cass is absolutely no expert on the treatment of transchildren (she never EVER treated a single one!) but somehow she is hailed a hero for supposedly exposing a medical scandal that has been ongoing for over 30 years!
Yet somehow, many doctors, countless organisations across the world have debunked her review into the healthcare for transgender minors, calling it ill-informed, spreading and reinforcing transphobia and “the result of cis-gender normative bias in science”.
The problem with Cass is also that she is claiming several things to be true without providing the proof for those remarks, just as she was starting out with “concerns over medical care for transgender minors.”
Yet somehow she thought she was now also a psychologist and deemed social transition a dangerous step because it “risks locking children in to further, future treatment”.
Multiple doctors voiced their concern about the unethical nature of having someone completely unknown with the medical processes of care in this field, allowed to review them.
It would be unheard of in any other field, yet, somehow, pseudoscience surrounding trans issues according to you should be uncritically allowed in science.
And when trans people speak up about this, or the scientific journal does it’s job and holds the paper, you call that depressing.
You know what I’m depressed about? Scientists or doctors actively abusing their credentials to spread disinformation about transpeople and their healthcare, which, for the most part, is merely endocrinological care that doesn’t suddenly change massively merely because of the gender identity of the patient.
If you say you think the editor did a good job of resigning out of protest, you are saying that disinformation should have it’s way and that the academic accountability needs to be completely absent.
I find that depressing, severely worrying and deeply disturbing, but for the most part: deadly naive and exceptionally dumb.