The (((LGBT))) Agenda Is A Social Contagion

“Rapid-onset gender dysphoria” among teens and young adults may be a social contagion linked with having friends who identify as LGBT, an identity politics peer culture, and an increase in internet use, finds a study out this month from a Brown University professor. The study was quickly yanked from Brown’s news releases after a transgender activist feeding frenzy, and the journal it was published in is reconsidering the publication. There is a parent and researcher-driven petition to stand behind the publication of the first study to look in detail at rapid-onset gender dysphoria.

The petition includes the following graph about gender referrals in the United Kingdom. Anecdotal and news reports, as well as the rapid recent growth in transgender treatment centers, indicates a similar phenomenon inside the United States.

“[T]he parental reports in this study offer important and much-needed preliminary information about a cohort of adolescents, mostly girls, who with no prior history of dysphoria, are requesting irreversible medical interventions, including the potential to impair fertility and future sexual function,” says the petition. “In any other group of children, these grave consequences would be seen as human rights violations unless there was significant and overwhelming evidence these procedures would be beneficial long-term.”

Despite these facts on the ground, Brown issued a statement Tuesday effectively apologizing for publicizing their own professor’s research because, “Brown community members express[ed] 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 spirit of free inquiry and scholarly debate is central to academic excellence,” said the statement from Bess Marcus, the dean of Brown’s School of Public Health. “At the same time, we believe firmly that it is also incumbent on public health researchers to listen to multiple perspectives and to recognize and articulate the limitations of their work.”

Hm, I wonder if she would worry about “invalidating the perspectives of members of the alternative health community” after a Brown researcher published a study indicating a vaccine is effective and anti-vaxxers went crazy about it on Twitter. Doubtful.

The reason trans activists went nuts is that the study reinforces what plenty of parents, public health experts, and doctors have been saying: Transgenderism looks a lot like a dangerous fad. It’s telling that their response was to demand suppressing the results. It’s also telling that Brown chose to prioritize the unreasonable demands of a tiny minority above the potential well-being of children and the process of scientific inquiry.

How This Study Came About

The study is authored by Lisa Littman, a behavior and social sciences professor at Brown, and an OB-GYN whose publications are mainly in reproductive health and abortion. Here’s the phenomenon that caused her to conduct the study to learn more:

Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as ‘binge-watching’ Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions are atypical for the presentation of gender dysphoria described in the research literature…

Littman recruited for the study by posting on the transgender-critical websites 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and YouthTransCriticalProfessionals, seeking parents of adolescents who had quickly come out as transgender. She recruited 256 parents of children ages 11 to 27. They filled out a 90-question survey that took about 30-60 minutes to complete. Eighty percent of their transgender-identifying children were female, and on average the kids came out at age 15.

While the author and any social scientist will tell you the study design has many flaws — self selection and self reporting among them — it is comparable in quality to studies that LGBT activists amplify when it serves their narratives. For example, a recent study that found kids of lesbians had outcomes as good or better than that of married biological parents also had self-selected participants who self-reported outcomes. Even though that had only one-quarter the sample size of Littman’s study, it was widely celebrated and published about in prominent outlets.

Littman found a number of things that make transgender narratives look terrible. For example, she explored the horrifyingly irresponsible lies anonymous internet users frequently offer to confused kids who were apparently free to browse for this information online. The below graph from the study quotes common “advice” transgender activists gave children over these kinds of forums.

It is also notable that 86 percent of the parents who took this survey said they support same-sex relationships and 88 percent “believe trans people deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else.” Similar numbers supported their kids’ decision to adopt opposite-sex hairstyles, clothes, and so forth. Of the children who told their parents they wanted to see a gender therapist, 82 percent took them.

In other words, this is a highly open and supportive sample of parents who are largely fine with cross dressing and non-heterosexuality but not on board with chopping off their daughters’ breasts or giving their sons female hormones. It’s really hard to see how they can be fairly faulted for wanting other options and more thought before rushing to mutilate and sterilize their children. Instead of harming transgender people’s best interests, instead this study amplifies the concerns of people who clearly care deeply about gender dysphoric kids.

Here’s What the Study Found

The study offers insights into how gender dysphoria seems to develop among those who declare it suddenly. Among the children studied, 59 percent identified as heterosexual prior to expressing gender dysphoria. This is a disproportionately high percent of non-heterosexual kids (41 percent), although homosexuality and especially lesbian activity is highly fluid and tends to dissipate, especially for teens and females. Eighty-seven percent of the children studied became gender dysphoric after friends did, after increasing their time online, or both.

Eighty-seven percent of the children studied became gender dysphoric after friends did, after increasing their time online, or both.

None of the young people Littman studied would have met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for diagnosing childhood gender dysphoria, the study says. However, a very high rate, 62 percent, had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder or neurodevelopmental disability before their gender dysphoria began.

Nearly half of these children (48 percent) “experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria,” the study says, such as parental divorce, a death in the family, a romantic breakup, rape or attempted rape, school bullying, family relocation, or a serious illness. Nearly half (45 percent) had been harming themselves before coming out trans. The parents of most of these children also reported they were bad at handling strong negative emotions.

“The majority of respondents (69.4%) answered that their child had social anxiety during adolescence; 44.3% that their child had difficulty interacting with their peers, and 43.1% that their child had a history of being isolated (not associating with their peers outside of school activities),” says the study. One parent explained that her daughter “had very high expectations that transitioning would solve their problems,” the study says. The parent wrote that the child “discontinued anti- depressant quickly, stopped seeing psychiatrist, began seeing gender therapist, stopped healthy eating. [She] stated ‘none of it’ (minding what she ate and taking her Rx) ‘mattered anymore.’ This was her cure, in her opinion.”

This makes it obvious why transgender activists do not want this information public. It suggests many gender dysphoric young people hit a rough patch in life (or several), have poor or immature coping skills, and got the message from peers, online, or both that transgenderism was a handy, simple explanation for their feelings that also offered instant social acceptance and attention.

High Correlation to Peers Who Promote LGBT Sexuality

The study includes other eye-opening information, such as case studies of several children’s stories. Here are three:

“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends were taking group lessons together with a very popular coach. The coach came out as transgender, and, within one year, all four students announced they were also transgender.”
“A 21-year-old natal male who had been academically successful at a prestigious university seemed depressed for about six months. Since concluding that he was transgender, he went on to have a marked decline in his social functioning and has become increasingly angry and hostile to his family. He refuses to move out or look for a job. His entire family, including several members who are very supportive of the transgender community, believe that he is ‘suffering from a mental disorder which has nothing to do with gender.'”
“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends are part of a larger friend group that spends much of their time talking about gender and sexuality. The three natal female friends all announced they were trans boys and chose similar masculine names. After spending time with these three friends, the 14-year-old natal female announced that she was also a trans boy.”

The study also describes links between social acceptance and even obsession with alternative sexuality as being a high risk factor for children contracting gender dysphoria:

Parents described intense group dynamics where friend groups praised and supported people who were transgender-identified and ridiculed and maligned non-transgender people. Where popularity status and activities were known, 60.7% of the [children with gender dysphoria in the study] experienced an increased popularity within their friend group when they announced a transgender-identification and 60.0% of the friend groups were known to mock people who were not transgender or LGBTIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or asexual).

The study also may indicate that school “anti-bullying” programs typically created by LGBT activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign may help accelerate children identifying as transgender by pushing peers and authority figures to profusely express their support. It also may suggest that Marxist-style identity politics that brand heterosexuality as oppressive increase gender dysphoria. Perhaps this is one reason a 2013 study found that anti-bullying programs actually increase bullying.

‘They are constantly putting down straight, white people for being privileged, dumb and boring.’

“Great increase in popularity among the student body at large. Being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens,” wrote one parent on the study response form. Another wrote, “not so much ‘popularity’ increasing as ‘status’ … also she became untouchable in terms of bullying in school as teachers who ignored homophobic bullying …are now all at pains to be hot on the heels of any trans bullying.”

Children who contracted gender dysphoria in the study were highly likely to have peer groups with a culture of directing animosity towards people who are white, straight, and male. “They are constantly putting down straight, white people for being privileged, dumb and boring,” one study participant wrote. Another wrote: “In general, cis-gendered people are considered evil and unsupportive, regardless of their actual views on the topic. To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories with this group of friends.”

The peer groups of rapid-onset gender dysphoric children also routinely mocked family members and adults, the study found, alienating these distressed children from their most likely sources of help. A handful of study participants who heeded their children’s petition to be removed to a different social environment reported the children were much happier and ceased describing themselves as transgender. One of these children “expressed a strong desire to ‘…get out of the culture that if you are [heterosexual], then you are bad or oppressive or clueless.'”

Social Contagion Is a Well-Documented Human Behavior

“The results of the study support the possibility that social contagion, rather than an innate, immutable sense of incongruence between body and mind, may be at work in some of these cases,” says the open letter petitioning Brown to stand behind Littman’s work.

The petition is the work of 4thWaveNow, a networking and information website for gay-friendly parents and researchers concerned about transgender politics. As mentioned above, Littman recruited parents for her study on the site, which trans activists are ridiculously claiming is a “far-right” “hate” site. 4thWaveNow clearly leans politically liberal and strongly supports non-heterosexuality. These are parents who are righteously concerned about manipulating and mutilating children for the sake of a highly politicized narrative that has little real support beyond its ability to create a business and political industry that profits from despair.

We are allowing people to get fame and profit by lying to vulnerable people and facilitating procedures that very likely do more harm than good.

I’m a free market supporter, but I also see that markets function on desire, and not all desires are good. It’s good to desire to mother a child. It’s not good to meet that desire by renting a womb and buying the medical machinery and human parts to make one. It’s good to desire social acceptance and a strong identity. It’s not good to address that desire by pretending to be a male when you are a female, or vice versa. Believing and acting on lies hurts people, often badly.

Rather than blaming the market mechanisms by which people pursue these bad answers to their desires, it’s more appropriate to set boundaries defining what longings are good and not, and what are healthy and morally right ways to satisfy them. Markets cannot do this. This is what a society is for. And because our society is failing in this duty, through things like suppressing the research, discussion, and inquiry that facilitates it, we are allowing people to get fame and profit by lying to vulnerable people and facilitating procedures that very likely do more harm than good.

This is what we call exploitation. It’s an old human story. Social hysterias like the Dutch tulip craze, Salem witch trials, lynchings, buying stock in a mythical America where the streets were paved with gold, and countless other contagions are a persistent feature of human history. Often it is intermixed with buying and selling because where there is desire, there is exchange. People did, and still do, buy and sell human beings. Now we are also buying and selling, mixing and matching human body parts. There ought to be both social and legal limits on things like this, and far better ones than we have now.

Desire drives exchange. Thus it’s big business to create desires for products and services. In so doing, business takes on the social and especially religious function of defining, refining, and directing our desires. The answer is to take that responsibility back for ourselves, and inform our desires, and ensure our children’s desires are formed, with history, research, ethics, religion, and other products of an advanced and successful culture.

The goal should be to minimize harm as much as possible. We do that by thinking before acting, and part of that thinking is talking. Research is also thinking, in a particularly rigorous fashion. This is why trans activists try to suppress talking and thinking. That shows very clearly their true goals are not for bettering human society. It also provides even greater urgency that we refuse to heed their wild, petulant, dangerous demands.

And here's a timely reminder of the father of all this 'gender is different to sex' crap, John Money - disgusting piece of shit.

Today David Reimer would be 50 years old. He would be at the peak of his career, perhaps with a couple of teenage kids, whom he could look forward to sending off to begin their own lives, and could look forward to retirement, becoming a grandfather, and enjoying the life he built for himself. Only David Reimer is dead, because of an evil sexual experiment that was performed on him years ago.

Crime 1: Male Genital Mutilation

David (originally named Bruce) and his twin brother Brian were born in 1965 in Winnipeg, Canada. His parents, two farm kids barely out of their teens, were concerned about how the boys were urinating, and they were referred for circumcision at 7 months.

The twins were misdiagnosed with phimosis, a failure of the foreskin to fully retract. However, this is perfectly normal for infants, and the foreskin often does not fully retract until age 10. The doctor performing the male genital mutilation experienced a malfunction in his equipment, and David’s penis was almost completely burned off. They left the hospital. David’s brother Brian was not circumcised, and his phimosis naturally resolved itself.

Crime 2: Sexual Experimentation

The parents, deeply concerned about the trauma and pain this would cause David, traveled to Western medicine’s premiere institution: Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where they met with Dr. John Money, a pediatrician and psychologist (I would also credit him as having one of the largest effects in the field of linguistics of anyone in the last century).

Dr. Money had begun working at Johns Hopkins in 1951 and opened a groundbreaking clinic there—the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, in 1965, around the time of David’s birth. The parents had seen Money on TV talking about new treatments for people with sexual disorders.

Money had a quite extreme suggestion for David’s parents. He told them they should surgically remove what remained of David’s penis and raise him as if he were a girl. Money theorized that sexuality was primarily caused by social learning from early childhood, and that it would be in David’s best interest to simply be raised as a woman, since penile surgery at the time was very limited.

Money was an expert in hermaphrodites (now called intersex), people born with multiple or mismatched sexual organs, and it was far easier to create a vagina for them than a penis, so this is what he recommended for David.

A Brief Bio Of Dr. John Money

Money was born in New Zealand, moving to the USA to earn a PhD at Harvard in 1952, after writing a dissertation on hermaphrodites (Hermaphroditism: An Inquiry into the Nature of a Human Paradox). Money was married briefly in the 1950s, but quickly divorced and would never marry again.

He is almost fully responsible for modern day usage of the word “gender” to refer to sexuality. He focused on abnormally developed sex organs and had a special interest in hermaphrodites. He theorized that gender was a learned trait, of which having a penis or vagina was only one of many factors. In addition to the typical factors of chromosomes, type of genitalia, presence of sex hormones, etc., Money theorized there was an additional factor that decided one’s sex: “Gender role and orientation as male or female, established while growing up.”

At the time, the word gender was not used to refer to human sexuality, and Money explained gender role as:

For Dr. Money, gender included not only a man-woman decision, but also one’s behavior and attitude that went beyond biology. No longer was a boy who picked up a doll just being curious, expressing interest in the human body, or merely picking up a toy he didn’t understand the sexual and social ramifications of.

No, according to Money, this boy was expressing his feminine side. The John Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic was the first attempt at considering that sex was something that humans had control over.

The Power Of Language

Language is incredibly powerful. As is often said, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and the words used to describe a person, idea, or event, strongly shape how that person or idea is seen by society. Dr. Money has altered the American language more than perhaps anyone else in the latter half of the 20th century. Among his successes:

Some of these are difficult to accept even today. For example, Money said there was “affectional pedophilia” and “sadistic pedophilia” and that “If I were to see the case of a boy aged 10 or 11 who’s intensely erotically attracted towards a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual… then I would not call it pathological in any way.”

The Treatment

Dr. Money saw a great opportunity to test out his theories on the infant David. Not only would Money have a perfect experiment, an infant not even at his first birthday who had not developed any sexuality yet, but his twin brother provided the perfect control subject. Money insisted that he would personally oversee David’s treatment and counsel and monitor him.

At age 22 months, David’s remnant of a penis was surgically castrated, and he was given the name Brenda, and regularly saw Dr. Money, often along with his twin brother Brian, for around 10 years. Keep in mind at all times during treatment the children were prepubescent. Some of the treatment involved David getting on the ground on all fours while his twin brother Brian placed his crotch up against David’s ass and simulated fucking him by making thrusting motions.

Money would also force David to lay down and spread his legs while Brian climbed on top of him. He would make the two twins take off all their clothes and inspect each others genitals, and Money photographed them naked. He showed David graphic photographs of a seven year old girl giving birth.

Money proclaimed his theory was proven correctly, that Brenda acted and behaved as a girl, and that behavior could indeed overcome biology and determine sex. He reported on the case (anonymously, to protect David’s secret) as a success, and said “the child’s behavior is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother.”

Money’s writings on gender, his new vocabulary, and his theories on nature vs. nurture were celebrated and adopted. He received national awards and honorary degrees, was featured in Time magazine, and included a chapter on the Reimer twins in one of his textbooks.

But the truth was a completely different story. As Money started pressuring the parents around age 10 to have an operation to surgically create a vagina, the parents balked and slowly the truth emerged.

The Reality: You Can’t Alter Sex

David (living as Brenda) was terrified of the visits to Dr. Money. As early as a few months after the initial operation, at age 2, Brenda would angrily tear off her dress, refused to play with dolls, would beat up her twin brother and steal his toy cars and guns. She complained to her teachers and parents that she felt like a boy. She loved running and climbing and fighting and hated playing with dolls. She had no friends, and was constantly teased and ridiculed by classmates for her masculine looks and interests.

Both twins complained they were sexually abused during their treatment sessions with Money. Brenda had to pee through a small hole surgeons had created in her abdomen. She was taking female hormones, but they only caused some physical changes and did not make her feel female.

The mother, overcome with guilt and the pain of hiding this secret, attempted suicide. The father became a serious alcoholic and rarely spoke. Twin brother Brian began using drugs and stealing things. At age 13, Brenda was experiencing suicidal depression, and said she would commit suicide if forced to return to Dr. Money’s office again.

At age 14, a local psychiatrist convinced the parents they had to tell Brenda the truth. That he was really a man. He decided to take the name David. David later recounted: “Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn’t some sort of weirdo. I wasn’t crazy.”

It was a long and difficult road to reclaim his masculinity. David had a double mastectomy to remove his breasts grown by the estrogen. He took regular testosterone injections, and had multiple operations to create an artificial penis. David was relieved to hear the truth, but incredibly hurt and damaged by years of experimentation, and depression at the thought that he would never find a woman. He attempted suicide twice in his early 20s

The Aftermath

Unbelievably, Dr Money was still taking credit for the experiment as a success. Money’s ideas were just what feminists were looking for–proof that there is no biological reason for boys to be better at math, more productive, or earn more than a woman, and that nurture, not nature, determines whether we feel masculine or feminine.

David’s brother Brian, traumatized by this lie and the sick things he was forced to do to his twin brother, became extremely angry, began using drugs, developed schizophrenia, had two failed marriages and died of an overdose of antidepressants in 2002 at the age of 36.

David, around the age of 30, met Dr. Milton Diamond, a psychologist and critic of Money’s who had followed the case closely in journals until Money mysteriously stopped publishing updates when Brenda became David. Dr. Diamond revealed everything to David, including how Money used the supposed success of David’s operation to legitimize widespread infant sex changes in cases of genital injury. David was horrified and outraged.

In 1997 Dr. Diamond wrote a paper shattering Money’s false story which received national attention, and David was interviewed for Rolling Stone, and the reporter later published a biography of his life “As Nature Made Him.”

David found work as a janitor in a slaughterhouse, married a woman at age 25 and became stepfather to her three children, but was chronically depressed, unemployed, angry, filled with thoughts of his brother’s death, and obsessed with his inability to be a real husband and father. Marital problems spiraled, his wife discussed separating, and two days later David took his shotgun, sawed off the barrel in the garage, drove to the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, and blew his brains out at age 38.

Epilogue

In 1979 the Hopkins clinic closed. It had focused mainly on transsexuals, and this was not the direction Johns Hopkins wanted to go. Dr. Money worked the rest of his career at John’s Hopkins, and died peacefully one day before his 85th birthday in 2006.

He continued to receive international awards for many years, most recently in 2003 when New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark opened a John Money Wing at an art gallery.

It is important to know the history behind feminism, gender, and sexual fluidity. It would be nice to just think that Bruce Jenner is an obscure rare nutball, that feminism is mostly about being nice to women, and that old societal rules and norms, especially concerning sexuality, promiscuity, and marriage, are just outdated bad ideas like slavery, leeching, and believing in a flat earth.

But the truth is, the history behind many of these changes is sickeningly evil. I am personally opposed to male genital mutilation, regardless of horrible tragedies like this. If you are not, I encourage you to think really hard about who advocates for continuing it and why. The history of gender fluidity, third wave feminism, nurture overcoming nature sexually, and pedophilia can be traced back to a horrible story about two twin boys, both of whom died after leading miserable, short lives.

Not all the news is bad. Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins, and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, exclaimed earlier this year that “transgenderism is a mental disorder that merits treatment, and that sex change is biologically impossible.”

He referenced studies that the suicide rate among transgendered surgical patients is 20 times higher than normal people, as well as studies that of children who expressed transgendered feelings, 70% to 80% spontaneously lost those feelings. We should echo and amplify such truths, and support brave men like Dr. McHugh who have the courage to speak up.

The next time you hear someone use the word gender, think of Dr. Money, who is directly responsible for its usage. And think of David Reimer.

The proportions of heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles among sex offenders against children: an exploratory study.