Sexuality and sexual arousal are powerful, of course --- particularly in males. but another very powerful drive is stimulated by contemporary gender discourse / trans activism that I think is under-analyzed: rage (particularly in males). Teens are often angry: they have a strong sense of justice, they need to rebel to form themselves as people, they are continually thwarted by their life-stage.
Identifying as trans serves as an outlet for adolescent anger but it also stokes it really powerfully and dangerously. For girls this rage is served and cultivated by a powerful new language of scolding: grownups are wrong, other kids who don't get it are wrong, everyone is wrong wrong wrong, they are going to show everybody how wrong they are about everything. It's mean girl self-righteousness. Girls who have been excluded will be more vulnerable to going down this path.
For boys this rage is served and cultivated in a much darker way: trans activism and gender ideology actively cultivate seething hostility toward women who reject its tenets. It advocates punitive violence and says it is righteous and justified. Rage is exciting and stimulating and absorbing. It grows when fed. I agree we've over-sold the boys sitting in the basement masturbating; many of them are sitting in the basement indulging not their sexuality but their hostility. Boys who have been excluded will be more vulnerable to going down this path.
Given the stats on how little sex young people are having compared to previous generations, I suspect the degree to which anger has come to substitute for romance in providing a source of / outlet for libidinal energies is being missed.
Extremely helpful observations and analysis, thank you Joe
Many of my colleagues would rather avoid the curiosity that we should have about such sociological phenomenon intersecting with predisposing factors like autism and fears about gender conformity fostering a breeding ground for intrapsychic dilemmas and seeking respite within online communities
They have been told not to be curious in favor of obeying the thought-stopping mantra that engaging with this sort of clinical observation and our own curiosity as clinicians is intrinsically harmful to (other) trans people, missing the point that there is no “true” trans, only those who are not unhappy with their choice to transition
Thus we dutifully abandon our professional instincts and our traditional roles in order to appease the social justice warriors who police the conversations we can have with each other
Thank you for being one of those clinicians who is willing to step outside the bounds of “acceptable” speech to cover this story
I disagree. This thread looks at it back to front. The diagnostic cluster of those of us with the core syndrome with all the features of transsexualism and who don't experience adolescent remission are the 'true trans' or rather 'true *transsexuals*'.
Social mimesis of this has had terrible results and it grieves me that many have been led into regretful choices but insisting that there is nothing that was being copied in the first place is missing the point.
Using all the terms to make it so, doesn't make it so (syndrome, remission etc). The only thing being copied that we currently know about is the behaviour and narratives and these are culturally influenced. There may one day be found distinct aetiologies or propensities but these clusters of attributes aren't a distinct essence that is some true property of transness. Rather along with environment this complex may predispose someone to particular behaviours and towards narratives that exist in the culture. These narratives change over time and vary among individuals.
There are plenty of studies which have been strongly indicative of organic aetiologies and a prominent Professor of Psychobiology has told me personally that he considers my work to be 'good scholarship and clear thinking.' Also that 'of course' he agreed with me so don't try and gaslight me into doubting myself.
If you have access to studies, which are the most compelling and can you share them? I have skimmed this article but I don't have access to the sources quoted. Im already concerned it doesn't mention that in many studies the trans person may be taking cross-sex hormones which affects brain structures. And it bypasses mentioning homosexuality or effeminate/masculine external characteristics, which are alternative reasons for difference that overlap with people adopting a trans persona. Also, were these studies blinded? Have they been replicated by other groups? Neuroimaging studies for example routinely fail replication. People have long sought this kind of aetiology (previously it was to find homosexuality) so I'm surprised that if this was definitive it hasn't become mainstream. Aren't you?
Trans is a cultural manifestation that changes over time. Even if brain differences exist it doesn't prove 'trans', it might show that some people predisposed to trans have certain brain features.
A lot of psychiatric observation includes an obsessive element, and some trans could also be explained by conditioning through paraphilias.
Send me what you consider the best study and I will look into it.
I don't know if you're suited to scientific work if you accuse any challenge to your position as 'gas lighting into doubting yourself' You seem perfectly happy to confidently assert your unassailable truths. Why do you get a privilege to do this but others are gas-lighting?
I have read your linked stack. I disagree with your presentation of Hirschfeld but will put that in your stack when I compose it if comments are open.
Edit: the sensitivity to steroids by Lindstrom is a case in point. Nothing is mentioned about homosexuality which shows the same result. If trans FTM show the same behaviour with regards to pheromones as biological women doesn't this point to a homosexual response, by definition, despite the subjects claiming non-homosexuality?
I have linked the review study by Milton Diamond which has a number of papers. There is a separated twin study in there somewhere which is strong evidence and then beside this there is the Ramachandran study on neural body mapping.
I made the comment about gaslighting because you have already made up your mind and are determined that I should doubt myself without knowing anything about me.
I don't need the approval of some random person on the internet. Besides my own life experience, research and personal therapy I have the approval of not only one but actually two Emeritus Professors of Psychology for my book and the hypothesis I propose. I may be wrong, I may be right, but my hypothesis is coherent and testable, which is more than can be said for some of the accusations that are laid against transsexuals who have been quietly living their lives in peace before the transgender movement muscled in and claimed to be us.
A simple truth is that post-Butler transgenderism has blinded too many to the neurological research that had accrued prior to her ideology and now everyone had got into the 'It's all functional' mindset, which it isn't, even when they don't agree with her on the rest.
It's important context that Prof. J. Michael Bailey has said that Jo doesn't understand what AGP is. However, rather than put his theory forward for what would have been a very lively peer review, Jo has directly marketed the theory as a fait accompli at parents. I think this is irresponsible.
It's rather obvious, looking from the "ROGD boy" profile, that what Jo is describing is AGP. [1] In the "Man who Would be Queen", Bailey wrote that "Ray Blanchard remarked to me that he saw a seemingly close relation between autogynephilia and computer nerdiness". And indeed, autogynephilic males like Lynn Conway, who was instrumental in the development of the microprocessor, are profoundly gifted, "Conway was shy and experienced gender dysphoria as a child".
I can understand why anti-"gender identity" counsellors believe they have found something new, however, as they appear to primarily understand autogynephilia in terms of the caricature that has been created as a political campaign against "gender identity" ideology. [2]
I see that parents are now being sent down a wild goose chase in trying to understand something through psychoanalysis, which cannot be understood through psychoanalysis.
I have to reread this and compare with my prior thoughts. One that did jump to my attention is the online culture of being able to create and recreate avatars, icons (that is a loaded word!), handles, and personas (furr-sonas too). There are a cluster of elements that contribute to the disembodied lives of many young people, and in particular boys who spend a good amount of time online. The lockdowns exacerbated this, as online became the only place in which one could socialize.
Online you don't have a body; you create and imagine it. You have relationships with other people mediated through an imagined body, through how you introduce yourself by your image and worded introduction. You do create yourself.
As a woman, you can be treated with a tender consideration that is less likely towards a perceived male. You might be treated possibly protectively, as desirable, sexualized and sexually desirable... You get the idea.
What are some online activities and contexts? How do they mediate and channel the mind, the body, one's own experience and self-concept? A few: gaming. Lots of time gaming. You can game and simultaneously chat both verbally and written (Discord), so there is a lot of social interaction. You can also join servers and have others join, or find them, and the topics and interactions are unlimited. Anime can also come along with fan fiction and fan art, leading into the hentai porn, and also the freedom to imagine and identify as a man or a woman within your favorite world, and also with anthropomorphic animals (furry culture).
Gateway to porn is through the hentai, the furries, and you have the whole drive to excess and novelty, the creation of self according to a sexual icon type and pattern. How many get into and normalize S and M and controlled victimization, becoming a sexual object or fetish? These kinds of sexual experiences are way more normalized than when I was younger. It is a gateway, because curious minds, and curious minds together, will roam and discover. I believe that when one is in a sexual experience, the experience itself makes acceptable, desirable, addictive, and formative the guided content of that sexual experience. Imagine your young horny male being shaped by sexual experiences which are online, and so disembodied, but then bodied by the excitation and the magic of the sexually altered state. These are our dear young men.
I rarely see discussed this, but I have also read the physical connection between exposure to electronics, through the emf and also through the eyes. The light. There is, to me, a plausible and possibly already proven link between light exposure/emf and a while range of physical effects. I would look to Mercola and Román Shapoval (on substack), perhaps also Firstenberg, for more about that and to start to connect the dots. To make it common sense think: circadian rhythms... Or, how about the body type of one who spends large numbers of hours online....
I think the physical effects are massive, and this is not even getting to what happens to a brain which is entrained to features like: endless scrolling, online presentation VS reality, meme communication and endless meme tree layering, fast-paced visual mediums a la YouTube game theory and such. And then there is straight up propaganda life, friendship, sexuality through the kidsy medium of cartoons, Disney, the Owl House, Marvel, and a lot of really crazy symbology and narrative meaning-making.
Back to lockdowns and pandemic culture and hysteria. Fear, alienation, avoidance, physical taboos. Even the people you know are covered in masks. Your experience of them lacks social cues through the physical. You cannot get close to them. You cannot share space. Who are they, even? Do they like you? Do you like them? Eat alone. Don't exercise. Don't go outside. Nihilism and doom. No prospects. We can draw so many lines between the doI have to reread this and compare with my prior thoughts. One that did jump to my attention is the online culture of being able to create and recreate avatars, icons (that is a loaded word!), handles, and personas (furr-sonas too). There are a cluster of elements that contribute to the disembodied lives of many young people, and in particular boys who spend a good amount of time online. The lockdowns exacerbated this, as online became the only place in which one could socialize.
Online you don't have a body; you create and imagine it. You have relationships with other people mediated through an imagined body, through how you introduce yourself by your image and worded introduction. You do create yourself.
As a woman, you can be treated with a tender consideration that is less likely towards a perceived male. You might be treated possibly protectively, as desirable, sexualized and sexually desirable... You get the idea.
What are some online activities and contexts? How do they mediate and channel the mind, the body, one's own experience and self-concept? A few: gaming. Lots of time gaming. You can game and simultaneously chat both verbally and written (Discord), so there is a lot of social interaction. You can also join servers and have others join, or find them, and the topics and interactions are unlimited. Anime can also come along with fan fiction and fan art, leading into the hentai porn, and also the freedom to imagine and identify as a man or a woman within your favorite world, and also with anthropomorphic animals (furry culture).
Gateway to porn is through the hentai, the furries, and you have the whole drive to excess and novelty, the creation of self according to a sexual icon type and pattern. How many get into and normalize S and M and controlled victimization, becoming a sexual object or fetish? These kinds of sexual experiences are way more normalized than when I was younger. It is a gateway, because curious minds, and curious minds together, will roam and discover. I believe that when one is in a sexual experience, the experience itself makes acceptable, desirable, addictive, and formative the guided content of that sexual experience. Imagine your young horny male being shaped by sexual experiences which are online, and so disembodied, but then bodied by the excitation and the magic of the sexually altered state. These are our dear young men.
I rarely see discussed this, but I have also read the physical connection between exposure to electronics, through the emf and also through the eyes. The light. There is, to me, a plausible and possibly already proven link between light exposure/emf and a while range of physical effects. I would look to Mercola and Román Shapoval (on substack), perhaps also Firstenberg, for more about that and to start to connect the dots. To make it common sense think: circadian rhythms... Or, how about the body type of one who spends large numbers of hours online....
I think the physical effects are massive, and this is not even getting to what happens to a brain which is entrained to features like: endless scrolling, online presentation VS reality, meme communication and endless meme tree layering, fast-paced visual mediums a la YouTube game theory and such. And then there is straight up propaganda life, friendship, sexuality through the kidsy medium of cartoons, Disney, the Owl House, Marvel, and a lot of really crazy symbology and narrative meaning-making.
Back to lockdowns and pandemic culture and hysteria. Fear, alienation, avoidance, physical taboos. Even the people you know are covered in masks. Your experience of them lacks social cues through the physical. You cannot get close to them. You cannot share space. Who are they, even? Do they like you? Do you like them? Eat alone. Don't exercise. Don't go outside. Nihilism and doom. No prospects. We can draw so many lines between the dots.
And then there is the current satisfaction with diagnoses, self-diagnoses, medicalization for depression, anxiety, adhd, and so on. There is something reassuring about having a diagnosis and being treated, and also being able to introduce oneself as such, which guides others likewise into a prescription of how to socially relate, respect, and never ever discriminate or act phobic. The social prescriptions that tie themselves to a scientific physical prescription. What is the social function of these? What is the interior psychological function? How does this work for these spectrum or whatever you want to call it kids?
And, what are the effects of all of the drugs and pharmaceutical manipulations upon these young people? So much.
Suffice to say that this article is great. I am very excited by the connections AND I want more to be brought in. I have good liberal family members who would not dare read these kinds of things because it would be disrespectful to question gender identity. I would like to see more like this that compellingly opens us up to be curious and consider that there is much more going on in a young person's life than the simplistic discovery of a young man that he was ALWAYS a woman. Maybe we could offer more to our dear young people than simply stopping at that declaration. Thank you!
what you describe is something i have witnessed. something i am still witnessing. it's a collision of all these factors. colliding with a young man. and the damage is immense. you describe it so exactly. and your description makes me feel less alone. thank you.
It’s a mystery to me why a study isn’t done of the parents of such kids. They are obviously the people with the most influence on these children. There are very likely certain characteristics they have with each other that create the self loathing to begin with. I don’t see how ignoring the elephant in the room helps.
I strongly agree and would also like to see a study on this. I attempted to explore how parenting / upbringing factors might be contributing what I believe is a significant subset of the gifted/autistic/ROGD population, both male and female. I am *not* trying to shame parents; this is a cultural and intergenerational issue. This is from a brain development lens and draws extensively on Iain McGilchrist's work in The Master and His Emissary.
This was a great piece that tied into the porn: 16 year old wrote an incredible essay to wake us up to how ubiquitously children are accessing porn, and how it is shaping and influencing them.
Also, I think it is a conversational touchpoint to hear John Uhler talk about his experience as a psychologist working with psychopaths in prison, related to a porn pathway to change of self.
I was precisely the hyper intellectualized effeminate boy, slightly introverted, an enigma to children and frightening to adults (teachers: constantly correcting). I also have an almost cinematically detailed emotional and somatic memory which I enjoy recalling, the nice parts.
I decided at around age 8 (around 1970) I was transsexual - that was the only explanation for my attraction to men, and that was how I would get a handsome husband and live a married life. A result of my copius library medical research. Yes, age 8. I charted out surgery and hormones.
As I was reaching puberty, around 1974, I watched the “Tomorrow Show” with very late with Tom Snyder one evening (parents had long since given up any semblance of control), he went into a Manhattan gay disco, full of handsome shirtless muscular hairy men clearly enjoying each others company, kissing on TV.
The moment of Verklärung: transfiguration. I wanted those men, they would want me, and all my medical plotting evaporated like a bad dream. A huge range of memories and my mute reactions bloomed up that evening and started connecting - Steve Reeves movies, Semi-nude men in the scary but exciting Mario Bava classic “Black Sunday”, the shirtless hairy Clint Walker in “The Dirty Dozen”, a hatred of public bathrooms (“discovery!”), the smell of men (Men in my family have no body odor, a defective ABCC11 gene), the sound of deep voices, the look of large hands, and the throbbing thing boys get at puberty especially when they see images they could practically smell.
That was that, my reading research changed and a few years later I was (illegally: blond teen resembling a football tackle gets you in anywhere in DC and NYC) the person meeting those men.
50 years later I’m “triggered” seeing a precise description of what I went through but as pointed out, now the boys land in surgery, not a throbbing disco.
The one thing I’d argue with which is a consistent misinterpretation: I didn’t dislike my sex. I thought I was the wrong sex because it was difficult to conceptualise that the feelings a woman had for a man could also be embodied in a man.
I believed that only women had those feelings ergo I was woman. Gay, same-sex attraction was not an option because I didn’t have sexual feelings at 8, I only understood roles and what they implied. I had seen and read plenty about all sorts of sex (my parents had a large library; as well my father had 2nd drawer from the dresser top under underwear jackoff porn)
At 12 I definitely had sexual feelings, and puberty amplified them sufficiently that I could recognize them in other men. Everything fell into place in seconds in my mind. It was like learning to do integral calculus, or when I first played Prokofiev on a flute, or connecting entropy to heat, evolution and rolling dice, or the first electrical Jacob’s ladder (traveling arc) I built. Bam! Zap!
I don’t believe children can be trans, “AGP” or otherwise until well into puberty or beyond, when their body and mind is mature, perhaps early 20’s? because they simply cannot conceptualise that which they cannot feel. The WPATH papers highlighted this cruel reality when the “doctors” admitted that children who could not even understand high school biology were saying they were trans.
Look at what “Jazz Jennings” says about orgasm - he has absolutely no idea what it is, and never will.
Male children who are bullied (I was, incessantly) and likewise can only think of male and female in relation to a family unit - not sex - they exist on a continuum of unhappiness between worrying about their role in their life in relation to others and what they could adopt to realize a viable future, hypothesizing why they are harassed and assaulted and how they can avoid it.
This is precisely a child who should not be informed that they are trans (they aren’t) they can change their sex (they can’t) and that if they do so they will be a fulfilled adult (they will be sexless) and live with a partner like their parents (very unlikely).
It is for this reason I reject the premise that there are children who are possibly any variation on trans.
It’s like discussing a male child’s feelings of having a full beard and shaving it or not, describing exactly what an orgasm feels like, and how they like to evoke one.
“Psychotherapists” cannot understand the state of mind of these children (“Theory of Mind”) and attribute the motives of adult heterosexual men to young boys.
He had a biography published in 1967, I discovered it in my parents’ library a few years later. I also read my Grandmother’s “Readers Digests” and seem to recall something there. There were articles on homosexuality at that period, and the inevitable “I am Joe’s X” (man gland, testicles, nose, foot…) - some touched on trans…
Because I knew I liked and fantasized about big hairy muscular men (not boys) and only women got married to men, I would have to become a woman as I had read. It was a child’s logic, you just removed your genitals and had breast implants. Somehow about that time I was logically aware of hormones (Mom had a hysterectomy, my Aunt took birth control). Testosterone was very abstract.
There were some medical things I read in the local library, and homosexuality and transsexualism was somewhat connected in my mind. The medical DSM-2 from the period spoke of transvestism but not transsexualism.
Around 1976 Patricia Nell Warren’s “The Front Runner” appears in our library, and Grant Tracy Saxon’s “The Happy Hustler” in my Dad’s secret stash. And gay porn… I had already “desisted”
I had already begun my own secret Playgirl stash (behind hot water heater in a closet in a bathroom), as well as “Chic” - one with a nude porn Paul Barresi (who I met 6 years later and worked out with at my Gym in West Hollywood LA, not the infamous Jim Morris Club / John Travolta / Barresi event) and so on.
Yes, I think it does. Christine Jorgensen in turn had a copy of The Male Hormone. I'm reading Bob Ostertag's Sex, Science, Self at the moment and it's interesting how hormones become the essence of man/women.
Other stacks (Unyielding Bicyclist) highlight various puff pieces in media/TV through the 80s on trans so I guess cultural exposure has been more frequent, for longer than we sometimes appreciate.
The porn was perhaps a good clue that you were not only gay but a man as well I guess, secret stashes tending to be a male thing on the whole... ( I had a rather large one, also partly 'inherited' from my father...
Lots of Gids patients were gay, 80% is quoted though I need to read Cass report to confirm - seems a bit high.
What was your understanding of transsexual at 7 that you remember - was it already a prominent idea in US culture? Did you think I must be a girl inside because of X,y,z, or did you think I am in the wrong body and need to change my sex?
Trans to me is culture bound so I'm curious what was available from the culture for a 7 year old in the 70s to shape their narratives.
Just noticed your reply, apologies for a year delay. My mother had the sex talk with me at age 5, sperm and eggs and mothers and fathers, without specifics of acts. I remember it sitting at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning in winter, at our house in Phoenix. When she spoke of men and women in love, and specifics of only women and men can get married, and women fall in love with men, my child logic was that if you fell in love with men you were a woman. I knew at that age I was very interested in men and men’s bodies (Hercules on TV), and surmises that I was probably a girl. I literally called myself a Janie Girl to a tomboy friend around 6 or so - “if you’re a tomboy I’m a Janie girl”.
Somehow around that period I became aware of transsexuals, probably Christine Jorgensen whose book was published when I was 5, by virtue of my parent’s conversation - nothing at all was off limits, and I was a very curious child. That was when I decided I wasn’t actually male, and could get surgery to make me look female since I was a transsexual so I could marry a man when I grew up.
I thought I was a girl because I liked men (detested boys, always have), and I could get a female body. I never disliked my body at all. I disliked the idea of being alone or having to marry a woman; but that was a child’s logic, a fallacy of illicit distribution - women love men, I enjoy men , I’m a woman, very Alice in Wonderland.
I suspect Sufeitzy is describing the normal arc of development for the majority of current transreferrals, if only they didn't get referred! The last decade has seen thousands of potential gay kids diverted into an adult life on sexual dysfunction and sterility, and if that isn't conversion therapy, I don't know what is.
I love this, "The boys land in surgery not a throbbing disco." Today, some 30 years since my first visit to the Castro I still remember perfectly every beat and bar that seemed to sing , "Welcome home gay little Midwesterner!!" I am so very fortunate I took a plane with my secret girlfriend to figure it all out! And, it is so very sad that some folks just like me are sitting in a waiting room waiting to begin a tragic journey of pills, politics and persuasion. I bet the Castro of my youth is thick in the 3 P's of gender affirmative therapy! Go find the nightlife not knifelife!
If there were a 1490% increase in women admitted to abuse clinics, or a 1490% increase in calls to suicide hotlines, there would be an immediate and loud outcry from the left. The deadly silence on this issue is resounding. And purely political, regardless of the harm suffered by these people.
My ROGD, autistic, young adult son has many of the traits you detail. My ROGD daughter has different influences but I think the common ground is social media indoctrination and social awkwardness. This phenomenon has torn apart my small family.
I was drawn to read this piece perhaps because I am a therapist, but also because I am a loving Mom of a trans-identifying son. The article contains concepts that likely would not occur to the average person, but which our society desperately needs to be exposed to. I feel almost euphoric in this moment because this the author confirms my mother's intuition from more than a decade ago and that which God has impressed on me since. I pray that this article will get seen by people who need to see it.
Hang in their Gretchen. I am a therapist too and it is a hard line to hold. Moms know their kids. Social media knows their weakness. What you know is all heart and head, all love. We can't compete with predators and delusional group think. Be patient -All shall be well, keep the faith!
Thank you for writing this. My son absolutely falls into the ROGD category of trans identifying males. He fits all the criteria and the traits you’ve outlined describe him perfectly. I am excited to see more research come out about this topic.
Great post! One thing I think you are missing is why becoming a woman is so appealing to these boys. Their biggest problem is the feeling of not being wanted, especially by peers. What woman represent is the ultimate object of desire. They get so much more attention than boys that it creates a feeling of jealousy, even though most girls hate the attention they get.
Imma need to see a citation on that. 😅 My experience was the exact opposite. I wish I got any amount of attention at all in high school as a girl. The only girls who got attention were the pretty normies.
Ironic, isn’t it? But especially for the autistic boys, they don’t have the empathy to realize a girl that isn’t pretty doesn’t get that either, and they are unlikely to be pretty after transitioning.
Well yes. But also, even if you are pretty (i actually do think I’m pretty, now 😆) the reason I didn’t get attention was bc I wasn’t the combo of “normal” AND pretty. It actually had nothing to do with my looks- there were plenty of “popular” girls much less attractive than me- and plenty of people weirder and more bullied than me who were quite physically beautiful in retrospect- rather it had everything to do with the fact that I had such low self-confidence that I actively isolated myself, along with genuinely not liking the gross submissive behavior expected of girls and the lame group behavior. The guys are in the same boat. Feel ugly and weird? Sure, be true to yourself, but mostly, get over yourself. Your life will suck until you approach people, and know your own worth.
A boy wanting to “be a woman” is quite a jump. Do you really think comparing the mental state of a 50-year-old heterosexual AGP to a 10-year old pre-pubescent gay child is rational, possible, or meaningful?
The theory of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” in boys arguably shows more insight into the views of parents and counsellors regarding autogynephilia, rather than insight into the psychology of boys with issues around “gender identity”, [1] e.g.:
"I am quite literally someone who's mom thought I had "autism induced gender dysphoria"/boy ROGD when I came out as trans at 15, and can confidently say (seeing as I know the content of my own sexual fantasies), that this disorder is AGP, not some new category." [2]
Jo, I think it's irresponsible that you're not first attempting to publish your assumed findings in a peer reviewed journal, where you would find researchers disagree with you point-blank, e.g. Prof. J. Michael Bailey: "[Jo] doesn't understand autogynephilia. And although he may be a good therapist, psychoanalysis is a terrible scientific tool for understanding anything". [3]
Instead, you present the theory uncritically to parents as fact. It's no better than "gender identity" ideology itself. Naturally parents are going to prefer the theory of ROGD boys to the uncomfortable truth that their adolescent boy has an unusual aspect of their sexuality (what to do with that remains another question). Especially as a caricature of the devil now exists of males who have that sexuality.
The best resource for parents who want to understand what has motivated their otherwise masculine teenage son to suddenly declare that they are a woman remains "Gender dysphoria is not one thing". [4]
Sexuality and sexual arousal are powerful, of course --- particularly in males. but another very powerful drive is stimulated by contemporary gender discourse / trans activism that I think is under-analyzed: rage (particularly in males). Teens are often angry: they have a strong sense of justice, they need to rebel to form themselves as people, they are continually thwarted by their life-stage.
Identifying as trans serves as an outlet for adolescent anger but it also stokes it really powerfully and dangerously. For girls this rage is served and cultivated by a powerful new language of scolding: grownups are wrong, other kids who don't get it are wrong, everyone is wrong wrong wrong, they are going to show everybody how wrong they are about everything. It's mean girl self-righteousness. Girls who have been excluded will be more vulnerable to going down this path.
For boys this rage is served and cultivated in a much darker way: trans activism and gender ideology actively cultivate seething hostility toward women who reject its tenets. It advocates punitive violence and says it is righteous and justified. Rage is exciting and stimulating and absorbing. It grows when fed. I agree we've over-sold the boys sitting in the basement masturbating; many of them are sitting in the basement indulging not their sexuality but their hostility. Boys who have been excluded will be more vulnerable to going down this path.
Given the stats on how little sex young people are having compared to previous generations, I suspect the degree to which anger has come to substitute for romance in providing a source of / outlet for libidinal energies is being missed.
It seems like oftentimes these guys are sitting in the basement masturbating AND raging at the exact same time… ☹️
Extremely helpful observations and analysis, thank you Joe
Many of my colleagues would rather avoid the curiosity that we should have about such sociological phenomenon intersecting with predisposing factors like autism and fears about gender conformity fostering a breeding ground for intrapsychic dilemmas and seeking respite within online communities
They have been told not to be curious in favor of obeying the thought-stopping mantra that engaging with this sort of clinical observation and our own curiosity as clinicians is intrinsically harmful to (other) trans people, missing the point that there is no “true” trans, only those who are not unhappy with their choice to transition
Thus we dutifully abandon our professional instincts and our traditional roles in order to appease the social justice warriors who police the conversations we can have with each other
Thank you for being one of those clinicians who is willing to step outside the bounds of “acceptable” speech to cover this story
Your work is invaluable 🙏
This is a core point- that there is no “true” trans.
I disagree. This thread looks at it back to front. The diagnostic cluster of those of us with the core syndrome with all the features of transsexualism and who don't experience adolescent remission are the 'true trans' or rather 'true *transsexuals*'.
Social mimesis of this has had terrible results and it grieves me that many have been led into regretful choices but insisting that there is nothing that was being copied in the first place is missing the point.
https://claireraerandall.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/143883281?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
Using all the terms to make it so, doesn't make it so (syndrome, remission etc). The only thing being copied that we currently know about is the behaviour and narratives and these are culturally influenced. There may one day be found distinct aetiologies or propensities but these clusters of attributes aren't a distinct essence that is some true property of transness. Rather along with environment this complex may predispose someone to particular behaviours and towards narratives that exist in the culture. These narratives change over time and vary among individuals.
There are plenty of studies which have been strongly indicative of organic aetiologies and a prominent Professor of Psychobiology has told me personally that he considers my work to be 'good scholarship and clear thinking.' Also that 'of course' he agreed with me so don't try and gaslight me into doubting myself.
Here's Dr Milton Diamond on transsexualism as an intersex condition https://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2015to2019/2016-transsexualism.html
My book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Gender-Postmodernism-Trans-Identity/dp/1914208811/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30RJ7RPMXPI22&keywords=the+war+on+gender&qid=1654197847&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1
If you have access to studies, which are the most compelling and can you share them? I have skimmed this article but I don't have access to the sources quoted. Im already concerned it doesn't mention that in many studies the trans person may be taking cross-sex hormones which affects brain structures. And it bypasses mentioning homosexuality or effeminate/masculine external characteristics, which are alternative reasons for difference that overlap with people adopting a trans persona. Also, were these studies blinded? Have they been replicated by other groups? Neuroimaging studies for example routinely fail replication. People have long sought this kind of aetiology (previously it was to find homosexuality) so I'm surprised that if this was definitive it hasn't become mainstream. Aren't you?
Trans is a cultural manifestation that changes over time. Even if brain differences exist it doesn't prove 'trans', it might show that some people predisposed to trans have certain brain features.
A lot of psychiatric observation includes an obsessive element, and some trans could also be explained by conditioning through paraphilias.
Send me what you consider the best study and I will look into it.
I don't know if you're suited to scientific work if you accuse any challenge to your position as 'gas lighting into doubting yourself' You seem perfectly happy to confidently assert your unassailable truths. Why do you get a privilege to do this but others are gas-lighting?
I have read your linked stack. I disagree with your presentation of Hirschfeld but will put that in your stack when I compose it if comments are open.
Edit: the sensitivity to steroids by Lindstrom is a case in point. Nothing is mentioned about homosexuality which shows the same result. If trans FTM show the same behaviour with regards to pheromones as biological women doesn't this point to a homosexual response, by definition, despite the subjects claiming non-homosexuality?
I have linked the review study by Milton Diamond which has a number of papers. There is a separated twin study in there somewhere which is strong evidence and then beside this there is the Ramachandran study on neural body mapping.
I made the comment about gaslighting because you have already made up your mind and are determined that I should doubt myself without knowing anything about me.
I don't need the approval of some random person on the internet. Besides my own life experience, research and personal therapy I have the approval of not only one but actually two Emeritus Professors of Psychology for my book and the hypothesis I propose. I may be wrong, I may be right, but my hypothesis is coherent and testable, which is more than can be said for some of the accusations that are laid against transsexuals who have been quietly living their lives in peace before the transgender movement muscled in and claimed to be us.
A simple truth is that post-Butler transgenderism has blinded too many to the neurological research that had accrued prior to her ideology and now everyone had got into the 'It's all functional' mindset, which it isn't, even when they don't agree with her on the rest.
It's important context that Prof. J. Michael Bailey has said that Jo doesn't understand what AGP is. However, rather than put his theory forward for what would have been a very lively peer review, Jo has directly marketed the theory as a fait accompli at parents. I think this is irresponsible.
It's rather obvious, looking from the "ROGD boy" profile, that what Jo is describing is AGP. [1] In the "Man who Would be Queen", Bailey wrote that "Ray Blanchard remarked to me that he saw a seemingly close relation between autogynephilia and computer nerdiness". And indeed, autogynephilic males like Lynn Conway, who was instrumental in the development of the microprocessor, are profoundly gifted, "Conway was shy and experienced gender dysphoria as a child".
I can understand why anti-"gender identity" counsellors believe they have found something new, however, as they appear to primarily understand autogynephilia in terms of the caricature that has been created as a political campaign against "gender identity" ideology. [2]
I see that parents are now being sent down a wild goose chase in trying to understand something through psychoanalysis, which cannot be understood through psychoanalysis.
[1] https://www.rogdboys.org/boy-profile
[2] https://since2010.substack.com/p/part-7-rogd-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria
I have to reread this and compare with my prior thoughts. One that did jump to my attention is the online culture of being able to create and recreate avatars, icons (that is a loaded word!), handles, and personas (furr-sonas too). There are a cluster of elements that contribute to the disembodied lives of many young people, and in particular boys who spend a good amount of time online. The lockdowns exacerbated this, as online became the only place in which one could socialize.
Online you don't have a body; you create and imagine it. You have relationships with other people mediated through an imagined body, through how you introduce yourself by your image and worded introduction. You do create yourself.
As a woman, you can be treated with a tender consideration that is less likely towards a perceived male. You might be treated possibly protectively, as desirable, sexualized and sexually desirable... You get the idea.
What are some online activities and contexts? How do they mediate and channel the mind, the body, one's own experience and self-concept? A few: gaming. Lots of time gaming. You can game and simultaneously chat both verbally and written (Discord), so there is a lot of social interaction. You can also join servers and have others join, or find them, and the topics and interactions are unlimited. Anime can also come along with fan fiction and fan art, leading into the hentai porn, and also the freedom to imagine and identify as a man or a woman within your favorite world, and also with anthropomorphic animals (furry culture).
Gateway to porn is through the hentai, the furries, and you have the whole drive to excess and novelty, the creation of self according to a sexual icon type and pattern. How many get into and normalize S and M and controlled victimization, becoming a sexual object or fetish? These kinds of sexual experiences are way more normalized than when I was younger. It is a gateway, because curious minds, and curious minds together, will roam and discover. I believe that when one is in a sexual experience, the experience itself makes acceptable, desirable, addictive, and formative the guided content of that sexual experience. Imagine your young horny male being shaped by sexual experiences which are online, and so disembodied, but then bodied by the excitation and the magic of the sexually altered state. These are our dear young men.
I rarely see discussed this, but I have also read the physical connection between exposure to electronics, through the emf and also through the eyes. The light. There is, to me, a plausible and possibly already proven link between light exposure/emf and a while range of physical effects. I would look to Mercola and Román Shapoval (on substack), perhaps also Firstenberg, for more about that and to start to connect the dots. To make it common sense think: circadian rhythms... Or, how about the body type of one who spends large numbers of hours online....
I think the physical effects are massive, and this is not even getting to what happens to a brain which is entrained to features like: endless scrolling, online presentation VS reality, meme communication and endless meme tree layering, fast-paced visual mediums a la YouTube game theory and such. And then there is straight up propaganda life, friendship, sexuality through the kidsy medium of cartoons, Disney, the Owl House, Marvel, and a lot of really crazy symbology and narrative meaning-making.
Back to lockdowns and pandemic culture and hysteria. Fear, alienation, avoidance, physical taboos. Even the people you know are covered in masks. Your experience of them lacks social cues through the physical. You cannot get close to them. You cannot share space. Who are they, even? Do they like you? Do you like them? Eat alone. Don't exercise. Don't go outside. Nihilism and doom. No prospects. We can draw so many lines between the doI have to reread this and compare with my prior thoughts. One that did jump to my attention is the online culture of being able to create and recreate avatars, icons (that is a loaded word!), handles, and personas (furr-sonas too). There are a cluster of elements that contribute to the disembodied lives of many young people, and in particular boys who spend a good amount of time online. The lockdowns exacerbated this, as online became the only place in which one could socialize.
Online you don't have a body; you create and imagine it. You have relationships with other people mediated through an imagined body, through how you introduce yourself by your image and worded introduction. You do create yourself.
As a woman, you can be treated with a tender consideration that is less likely towards a perceived male. You might be treated possibly protectively, as desirable, sexualized and sexually desirable... You get the idea.
What are some online activities and contexts? How do they mediate and channel the mind, the body, one's own experience and self-concept? A few: gaming. Lots of time gaming. You can game and simultaneously chat both verbally and written (Discord), so there is a lot of social interaction. You can also join servers and have others join, or find them, and the topics and interactions are unlimited. Anime can also come along with fan fiction and fan art, leading into the hentai porn, and also the freedom to imagine and identify as a man or a woman within your favorite world, and also with anthropomorphic animals (furry culture).
Gateway to porn is through the hentai, the furries, and you have the whole drive to excess and novelty, the creation of self according to a sexual icon type and pattern. How many get into and normalize S and M and controlled victimization, becoming a sexual object or fetish? These kinds of sexual experiences are way more normalized than when I was younger. It is a gateway, because curious minds, and curious minds together, will roam and discover. I believe that when one is in a sexual experience, the experience itself makes acceptable, desirable, addictive, and formative the guided content of that sexual experience. Imagine your young horny male being shaped by sexual experiences which are online, and so disembodied, but then bodied by the excitation and the magic of the sexually altered state. These are our dear young men.
I rarely see discussed this, but I have also read the physical connection between exposure to electronics, through the emf and also through the eyes. The light. There is, to me, a plausible and possibly already proven link between light exposure/emf and a while range of physical effects. I would look to Mercola and Román Shapoval (on substack), perhaps also Firstenberg, for more about that and to start to connect the dots. To make it common sense think: circadian rhythms... Or, how about the body type of one who spends large numbers of hours online....
I think the physical effects are massive, and this is not even getting to what happens to a brain which is entrained to features like: endless scrolling, online presentation VS reality, meme communication and endless meme tree layering, fast-paced visual mediums a la YouTube game theory and such. And then there is straight up propaganda life, friendship, sexuality through the kidsy medium of cartoons, Disney, the Owl House, Marvel, and a lot of really crazy symbology and narrative meaning-making.
Back to lockdowns and pandemic culture and hysteria. Fear, alienation, avoidance, physical taboos. Even the people you know are covered in masks. Your experience of them lacks social cues through the physical. You cannot get close to them. You cannot share space. Who are they, even? Do they like you? Do you like them? Eat alone. Don't exercise. Don't go outside. Nihilism and doom. No prospects. We can draw so many lines between the dots.
And then there is the current satisfaction with diagnoses, self-diagnoses, medicalization for depression, anxiety, adhd, and so on. There is something reassuring about having a diagnosis and being treated, and also being able to introduce oneself as such, which guides others likewise into a prescription of how to socially relate, respect, and never ever discriminate or act phobic. The social prescriptions that tie themselves to a scientific physical prescription. What is the social function of these? What is the interior psychological function? How does this work for these spectrum or whatever you want to call it kids?
And, what are the effects of all of the drugs and pharmaceutical manipulations upon these young people? So much.
Suffice to say that this article is great. I am very excited by the connections AND I want more to be brought in. I have good liberal family members who would not dare read these kinds of things because it would be disrespectful to question gender identity. I would like to see more like this that compellingly opens us up to be curious and consider that there is much more going on in a young person's life than the simplistic discovery of a young man that he was ALWAYS a woman. Maybe we could offer more to our dear young people than simply stopping at that declaration. Thank you!
what you describe is something i have witnessed. something i am still witnessing. it's a collision of all these factors. colliding with a young man. and the damage is immense. you describe it so exactly. and your description makes me feel less alone. thank you.
I have a young man who went trans just over a year ago and excommunicated me. He's always on my mind.
It’s a mystery to me why a study isn’t done of the parents of such kids. They are obviously the people with the most influence on these children. There are very likely certain characteristics they have with each other that create the self loathing to begin with. I don’t see how ignoring the elephant in the room helps.
People don't want to be cancelled, how is that mysterious?
I strongly agree and would also like to see a study on this. I attempted to explore how parenting / upbringing factors might be contributing what I believe is a significant subset of the gifted/autistic/ROGD population, both male and female. I am *not* trying to shame parents; this is a cultural and intergenerational issue. This is from a brain development lens and draws extensively on Iain McGilchrist's work in The Master and His Emissary.
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-drama-of-the-gifted-children
I'm not arguing against anything described in this essay, but trying to add to it.
Edit: removed an example I originally shared because I think it was counter-productive out of its context. It's in this essay on the dark history of parenting books *not* in the essay linked above: https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-reading-too-much-part-df8
(Ignore the crappy URL, I'm fairly new to Substack and didn't know I could edit them when I published that one!)
A superb and sensible essay. So refreshing to have an adult in the room.
The graphs are so strongly correlated that I am hard to convince the underlying reasons are very different.
This was a great piece that tied into the porn: 16 year old wrote an incredible essay to wake us up to how ubiquitously children are accessing porn, and how it is shaping and influencing them.
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-our-fourth-graders-on-pornhub
Also, I think it is a conversational touchpoint to hear John Uhler talk about his experience as a psychologist working with psychopaths in prison, related to a porn pathway to change of self.
Nicely done.
I was precisely the hyper intellectualized effeminate boy, slightly introverted, an enigma to children and frightening to adults (teachers: constantly correcting). I also have an almost cinematically detailed emotional and somatic memory which I enjoy recalling, the nice parts.
I decided at around age 8 (around 1970) I was transsexual - that was the only explanation for my attraction to men, and that was how I would get a handsome husband and live a married life. A result of my copius library medical research. Yes, age 8. I charted out surgery and hormones.
As I was reaching puberty, around 1974, I watched the “Tomorrow Show” with very late with Tom Snyder one evening (parents had long since given up any semblance of control), he went into a Manhattan gay disco, full of handsome shirtless muscular hairy men clearly enjoying each others company, kissing on TV.
The moment of Verklärung: transfiguration. I wanted those men, they would want me, and all my medical plotting evaporated like a bad dream. A huge range of memories and my mute reactions bloomed up that evening and started connecting - Steve Reeves movies, Semi-nude men in the scary but exciting Mario Bava classic “Black Sunday”, the shirtless hairy Clint Walker in “The Dirty Dozen”, a hatred of public bathrooms (“discovery!”), the smell of men (Men in my family have no body odor, a defective ABCC11 gene), the sound of deep voices, the look of large hands, and the throbbing thing boys get at puberty especially when they see images they could practically smell.
That was that, my reading research changed and a few years later I was (illegally: blond teen resembling a football tackle gets you in anywhere in DC and NYC) the person meeting those men.
50 years later I’m “triggered” seeing a precise description of what I went through but as pointed out, now the boys land in surgery, not a throbbing disco.
The one thing I’d argue with which is a consistent misinterpretation: I didn’t dislike my sex. I thought I was the wrong sex because it was difficult to conceptualise that the feelings a woman had for a man could also be embodied in a man.
I believed that only women had those feelings ergo I was woman. Gay, same-sex attraction was not an option because I didn’t have sexual feelings at 8, I only understood roles and what they implied. I had seen and read plenty about all sorts of sex (my parents had a large library; as well my father had 2nd drawer from the dresser top under underwear jackoff porn)
At 12 I definitely had sexual feelings, and puberty amplified them sufficiently that I could recognize them in other men. Everything fell into place in seconds in my mind. It was like learning to do integral calculus, or when I first played Prokofiev on a flute, or connecting entropy to heat, evolution and rolling dice, or the first electrical Jacob’s ladder (traveling arc) I built. Bam! Zap!
I don’t believe children can be trans, “AGP” or otherwise until well into puberty or beyond, when their body and mind is mature, perhaps early 20’s? because they simply cannot conceptualise that which they cannot feel. The WPATH papers highlighted this cruel reality when the “doctors” admitted that children who could not even understand high school biology were saying they were trans.
Look at what “Jazz Jennings” says about orgasm - he has absolutely no idea what it is, and never will.
Male children who are bullied (I was, incessantly) and likewise can only think of male and female in relation to a family unit - not sex - they exist on a continuum of unhappiness between worrying about their role in their life in relation to others and what they could adopt to realize a viable future, hypothesizing why they are harassed and assaulted and how they can avoid it.
This is precisely a child who should not be informed that they are trans (they aren’t) they can change their sex (they can’t) and that if they do so they will be a fulfilled adult (they will be sexless) and live with a partner like their parents (very unlikely).
It is for this reason I reject the premise that there are children who are possibly any variation on trans.
It’s like discussing a male child’s feelings of having a full beard and shaving it or not, describing exactly what an orgasm feels like, and how they like to evoke one.
They can’t.
Andrew Sullivan thinks most young males wanting to be women are likely gay. They will lead happier lives as gay men than as pretend women.
Absolut wahr Frau Katze.
“Psychotherapists” cannot understand the state of mind of these children (“Theory of Mind”) and attribute the motives of adult heterosexual men to young boys.
Phenomenal.
Two words: Christine Jorgensen.
He had a biography published in 1967, I discovered it in my parents’ library a few years later. I also read my Grandmother’s “Readers Digests” and seem to recall something there. There were articles on homosexuality at that period, and the inevitable “I am Joe’s X” (man gland, testicles, nose, foot…) - some touched on trans…
Because I knew I liked and fantasized about big hairy muscular men (not boys) and only women got married to men, I would have to become a woman as I had read. It was a child’s logic, you just removed your genitals and had breast implants. Somehow about that time I was logically aware of hormones (Mom had a hysterectomy, my Aunt took birth control). Testosterone was very abstract.
There were some medical things I read in the local library, and homosexuality and transsexualism was somewhat connected in my mind. The medical DSM-2 from the period spoke of transvestism but not transsexualism.
Around 1976 Patricia Nell Warren’s “The Front Runner” appears in our library, and Grant Tracy Saxon’s “The Happy Hustler” in my Dad’s secret stash. And gay porn… I had already “desisted”
I had already begun my own secret Playgirl stash (behind hot water heater in a closet in a bathroom), as well as “Chic” - one with a nude porn Paul Barresi (who I met 6 years later and worked out with at my Gym in West Hollywood LA, not the infamous Jim Morris Club / John Travolta / Barresi event) and so on.
I was a very aggressive gay child and teen.
Make sense?
Yes, I think it does. Christine Jorgensen in turn had a copy of The Male Hormone. I'm reading Bob Ostertag's Sex, Science, Self at the moment and it's interesting how hormones become the essence of man/women.
Other stacks (Unyielding Bicyclist) highlight various puff pieces in media/TV through the 80s on trans so I guess cultural exposure has been more frequent, for longer than we sometimes appreciate.
The porn was perhaps a good clue that you were not only gay but a man as well I guess, secret stashes tending to be a male thing on the whole... ( I had a rather large one, also partly 'inherited' from my father...
Anyway thanks for your candid sharing.
Lots of Gids patients were gay, 80% is quoted though I need to read Cass report to confirm - seems a bit high.
What was your understanding of transsexual at 7 that you remember - was it already a prominent idea in US culture? Did you think I must be a girl inside because of X,y,z, or did you think I am in the wrong body and need to change my sex?
Trans to me is culture bound so I'm curious what was available from the culture for a 7 year old in the 70s to shape their narratives.
Just noticed your reply, apologies for a year delay. My mother had the sex talk with me at age 5, sperm and eggs and mothers and fathers, without specifics of acts. I remember it sitting at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning in winter, at our house in Phoenix. When she spoke of men and women in love, and specifics of only women and men can get married, and women fall in love with men, my child logic was that if you fell in love with men you were a woman. I knew at that age I was very interested in men and men’s bodies (Hercules on TV), and surmises that I was probably a girl. I literally called myself a Janie Girl to a tomboy friend around 6 or so - “if you’re a tomboy I’m a Janie girl”.
Somehow around that period I became aware of transsexuals, probably Christine Jorgensen whose book was published when I was 5, by virtue of my parent’s conversation - nothing at all was off limits, and I was a very curious child. That was when I decided I wasn’t actually male, and could get surgery to make me look female since I was a transsexual so I could marry a man when I grew up.
I thought I was a girl because I liked men (detested boys, always have), and I could get a female body. I never disliked my body at all. I disliked the idea of being alone or having to marry a woman; but that was a child’s logic, a fallacy of illicit distribution - women love men, I enjoy men , I’m a woman, very Alice in Wonderland.
I suspect Sufeitzy is describing the normal arc of development for the majority of current transreferrals, if only they didn't get referred! The last decade has seen thousands of potential gay kids diverted into an adult life on sexual dysfunction and sterility, and if that isn't conversion therapy, I don't know what is.
I love this, "The boys land in surgery not a throbbing disco." Today, some 30 years since my first visit to the Castro I still remember perfectly every beat and bar that seemed to sing , "Welcome home gay little Midwesterner!!" I am so very fortunate I took a plane with my secret girlfriend to figure it all out! And, it is so very sad that some folks just like me are sitting in a waiting room waiting to begin a tragic journey of pills, politics and persuasion. I bet the Castro of my youth is thick in the 3 P's of gender affirmative therapy! Go find the nightlife not knifelife!
Excellent piece. Thank you.
If there were a 1490% increase in women admitted to abuse clinics, or a 1490% increase in calls to suicide hotlines, there would be an immediate and loud outcry from the left. The deadly silence on this issue is resounding. And purely political, regardless of the harm suffered by these people.
My ROGD, autistic, young adult son has many of the traits you detail. My ROGD daughter has different influences but I think the common ground is social media indoctrination and social awkwardness. This phenomenon has torn apart my small family.
I was drawn to read this piece perhaps because I am a therapist, but also because I am a loving Mom of a trans-identifying son. The article contains concepts that likely would not occur to the average person, but which our society desperately needs to be exposed to. I feel almost euphoric in this moment because this the author confirms my mother's intuition from more than a decade ago and that which God has impressed on me since. I pray that this article will get seen by people who need to see it.
Hang in their Gretchen. I am a therapist too and it is a hard line to hold. Moms know their kids. Social media knows their weakness. What you know is all heart and head, all love. We can't compete with predators and delusional group think. Be patient -All shall be well, keep the faith!
Thank you!
Finally. Thank you.
Thank you for writing this. My son absolutely falls into the ROGD category of trans identifying males. He fits all the criteria and the traits you’ve outlined describe him perfectly. I am excited to see more research come out about this topic.
Great post! One thing I think you are missing is why becoming a woman is so appealing to these boys. Their biggest problem is the feeling of not being wanted, especially by peers. What woman represent is the ultimate object of desire. They get so much more attention than boys that it creates a feeling of jealousy, even though most girls hate the attention they get.
“They get so much more attention than boys”
Imma need to see a citation on that. 😅 My experience was the exact opposite. I wish I got any amount of attention at all in high school as a girl. The only girls who got attention were the pretty normies.
Ironic, isn’t it? But especially for the autistic boys, they don’t have the empathy to realize a girl that isn’t pretty doesn’t get that either, and they are unlikely to be pretty after transitioning.
Well yes. But also, even if you are pretty (i actually do think I’m pretty, now 😆) the reason I didn’t get attention was bc I wasn’t the combo of “normal” AND pretty. It actually had nothing to do with my looks- there were plenty of “popular” girls much less attractive than me- and plenty of people weirder and more bullied than me who were quite physically beautiful in retrospect- rather it had everything to do with the fact that I had such low self-confidence that I actively isolated myself, along with genuinely not liking the gross submissive behavior expected of girls and the lame group behavior. The guys are in the same boat. Feel ugly and weird? Sure, be true to yourself, but mostly, get over yourself. Your life will suck until you approach people, and know your own worth.
A boy wanting to “be a woman” is quite a jump. Do you really think comparing the mental state of a 50-year-old heterosexual AGP to a 10-year old pre-pubescent gay child is rational, possible, or meaningful?
Excellent piece. Our boys need this discussion. Thank you Joe.
The theory of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” in boys arguably shows more insight into the views of parents and counsellors regarding autogynephilia, rather than insight into the psychology of boys with issues around “gender identity”, [1] e.g.:
"I am quite literally someone who's mom thought I had "autism induced gender dysphoria"/boy ROGD when I came out as trans at 15, and can confidently say (seeing as I know the content of my own sexual fantasies), that this disorder is AGP, not some new category." [2]
Jo, I think it's irresponsible that you're not first attempting to publish your assumed findings in a peer reviewed journal, where you would find researchers disagree with you point-blank, e.g. Prof. J. Michael Bailey: "[Jo] doesn't understand autogynephilia. And although he may be a good therapist, psychoanalysis is a terrible scientific tool for understanding anything". [3]
Instead, you present the theory uncritically to parents as fact. It's no better than "gender identity" ideology itself. Naturally parents are going to prefer the theory of ROGD boys to the uncomfortable truth that their adolescent boy has an unusual aspect of their sexuality (what to do with that remains another question). Especially as a caricature of the devil now exists of males who have that sexuality.
The best resource for parents who want to understand what has motivated their otherwise masculine teenage son to suddenly declare that they are a woman remains "Gender dysphoria is not one thing". [4]
[1] https://since2010.substack.com/p/part-7-rogd-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria
[2] https://twitter.com/anne__onymous_/status/1785175437569593852
[3] https://since2010.substack.com/p/should-you-refer-your-sons-to-genspect
[4] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/