I talked to Nichole and ML about their work on ROGD Boys, an online resource for parents and clinicians focusing on the new cohort of boys and young men announcing trans identities and seeking transition.
Given the similarities between the ROGD boys and girls I’m just gonna put this out there: fear of or shame about their sexuality does not preclude autogynephilia. Nor does autogynephilia make them unworthy of help.
If they’re as similar to the girls wrt how they deal with their sexuality fears as they are in everything else, I’d go as far as to say shame and fear of their sexuality is often a precondition—it makes sexuality less scary when they take their own material reality out of it entirely. It’s maybe not the same route to getting there as the porn brain guys. And it may take on a more cutesy/romance focused fantasy* but I still think that’s related to their sexuality…you know, as attracted to women.
On the topic of social influences, my husband informs me that in the nerd social spheres he inhabits it hasn’t been acceptable to admit you think a fictional male character is cool for years now. That the other nerd guys will mock you and claim this must mean you’re gay, and that they want the cool female characters to have female love interests because a male love interest who would be worthy of her would be cooler than them. (I’m paraphrasing; His word choices were more scathing.) I feel like this type of attitude would not help insecure young men…but wouldn’t necessarily be an obvious influence to anyone outside of that social group; it’s not direct in the same way as “and then this group of girls all competed to see who could most accept him as Just Like Them to prove they were supportive.”
*Nor does autogynephilia make them unworthy of help. Autism and ADHD both seem to come with either hyposexuality—in which case orientation is expressed more through relationship fantasies than sex fantasies even leaving aside fear of sexuality—or hypersexuality.
Personally, I think sexual desire is a lot more changeable (for lack of a better word) than people think, for both men and women. Sexual desires change through indirect means. To paraphrase the article linked above, no teenage boy wakes up one day, says “I want to be an autogynephile,” and forces himself down that road, but neither is AGP an inborn trait. Some people will disagree, but to me it’s fairly obvious that fetishes are something that develop gradually, and no person is born with some sort of genetic guarantee that they will develop a fetish. If all male nerd culture ever talks about is “traps” and yuri, this is EXACTLY the sort of indirect pressure that shapes sexual desire.
And it makes perfect sense that a young man’s fear of his own sexuality would also exert this indirect pressure. AGP would seem “safer” on a subconscious level in the face of both “toxic males” messaging and general shyness about relating to others, since, at least at the start, no other people need be involved for a guy to get something sexual out of AGP fantasies.
Great interview! Thanks so much. Here's what I find interesting. One would think that in a cohort as peer conscious as teenagers that transitioning would be a dangerous way of making oneself a target for bullying. But it seems as though the space for the trans identity is more welcoming than the discomfort of not fitting in with other boys. This means the role of welcoming girls might play a larger part in creating a space for fitting in. It's a place to flee to. For their part, the girls gain status by having a trans friend whose identity is in their hands. Little Dr. Frankensteins...What a tangle!
Here's something I think about a lot: the role of mass culture in praising the power of beauty. For boys who don't have the macho mojo, or who worry about their toxicity as males, that kind of power is quite seductive.
Finally, I want to second the author's question: Why aren't people more curious about this?
People aren’t more curious because of the AGP theory, which I don’t think is valid even in the older cohort. Dr. Charles Moser posits some critical questions about the validity of Blanchard and Lawrence studies. This along with the history of transsexual, transvestite, transgender are all reasons to question. Society wants someone to rail against and what a perfect antagonist than a sexual fetish? This has become a cult. These boys are rudderless and that vulnerability along with algorithms or a girl encouraging is the perfect storm to indoctrinate the boys.
In reading about AGP, listening to Benjamin Boyce podcasts, reading Charles Moser critiques, symposium on psychosomatic disorder, countless MTF bs on medium, psychosomatic disorders, looping/naming convention, report on Sexuality by male detransitioner stories and accounts from a few wives who were married to MtF. If AGP is the etiology for heterosexual MtF, what is the etiology for gays for MtF? Do you think AGP, pedophilia and other paraphilias are innate?
"Do you think AGP, pedophilia and other paraphilias are innate?"
Beyond my pay grade I'm afraid. I'm certainly not as well-versed as you are in the ins and outs of this ...what I would say is that many of "theoreticians" (Serrano and Chu, Lavery et al) seem to be AGPs who've been to graduate school.
I don't think going to graduate school necessarily equates to being smarter.
What those three and Lawrence have in common is narcissistic traits. Lawrence has stated that AGP and narcissistic traits go together.
I have only researched a lot because AGP vs Gays never made sense to me. One does it because they have an innateness that supposedly they have an erotic target identity disorder (or AGP) where as the gays do it because they lack that and they have female traits? Just my 2c in skepticism. Thanks for the question.
The graduate school comment was meant as snark. However you parse the origins of the trans phenom I can think one can say that the internet has facilitated its popularity. Sometimes I'm amazed that we let kids explore the myriad permutations of sexuality online without any sort of guidance. Our faith in progress did us a disservice in this arena.
Reading the paragraph about the 'typical' ROGD boy makes me wonder if a trans identity isn't some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism for nerdy teen boys who are basically walking stereotypes and who can't find any other ways to get into the orbit of girls they like. If girls are incentivising these guys by encouraging them to transition then that very fact alone could be enough to explain why super nerdy guys gravitate towards TQism. I still have a hard time believing that there isn't a sexual component to this but I'm willing to accept that the traditional definition of autogynephilia as being aroused by the thought* of oneself as a woman doesn't quite cut it in this case. I'd be curious to know how gifted boys who are also either handsome or athletic, or both fair compared to the ROGD cohort of boys. I assume gifted ROGD boys are still a minority of the overall population of gifted male teens, even when you factor in that high intelligence seems to correlate with certain mental illnesses like anxiety and depression**.
*It would be interesting to know if people with aphantasia are less likely to develop a trans identity.
**This is one of those 'facts' that I've heard about but don't really know how true it actually is.
My son had three girlfriends. His IQ was in the 98th percentile. He was very kind, the opposite of the TRAs. He didn’t make male friends because in his class, they were not as witty, smart and mature. He was friends with all his older brothers friends. When they went off to college, he became unmoored looking for his tribe. Instead of maturing into himself, he was rudderless.
If the sexual component isn't a meaningful explaination anymore then it does feel like we're dealing with a new religion that fills the void in many people's lives that traditional religion no longer can (in part because we reached a point where people could openly mock and criticise other people's religions, that hasn't happened yet with TQism).
I want to reply to the aphantasia. This seems to be making the rounds on the web for some reason. My son, whom I am estranged from, mentioned that he has aphantasia in a post. I had to look up the newest flavor of identity he picked up. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is aphantasia, he is a 4 and I am a 5. I thought "I can picture that" was a metaphor of sorts.
Aphantasia . . . is the inability to visualize.[1]
The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880,[2] but has remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter.[3] Zeman's team coined the term aphantasia,[4] derived from the ancient Greek word phantasia (φαντασία), which means "appearance/image", and the prefix a- (ἀ-), which means "without".[5] People with aphantasia are called aphantasics,[6] or less commonly aphants[7] or aphantasiacs.[8]
Aphantasia can be considered the opposite of hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.[9][10]
I only learnt about the phenomenon myself a few years ago but I didn't even learn the name until this year. Katie Herzog wrote a very funny Blocked and Reported post about finding out she had it (https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/revelations).
Also when I mentioned the condition to my best friend, whom I've known since 1998, he was like "you can make pictures in your head?" and I was like "yes, can't you?", and he was like "no", and I was like "so you're telling me you don't have a soul". It was quite the revelation...
As someone who was a self-loathing, closeted gay teen at a boarding school in the early 70s , I can say that having to live with other cliquish high achieving boys who were quite conspicuous about how thoroughly they had it together compounded my unspoken pain. A sport that was very popular among the students was making other boys aware of their juvenile inadequacies. Those guys have a lot to answer for.
If teen boys of that ilk still exist at public and private high schools today, look to them as one of the reasons some boys go ROGD.
What an amazing collection of facts and resources. It gave me an idea.
We should apply the rules of negligence to medical interventions: those who provide "Gend Aff Care" to kids and teens, without accurate warnings about the risks, should be held financially responsible for the costs of those risks materialising in their patients.
Doing so is morally justified, and could fit within our existing western legal systems as a principle of law. Doctors already have an obligation to warn patients about the side effects of new medications they prescribe, so this wouldn't be much of a stretch.
I didn't practice malpractice law before I retired from the profession, but I get the gist of it enough to say that a plaintiff would have to prove (among other things) that his doctor failed to adhere to the accepted standard of care in his profession.
It is very likely that the doctor's attorney will try to get the court to accept a standard of care promulgated by an organization such as WPATH that is captured by gender identity ideology and trans activism. It is almost as if trans activists realized many years ago to prioritize establishing professional standards of care for doctors and therapists who practice so-called gender affirming care. They've been working tirelessly to present them as "gold standard" of care so they'll be accepted by judges when victims try to hold their doctors and other care professionals responsible for their malpractice.
I hope that the sex realist bar is working with medical professionals and other qualified experts to topple flawed standards of care that are biased in favor of providers of gender affirming care and against their victims.
You may be reluctant to address this issue politically due to your pain, but it's unrealistic to believe that this isn't a political matter. Much like the political discourse surrounding COVID-19, the current trend of young boys considering transitioning to women is deeply entwined with political agendas. What happened to your son was not merely an unfortunate event. There's a deliberate effort by individuals such as Andy Slavitt, and as you've noted, by big pharmaceutical companies, to promote treatments and studies that increasingly target vulnerable young men, steering them towards transitioning care. By avoiding the political implications of this situation, you're turning a blind eye to the true forces at play. The Democratic Party bears significant responsibility for advancing these policies. It's troubling to witness your direct experience with your son’s situation and yet see you refrain from confronting the political roots of this issue. “All of us involved with ROGD Boys come from a scientific background. When we meet, we leave our political affiliations at the door. We want ROGD Boys to be a resource for parents and the boys based on what the science tells us. Other people might have time for identities and politics, but we do not. All that matters to us are our suffering children.”
I understand the website shouldn't be political, but you should no longer be part of the Democratic party, which it sounds like you are. Listen to RFK’s speech. Tell me it’s okay to close your eyes and not squarely lay the blame for the pain and suffering that countless other families will endure on one political party. At the same time, you work tirelessly to try and help them with the resources you created while ignoring the reason we are seeing an alarming trend or uptick in the number of boys walking down this destructive path. There is only one group of people in this country that sees what’s happening here, and your lack of wanting to get political is disturbing. Half of America plays identity politics, and it sounds like you are playing the game as well. So, congratulations on staying out of the political game. I’m sure all of your democratic friends will continue to invite you to their cocktail parties.
You lost me at RFK. It is hard enough dealing with the obvious causes of gender identity madness without having to contend with conspiracy mongers' attempt to hijack the sex realist cause for the benefit of their obscure and unhinged agendas.
Yes, most Dems are on the wrong side of the gender identity culture war, but it's because they're uniquely susceptible to gender ideology. It appeals to their bleeding-heart liberalism. They've been bamboozled by trans activists and the dark, destructive and paranoid philosophy that underlies gender identity.
However, on the whole Dems do not reject vaccines, seek to close off women's reproductive health care options, work to shove gay people back in the closet, embrace patriarchal nationalist evanglical Christianity or try to undermine our liberal constitutional democracy.
Don't say we didn't warn you when your country turns into Venezuela, and you're waiting in lines for food, hoping to somehow find food for your family.
Typical liberal progressive response: 'You lost me at RFK.' Of course we did, because critical thinking isn't your strong suit. You don't analyze or question; you simply echo whatever narrative your tribe has decided on. To you, RFK is nothing more than an anti-vaxxer or a nut job because that’s what the mainstream media has fed you. You’ve chosen to accept those labels without ever considering the substance beneath them. In short, you're just another sheep in the flock, blindly following whatever narrative you're told to believe.
The Democratic Party’s priorities clearly do not include the well-being of these children. Their policies seem to be designed to ensure that countless more young people endure the same suffering and confusion that your family has faced. This perspective, highlighted in the article I shared, underscores that your son’s transition wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a broader agenda, carefully crafted by those in power, to undermine and destabilize the youth of our nation.
Here's the link to Behind the Looking Glass, Vaishnavi Sundar's epic documentary on trans widows and trans orphans, released today at Lime Soda Films YT channel:
Eliza, did you see the recent NYT story by Christina Jewett about Dr Jeffrey E Shuren, the FDA director who was approving devices and pharmaceuticals while his wife was an attorney simultaneously representing the same pharmaceutical companies? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/health/fda-medical-devices-ethics.html
Part of me wonders if we could understand the motives behind trans-identification through terror management theory. I haven't read much about that theory but just have a gut feeling after reading this.
I never read about “euphoria”, boys who figure out they are gay and sneak around disreputable places and have sex with boys or men who smell like men and talk fondly about dick and ass and show them tricks they didn’t know they could do.
All adolescents are nervous about puberty. But not all adolescents are far enough away from a cellphone to actually meet other nervous horny adolescents and work out the kinks, so to speak.
More dark parties, illegal alcohol and marijuana, danger, kissing at 3am, being jacked off, the big burly one surprisingly taking an interest, feeling an unshaven chin down there, the world doesn’t end when you get caught, crushes, the first one who ignores you, the first one who calls back, afternoon with him and mom and dad away, figuring out blowjobs in cars, pushing on him because it feels good, someone you suddenly realize gets a crush on you, putting his hand down your pants, his putting your hand down his underwear, you realize you have big balls, jacking off in bed together, the first time you kissed someone with bed mouth, suddenly being able to smell semen on someone’s breath.
There's not a new cohort of "ROGD boys". It's just AGP. The nerdy, delayed, profile is the same.
"This profile is an archetypal profile of adolescent boys with autogynephilia and was discussed in the book The Man who would be Queen, where Bailey writes, “Ray Blanchard remarked to me that he saw a seemingly close relation between autogynephilia and computer nerdiness”. A famous example of a profoundly gifted male with autogynephilia is Lynn Conway, who was fundamental in the development of the microprocessor, grew up “shy” and experienced what is today called gender dysphoria."
Thanks for a superb interview and analysis, Eliza, and to all those working on the ROGD boys issue. All of our kids' lives matter, but there's something particularly tragic about the preponderence of gifted children of either sex being sidetracked by such a damaging ideology during their maturing years.
Unlike sex, a lot of the personal characteristics we discuss in relation to people are spectra and maleable, and it's important to remember that. We often see and repeat the message that people fall into psychological categories and "have" some characteristic or other, whether that's autogynephilia, ADHD, depression, their IQ, or their sexual orientation. All these are continua, but we apply very approximate methods of assessment and divide people into haves and have-nots. Young people in particular change a lot; their brains are developing rapidly, and they will be experimenting with different attitudes and life-skills, identities and behaviours. Meanwhile, the internet is full of quick tests they can do to self-diagnose, probably of very low quality, and they probably think they're stuck with whatever the results say. Growing up is so awkward because we want to do it really fast, and we don't want to do it at all at the same time.
But, as others have suggested, we mustn't analyse the victims looking for reasons they've gone astray and lose sight of the primary causes, the pseudo-medical scandal and the idiotic woke culture that enabled it. There were always traps waiting for troubled kids, but only recently have they been in danger of grooming by trusted, idiotic professionals in classrooms and clinics.
Those poor kids.
What have we done? Making girls too afraid to be women, and now boys too afraid to be men.
It's tragic.
Thankyou for the information.
Given the similarities between the ROGD boys and girls I’m just gonna put this out there: fear of or shame about their sexuality does not preclude autogynephilia. Nor does autogynephilia make them unworthy of help.
If they’re as similar to the girls wrt how they deal with their sexuality fears as they are in everything else, I’d go as far as to say shame and fear of their sexuality is often a precondition—it makes sexuality less scary when they take their own material reality out of it entirely. It’s maybe not the same route to getting there as the porn brain guys. And it may take on a more cutesy/romance focused fantasy* but I still think that’s related to their sexuality…you know, as attracted to women.
On the topic of social influences, my husband informs me that in the nerd social spheres he inhabits it hasn’t been acceptable to admit you think a fictional male character is cool for years now. That the other nerd guys will mock you and claim this must mean you’re gay, and that they want the cool female characters to have female love interests because a male love interest who would be worthy of her would be cooler than them. (I’m paraphrasing; His word choices were more scathing.) I feel like this type of attitude would not help insecure young men…but wouldn’t necessarily be an obvious influence to anyone outside of that social group; it’s not direct in the same way as “and then this group of girls all competed to see who could most accept him as Just Like Them to prove they were supportive.”
*Nor does autogynephilia make them unworthy of help. Autism and ADHD both seem to come with either hyposexuality—in which case orientation is expressed more through relationship fantasies than sex fantasies even leaving aside fear of sexuality—or hypersexuality.
This post (from a detransitioned man) is germane to this discussion:
https://sybmantics.substack.com/p/rapid-onset-autogynephilia
Personally, I think sexual desire is a lot more changeable (for lack of a better word) than people think, for both men and women. Sexual desires change through indirect means. To paraphrase the article linked above, no teenage boy wakes up one day, says “I want to be an autogynephile,” and forces himself down that road, but neither is AGP an inborn trait. Some people will disagree, but to me it’s fairly obvious that fetishes are something that develop gradually, and no person is born with some sort of genetic guarantee that they will develop a fetish. If all male nerd culture ever talks about is “traps” and yuri, this is EXACTLY the sort of indirect pressure that shapes sexual desire.
And it makes perfect sense that a young man’s fear of his own sexuality would also exert this indirect pressure. AGP would seem “safer” on a subconscious level in the face of both “toxic males” messaging and general shyness about relating to others, since, at least at the start, no other people need be involved for a guy to get something sexual out of AGP fantasies.
Spot-on post, as always, Tar Miriel! (love your username btw)
That's so interesting. And messed up.
Great interview! Thanks so much. Here's what I find interesting. One would think that in a cohort as peer conscious as teenagers that transitioning would be a dangerous way of making oneself a target for bullying. But it seems as though the space for the trans identity is more welcoming than the discomfort of not fitting in with other boys. This means the role of welcoming girls might play a larger part in creating a space for fitting in. It's a place to flee to. For their part, the girls gain status by having a trans friend whose identity is in their hands. Little Dr. Frankensteins...What a tangle!
Here's something I think about a lot: the role of mass culture in praising the power of beauty. For boys who don't have the macho mojo, or who worry about their toxicity as males, that kind of power is quite seductive.
Finally, I want to second the author's question: Why aren't people more curious about this?
People aren’t more curious because of the AGP theory, which I don’t think is valid even in the older cohort. Dr. Charles Moser posits some critical questions about the validity of Blanchard and Lawrence studies. This along with the history of transsexual, transvestite, transgender are all reasons to question. Society wants someone to rail against and what a perfect antagonist than a sexual fetish? This has become a cult. These boys are rudderless and that vulnerability along with algorithms or a girl encouraging is the perfect storm to indoctrinate the boys.
Could you elaborate a bit more on the first sentence?
In reading about AGP, listening to Benjamin Boyce podcasts, reading Charles Moser critiques, symposium on psychosomatic disorder, countless MTF bs on medium, psychosomatic disorders, looping/naming convention, report on Sexuality by male detransitioner stories and accounts from a few wives who were married to MtF. If AGP is the etiology for heterosexual MtF, what is the etiology for gays for MtF? Do you think AGP, pedophilia and other paraphilias are innate?
"Do you think AGP, pedophilia and other paraphilias are innate?"
Beyond my pay grade I'm afraid. I'm certainly not as well-versed as you are in the ins and outs of this ...what I would say is that many of "theoreticians" (Serrano and Chu, Lavery et al) seem to be AGPs who've been to graduate school.
I don't think going to graduate school necessarily equates to being smarter.
What those three and Lawrence have in common is narcissistic traits. Lawrence has stated that AGP and narcissistic traits go together.
I have only researched a lot because AGP vs Gays never made sense to me. One does it because they have an innateness that supposedly they have an erotic target identity disorder (or AGP) where as the gays do it because they lack that and they have female traits? Just my 2c in skepticism. Thanks for the question.
The graduate school comment was meant as snark. However you parse the origins of the trans phenom I can think one can say that the internet has facilitated its popularity. Sometimes I'm amazed that we let kids explore the myriad permutations of sexuality online without any sort of guidance. Our faith in progress did us a disservice in this arena.
Reading the paragraph about the 'typical' ROGD boy makes me wonder if a trans identity isn't some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism for nerdy teen boys who are basically walking stereotypes and who can't find any other ways to get into the orbit of girls they like. If girls are incentivising these guys by encouraging them to transition then that very fact alone could be enough to explain why super nerdy guys gravitate towards TQism. I still have a hard time believing that there isn't a sexual component to this but I'm willing to accept that the traditional definition of autogynephilia as being aroused by the thought* of oneself as a woman doesn't quite cut it in this case. I'd be curious to know how gifted boys who are also either handsome or athletic, or both fair compared to the ROGD cohort of boys. I assume gifted ROGD boys are still a minority of the overall population of gifted male teens, even when you factor in that high intelligence seems to correlate with certain mental illnesses like anxiety and depression**.
*It would be interesting to know if people with aphantasia are less likely to develop a trans identity.
**This is one of those 'facts' that I've heard about but don't really know how true it actually is.
My son had three girlfriends. His IQ was in the 98th percentile. He was very kind, the opposite of the TRAs. He didn’t make male friends because in his class, they were not as witty, smart and mature. He was friends with all his older brothers friends. When they went off to college, he became unmoored looking for his tribe. Instead of maturing into himself, he was rudderless.
If the sexual component isn't a meaningful explaination anymore then it does feel like we're dealing with a new religion that fills the void in many people's lives that traditional religion no longer can (in part because we reached a point where people could openly mock and criticise other people's religions, that hasn't happened yet with TQism).
I want to reply to the aphantasia. This seems to be making the rounds on the web for some reason. My son, whom I am estranged from, mentioned that he has aphantasia in a post. I had to look up the newest flavor of identity he picked up. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is aphantasia, he is a 4 and I am a 5. I thought "I can picture that" was a metaphor of sorts.
Thank you for a new word: aphantasia.
Aphantasia . . . is the inability to visualize.[1]
The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880,[2] but has remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter.[3] Zeman's team coined the term aphantasia,[4] derived from the ancient Greek word phantasia (φαντασία), which means "appearance/image", and the prefix a- (ἀ-), which means "without".[5] People with aphantasia are called aphantasics,[6] or less commonly aphants[7] or aphantasiacs.[8]
Aphantasia can be considered the opposite of hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.[9][10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
I only learnt about the phenomenon myself a few years ago but I didn't even learn the name until this year. Katie Herzog wrote a very funny Blocked and Reported post about finding out she had it (https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/revelations).
Also when I mentioned the condition to my best friend, whom I've known since 1998, he was like "you can make pictures in your head?" and I was like "yes, can't you?", and he was like "no", and I was like "so you're telling me you don't have a soul". It was quite the revelation...
Yes, boys experience pain and self-loathing in adolescence, too, the T hits and we become agonizingly aware of all our juvenile inadequacies.
As someone who was a self-loathing, closeted gay teen at a boarding school in the early 70s , I can say that having to live with other cliquish high achieving boys who were quite conspicuous about how thoroughly they had it together compounded my unspoken pain. A sport that was very popular among the students was making other boys aware of their juvenile inadequacies. Those guys have a lot to answer for.
If teen boys of that ilk still exist at public and private high schools today, look to them as one of the reasons some boys go ROGD.
Excellent piece - these parents are such important voices to elevate. The more the general public knows the reality, the better.
What an amazing collection of facts and resources. It gave me an idea.
We should apply the rules of negligence to medical interventions: those who provide "Gend Aff Care" to kids and teens, without accurate warnings about the risks, should be held financially responsible for the costs of those risks materialising in their patients.
Doing so is morally justified, and could fit within our existing western legal systems as a principle of law. Doctors already have an obligation to warn patients about the side effects of new medications they prescribe, so this wouldn't be much of a stretch.
I didn't practice malpractice law before I retired from the profession, but I get the gist of it enough to say that a plaintiff would have to prove (among other things) that his doctor failed to adhere to the accepted standard of care in his profession.
It is very likely that the doctor's attorney will try to get the court to accept a standard of care promulgated by an organization such as WPATH that is captured by gender identity ideology and trans activism. It is almost as if trans activists realized many years ago to prioritize establishing professional standards of care for doctors and therapists who practice so-called gender affirming care. They've been working tirelessly to present them as "gold standard" of care so they'll be accepted by judges when victims try to hold their doctors and other care professionals responsible for their malpractice.
I hope that the sex realist bar is working with medical professionals and other qualified experts to topple flawed standards of care that are biased in favor of providers of gender affirming care and against their victims.
You may be reluctant to address this issue politically due to your pain, but it's unrealistic to believe that this isn't a political matter. Much like the political discourse surrounding COVID-19, the current trend of young boys considering transitioning to women is deeply entwined with political agendas. What happened to your son was not merely an unfortunate event. There's a deliberate effort by individuals such as Andy Slavitt, and as you've noted, by big pharmaceutical companies, to promote treatments and studies that increasingly target vulnerable young men, steering them towards transitioning care. By avoiding the political implications of this situation, you're turning a blind eye to the true forces at play. The Democratic Party bears significant responsibility for advancing these policies. It's troubling to witness your direct experience with your son’s situation and yet see you refrain from confronting the political roots of this issue. “All of us involved with ROGD Boys come from a scientific background. When we meet, we leave our political affiliations at the door. We want ROGD Boys to be a resource for parents and the boys based on what the science tells us. Other people might have time for identities and politics, but we do not. All that matters to us are our suffering children.”
I understand the website shouldn't be political, but you should no longer be part of the Democratic party, which it sounds like you are. Listen to RFK’s speech. Tell me it’s okay to close your eyes and not squarely lay the blame for the pain and suffering that countless other families will endure on one political party. At the same time, you work tirelessly to try and help them with the resources you created while ignoring the reason we are seeing an alarming trend or uptick in the number of boys walking down this destructive path. There is only one group of people in this country that sees what’s happening here, and your lack of wanting to get political is disturbing. Half of America plays identity politics, and it sounds like you are playing the game as well. So, congratulations on staying out of the political game. I’m sure all of your democratic friends will continue to invite you to their cocktail parties.
You lost me at RFK. It is hard enough dealing with the obvious causes of gender identity madness without having to contend with conspiracy mongers' attempt to hijack the sex realist cause for the benefit of their obscure and unhinged agendas.
Yes, most Dems are on the wrong side of the gender identity culture war, but it's because they're uniquely susceptible to gender ideology. It appeals to their bleeding-heart liberalism. They've been bamboozled by trans activists and the dark, destructive and paranoid philosophy that underlies gender identity.
However, on the whole Dems do not reject vaccines, seek to close off women's reproductive health care options, work to shove gay people back in the closet, embrace patriarchal nationalist evanglical Christianity or try to undermine our liberal constitutional democracy.
I'll stick with the Democrats.
Don't say we didn't warn you when your country turns into Venezuela, and you're waiting in lines for food, hoping to somehow find food for your family.
Typical liberal progressive response: 'You lost me at RFK.' Of course we did, because critical thinking isn't your strong suit. You don't analyze or question; you simply echo whatever narrative your tribe has decided on. To you, RFK is nothing more than an anti-vaxxer or a nut job because that’s what the mainstream media has fed you. You’ve chosen to accept those labels without ever considering the substance beneath them. In short, you're just another sheep in the flock, blindly following whatever narrative you're told to believe.
This was not a coincidence. It was about politics.”
Here’s further evidence highlighting the political motives behind this issue.
https://open.substack.com/pub/euphoricrecall/p/the-dncs-pandemic-revisionism?r=6alom&utm_medium=ios
The Democratic Party’s priorities clearly do not include the well-being of these children. Their policies seem to be designed to ensure that countless more young people endure the same suffering and confusion that your family has faced. This perspective, highlighted in the article I shared, underscores that your son’s transition wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a broader agenda, carefully crafted by those in power, to undermine and destabilize the youth of our nation.
Here's the link to Behind the Looking Glass, Vaishnavi Sundar's epic documentary on trans widows and trans orphans, released today at Lime Soda Films YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frffv2sB8zE
Great film Ute. I'm so glad your voices are finally being heard.
Eliza, did you see the recent NYT story by Christina Jewett about Dr Jeffrey E Shuren, the FDA director who was approving devices and pharmaceuticals while his wife was an attorney simultaneously representing the same pharmaceutical companies? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/health/fda-medical-devices-ethics.html
Really brilliant, a must read.
Part of me wonders if we could understand the motives behind trans-identification through terror management theory. I haven't read much about that theory but just have a gut feeling after reading this.
Sounds appropriate to me.
We need intervention camps... like real camping with real people in real nature.
I applaud Eliza, ML, and Nicole for this post.
I never read about “euphoria”, boys who figure out they are gay and sneak around disreputable places and have sex with boys or men who smell like men and talk fondly about dick and ass and show them tricks they didn’t know they could do.
All adolescents are nervous about puberty. But not all adolescents are far enough away from a cellphone to actually meet other nervous horny adolescents and work out the kinks, so to speak.
More dark parties, illegal alcohol and marijuana, danger, kissing at 3am, being jacked off, the big burly one surprisingly taking an interest, feeling an unshaven chin down there, the world doesn’t end when you get caught, crushes, the first one who ignores you, the first one who calls back, afternoon with him and mom and dad away, figuring out blowjobs in cars, pushing on him because it feels good, someone you suddenly realize gets a crush on you, putting his hand down your pants, his putting your hand down his underwear, you realize you have big balls, jacking off in bed together, the first time you kissed someone with bed mouth, suddenly being able to smell semen on someone’s breath.
More sex.
More flesh.
Less phone.
There's not a new cohort of "ROGD boys". It's just AGP. The nerdy, delayed, profile is the same.
"This profile is an archetypal profile of adolescent boys with autogynephilia and was discussed in the book The Man who would be Queen, where Bailey writes, “Ray Blanchard remarked to me that he saw a seemingly close relation between autogynephilia and computer nerdiness”. A famous example of a profoundly gifted male with autogynephilia is Lynn Conway, who was fundamental in the development of the microprocessor, grew up “shy” and experienced what is today called gender dysphoria."
https://since2010.substack.com/p/rogd-boys-and-the-need-for-peer-review
Thanks for a superb interview and analysis, Eliza, and to all those working on the ROGD boys issue. All of our kids' lives matter, but there's something particularly tragic about the preponderence of gifted children of either sex being sidetracked by such a damaging ideology during their maturing years.
Unlike sex, a lot of the personal characteristics we discuss in relation to people are spectra and maleable, and it's important to remember that. We often see and repeat the message that people fall into psychological categories and "have" some characteristic or other, whether that's autogynephilia, ADHD, depression, their IQ, or their sexual orientation. All these are continua, but we apply very approximate methods of assessment and divide people into haves and have-nots. Young people in particular change a lot; their brains are developing rapidly, and they will be experimenting with different attitudes and life-skills, identities and behaviours. Meanwhile, the internet is full of quick tests they can do to self-diagnose, probably of very low quality, and they probably think they're stuck with whatever the results say. Growing up is so awkward because we want to do it really fast, and we don't want to do it at all at the same time.
But, as others have suggested, we mustn't analyse the victims looking for reasons they've gone astray and lose sight of the primary causes, the pseudo-medical scandal and the idiotic woke culture that enabled it. There were always traps waiting for troubled kids, but only recently have they been in danger of grooming by trusted, idiotic professionals in classrooms and clinics.