08-Aug-2018, 08:34 PM (This post was last modified: 27-Oct-2018, 11:14 PM by Marge Bouvier Simpson.
Edit Reason: Updating post with most current information.
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This letter presents what parents, scientists, and psychologists have to say about the sharp rise in transgender-identifying youth.
I'm posting this to maintain the writers anonymity, I can't take credit for the work that has gone into it, but would like to express my thanks for their hard work and my delight that people are doing great stuff here, that I wasn't even aware of. Please share this far and wide.
A Note About This Letter:
This letter may be a shock to people who have been assuming that gender dysphoric youth have extensive investigation and evaluation before they are affirmed in their transgender identification.
We as parents have experienced the lack of mental health evaluation, the immediate acceptance of the youth's self-diagnosis, and the effort to silence and ignore parents’ questions and concerns when the youth's claim does not match the child's life experience.
The research into what it means when a youth says they are transgender is in its infancy. There is no biological-based diagnosis or proven scientific theories and the clinical evidence evaluating different treatment paradigms is extremely lacking.
Yet, our children are immediately affirmed in their transgender belief by psychologists, schools are enacting policies to affirm a youth's claim of being transgender without question, schools are preventing the parents from being informed about their child's claim as well as "educating" elementary school children that their gender is a choice that can be medically altered if it doesn't match their "assigned birth sex."
It's time to bring ethical scientific debate and evidence-based care to our youth. This letter is meant to aid in that cause in a non-discriminatory, diversity-embracing fashion.
Our target audience is very broad with the first wave directed to schools and subsequent waves directed to psychologists, media, politicians, and physicians.
Please consider supporting this letter campaign in any way that you can.
"IMPORTANT UPDATE - October 27, 2018
-- The letter has been downloaded over 730 times. It was updated today which resets the download count to 0.
-- Please continue to disseminate!
-- As background, and in case anyone asks you about the letter or about specific points:
Statements within the letter are
(1) pulled from reliable sources as referenced within the document,
(2) supported by additional scientific findings that couldn't be included for length reasons,
and/or
(3) they reflect our collective experiences as parents that have not been recorded in the literature because the ROGD phenomenon is so new.
(08-Aug-2018, 08:34 PM)GCDad Wrote: This letter presents what parents, scientists, and psychologists have to say about the sharp rise in transgender-identifying youth.
I'm posting this to maintain the writers anonymity, I can't take credit for the work that has gone into it, but would like to express my thanks for their hard work and my delight that people are doing great stuff here, that I wasn't even aware of. Please share this far and wide.
Would love to see a UK-centric version of this letter. One that could be sent to MPs and NHS etc.
UHi... I’m new to this site and not sure if I’m
posting my story in the right place I’m sorry if it’s not...
Several years ago my then studious, gentle, super-geek 15y/o son who has Asperger’s Syndrome, suddenly announced that he was female (while in the grip of being acutely mentally ill with crippling OCD depression and anxiety). I recently found this site, and feel quite emotional seeing that there are now so many other parents who’ve also had to go through the hellish experience that sudden onset gender dysphoria wreaks - I felt totally isolated despite looking for help back then, there was literally no balanced support anywhere - just the horror of realising that the only support to be found was 100% biased ‘affirmation-only’ pro-trans propaganda, I was swamped with it from the NHS (Camhs/the Tavistock) when what my son and I desperately needed was the one-way trans-train to hell to be halted, and for a note of calm caution, with balanced rational support and guidance to take control. There was none of that available on the NHS. It was affirmation-only. And after one telephone call I realised looking for advice/support from Mermaids and Gires (who Camhs advised me to call) was a complete waste of time too. My son had many other crippling psychological issues, declaring that he’d been misgendered from birth was just one of them - he’d been worryingly addicted to online gaming and chat rooms, and within a short space of time he developed bewilderingly crippling OCD and anxiety. The GID was just one of his many issues in a sudden-onset steep decline into acute mental illness. Had he presented with anorexia I wouldn’t have expected Camhs to put immediate plans in place for a gastric band to be fitted, so I was horrified that the gender obsession/delusion was immediately unquestioningly embraced and encouraged in every way. He was even congratulated by his Camhs team for saying he was transgender. The 15 months we were under Camhs felt like being trapped in a Kafka story. Going to a private psychotherapist became our only option (we’re not wealthy, we were desperate for help). Thankfully my son agreed that his ocd and other issues had to be treated as priority, the nhs were clearly failing to do that so I had to take him away from Camhs and the Tavistock and their one-way pathway unquestioningly embracing transgenderism while failing to address all the other seriously debilitating ocd/anxiety issues that had bought my son’s day to day life to a complete standstill. They’d bought into his transgender self-diagnosis 100% from day one. I became the enemy because I said I felt it was inappropriate to embrace just one of his many totally out of character obsessions that had suddenly arisen. On top of struggling alone to cope with a mentally ill adolescent, it then became a battle to save my son from the reckless nhs psychologists intent on steering him to make a life changing decision while he was so very obviously acutely mentally unwell.
A hugely traumatic experience.
My son willingly saw a private psychotherapist who was recommended by a friend (i’d lost faith in thinking I’d ever find a psychotherapist who wasn’t pushing the pro-trans agenda) He has a good track record of helping adolescents - he wasn’t a gender specialist, he had no bias. Within approx 6 months I saw signs the ocd was improving, and that the transgender obsession had begun to wane. It’s a slow path to recovery as there were so many issues, but my son has been slowly adjusting to accepting (and liking) himself again. I had to take him away from the NHS affirmation-only counsellors, who were basically dangerous.
Sending gratitude to parents and campaigners who are now speaking out - the reckless abandonment of a responsible duty of care for children and adolescents suffering GID is an appalling scandal, it wrecks lives.
I am so glad that everything I have been telling my friends/family the past few years has finally been validated with scientific studies and research about ROGD.
Thanks goes out to everyone involved in the production of this letter. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders, as well as knowing my estranged daughter is not the only one who’s been affected and is struggling still with ROGD.
A little aside - if this affirmation of being transgender had occurred during MY childhood (had we had social media and advanced medical knowledge and procedures back then!), I’m sure I in my “Tomboy” experience (oh how I wanted to be a boy!!), would have been completely swept away by the transgender riptide with no escape... and I possibly wouldn’t have been able to eventually get pregnant at 41, and to have birthed the beautiful glorious little girl that I did. She wouldn’t be alive today. I didn’t even know I could get pregnant again, having lost a pregnancy earlier on in my life. Suffice it to say I am very glad I never transitioned as a young woman. Very VERY glad!!
Thanks again to all of you for this post. Thank you!
I made the very difficult decision to sign under my real name, and append this note. Praying that my faith isn't misplaced, and that others will find the courage to do the same:
Dear Dr. Marcus, Dr. Kahler and Mr. Brown:
Thank you for publishing Dr. Lisa Littman’s study of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Although my family was not a participant in Dr. Littman’s study, our story corroborates her research.
I am writing you under my real name, at personal risk, to demonstrate my trust that you’ll join me in standing up for the truth.
Please do not capitulate to the politically motivated and antiscientific hate mail you are getting about Dr. Littman’s study.
My family’s experience is not anecdotal, nor are we “right wing.” Our X-year-old child had no gender nonconforming history before spending nine of the last twelve months believing she was “really” a man, simply because when she asked a counselor about kids at school becoming “trans,” that counselor--without any evidence or investigation, and with total disregard to a history of traumatic brain injury and other mitigating factors--suggested that wondering about trans things means you're probably trans. Our family would not have known this was the content of their sessions if not for a smart-phone glitch sending us texts from the therapist intended for our child. The therapist was fired immediately and our original care team brought in to deal with the real issues. Within weeks our child stopped believing she was “really a man” and was immensely relieved.
But, had it not been for the smart-phone glitch, my daughter could have been put on testosterone and had a double mastectomy within weeks, without my consent or knowledge, due to my state’s 15-year age of medical consent and very active trans lobby willing to provide funding and drugs, no questions asked.
Under such circumstances, most ROGD families have not been as lucky as mine. I know firsthand, because I’ve met those families. I am a participant in the anonymous chat rooms, the underground railroad. Daily I provide support to families who have endured varying degrees of chemical and surgical damage before realizing that trans ideology is not the fix they were promised it would be. Believe me when I tell you that Dr. Littman’s data is only the tip of the iceberg.
What more evidence do you need from us?
Our stories are no more anecdotal than the spectral evidence by which thousands of children are being chemically sterilized and surgically altered. If it’s okay to rely on qualitative studies to justify transitioning children, then it’s certainly acceptable to use qualitative studies to question the transitioning of children. If it’s okay to rely on anecdotal feelings to medically experiment on children, then it’s okay to rely on anecdotal feelings to justify being cautious. Isn’t feeling cautious about proceeding without evidence the foundation of the scientific method?
Alternatively, if you must hold gender-critical parents to a higher standard of evidence than you hold the trans industry, fine. Then allow us to present our evidence in the light of day. Make it safe for us to give our names, as I have here. Ensure that our honesty will not subject us and our children to harassment and threats of violence such as your institution and Dr. Littman are now subject to. Show the bullies that you will stand up to them, and that you won’t let them use threats to suppress evidence. Ensure that our families’ truth will receive true scientific scrutiny, without our having to seek refuge in the anonymous chat rooms and underground railroads from which Dr. Littman gathered her very real data about us. Take a stand for the truth, and you shall have all the evidence from us that you need.
Dr. Littman is right. There is absolutely a social contagion in play. A contagion empowered by the effective gag order that institutions like Brown place on themselves, and on us, when capitulating to political groups’ demands that unpopular data be suppressed. A contagion that takes our children from us because scientists are more interested in political expediency than scientific rigor and the Hippocratic principal to first do no harm.
I know you’ve gotten the following form letter from other families, because I know those families. My family is one of them. So please add me to the list of petitioners, and thank you for reading.
As mentioned, I am using my real name, to show trust that you will join me in standing up for the truth. Please don’t let me down.
[Signed real name & address]
A concerned ROGD parent in [city]
xxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx
I saw this in the comments at 4thwavenow! It is an excellent letter, and I thank you so much for writing it and sharing it so many places. I appreciate it so much!
