(2022-08-04) Coyne New Paper Purports To Refute Social Contagion Hypothesis For Transgender Adolescents

Jerry Coyne: New paper purports to refute “social contagion hypothesis” for transgender adolescents. Here’s a medical paper reported on the NBC News site as showing that the “social contagion” hypothesis for the increase in transgender adolescents (i.e., young people acquire gender dysphoria because of social pressure) has been refuted. In fact, I’ve read the paper and don’t know what to make of it, since the data are at odds with other data, and some claims don’t seem to support the authors’ hypothesis. The author’s claims clearly need further testing.

Psychiatrist Jack Turban is known as a big advocate of “affirmative care,” which assumes that an adolescent’s self-identification is correct, and then affirms it both through therapy and eventually through puberty blocking (if needed) and surgical and other medical interventions

there is other evidence for social contagion in the literature, including that cited in Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage.

First, let’s look at the hypothesis of Turban et al. regarding “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD), a form of quick realization that you were born in the wrong body. But Turban et al., as well as NBC News, discuss the hypotheses below as if they work for both ROGD (a condition that is controversial) and “normal” gender dysphoria (GD).

I’ll give the three results of Turban et al.’s analysis:

1). The proportion of transgender adolescents who were biological males is higher than those who were biological females in both years, supposedly contradicting the social contagion hypothesis.

2). There was no increase in the number of transgender adolescents between 2017 and 2019.

The numbers of transgender adolescents of both types also fell from 2017 to 2019, contradicting hypothesis a.

This is in stark contrast to the data from the UK, which was gathered by looking at adolescents referred for gender treatment to the Tavistock Clinic in London (soon to be dismantled).

Why the disparity? One obvious clue is that Turban et al.’s data are self reports for surveys, while the data just above are individuals referred to a clinic for treatment.

As for the rise over time, it could be explained either by the social contagion hypothesis or a rapid de-stigmatization of transgender people.

what we have here is a mass of conflicting data.

One person I sent this draft to suggested I add this: “This study was conducted when the trans numbers at school were already quite widespread and reaching a plateau. At this stationary period it won’t be as evident that there is a social spread, since all schools already have the “contagion” and you won’t see local increases in numbers.

3.) There is a higher self-reported rate of both bullying and suicide attempts in transgender-identifying children than in cisgender-identifying children.

Although I’m not wedded to a social-contagion hypothesis, I don’t think these data rebut it very strongly

One thing that bothered me was how readily Turban et al. as well as NBC News saw this study as dispositive (he is an “affirmation guy”), and didn’t mention the Tavistock data. And of course we have only two years’ worth of data here, which is a limited time span to make such broad generalizations

In the end, whether the social contagion hypothesis is true should have nothing to do with how gender dysphoric youth should be treated. What causes dysphoria tells us very little about what form of therapy is needed. Although politicians may prohibit affirmative care, they shouldn’t, but neither should care be envisioned as completely affirmative at the outset.

As for affirmation, here’s a video a reader sent me which was shown at his/her children’s elementary school. I see this as affirmation, and I’m not that bothered by it. (Here’s an article about this kind of affirmation in other schools). But if there’s bullying, at least we must admit that there’s also constant affirmation in the classroom