RedState’s Water Cooler – January 14, 2019 – Open Thread
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Support For Parents Whose Children Suffer From ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’
A concerned mother contacted Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier several months ago to discuss an issue she’d hoped Shrier would write about. Her daughter suffered from “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Gender Dysphoria “is characterized by a severe and persistent feeling that one was born the wrong sex.” ROGD, rather than originating in early childhood, “is a social contagion that comes on suddenly in adolescence, afflicting teens who’d never exhibited any confusion about their sex.”
Her daughter, she said, had always been a “girly girl.” Throughout high school, she liked boys and dated boys, but often suffered from anxiety and depression.
The young woman went off to college—which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and “pronouns.” When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: “gender dysphoria.” Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone. Her real drug—the one that hooked her—was the promise of a new identity. A shaved head, boys’ clothes and a new name formed the baptismal waters of a female-to-male rebirth.
ROGD appears much more commonly in girls than boys.
Those afflicted with the condition now receive the full support of the medical community. In fact, they may receive a little too much support.
The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is “affirmative care”—immediately granting the patient’s stated identity…giving in to patients’ demands is exactly what most medical professionals do when faced with ROGD. Like fashionable and tragic misdiagnoses of the past, this one comes with irreversible physical trauma. “Top surgery,” a euphemism for double mastectomies. Infertility. Permanent rounding of facial features or squaring of the jawline. Bodily and facial hair that never goes away.
Planned Parenthood furnishes testosterone to young women on an “informed consent” basis, without requiring any psychological evaluation. Student health plans at 86 colleges—including those of nearly every Ivy League school—cover not only cross-sex hormones but surgery as well.
Yikes, how does a parent deal with that? When a parent balks at their child’s wish to make permanent changes to their body based on an affliction that came on so rapidly, often the child (and the child’s medical care provider) will turn against the parent. This conflict between mothers and ROGD teens often ruptures relationships.
Fortunately, there are support groups for parents and family members of individuals afflicted with this condition.
Brie Jontry, a spokeswoman for Fourth Wave Now, an international support network for these families, is one of the two mothers who spoke on the record. She tells me ROGD teens often come from politically progressive families. Many of the mothers I spoke with say they enthusiastically supported same-sex marriage long before it was legal anywhere. Some of them describe welcoming the news when their daughters came out as lesbians. But when their daughters suddenly decided that they were actually men and started clamoring for hormones and surgery, the mothers begged them to reconsider, or at least slow down.
Shrier concludes:
Under the influence of testosterone and the spell of transgression, ROGD daughters grow churlish and aggressive. Under the banner of civil rights, they assume the moral high ground. Their mothers take cover behind pseudonyms. As ROGD daughters rage against the biology they hope to defy, their mothers bear its burden, evincing its maternal instinct—the stubborn refusal to abandon their young.
Under the influence of testosterone and the spell of transgression, ROGD daughters grow churlish and aggressive. Under the banner of civil rights, they assume the moral high ground. Their mothers take cover behind pseudonyms. As ROGD daughters rage against the biology they hope to defy, their mothers bear its burden, evincing its maternal instinct—the stubborn refusal to abandon their young.
Should the medical community be so quick to allow teens to undergo major physical transformations when their ROGD may go away as quickly as it came on. As a teenager and even in my twenties, I changed my mind frequently, as many young people do. A teenager or an immature young adult, especially one who suffers from severe anxiety or depression, is not in the best frame of mind to make such momentous decisions. Shouldn’t there at least be a reasonable “waiting period” before hormone therapy and especially prior to life-changing surgery?
As someone once said:
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As Always, This Is An Open Thread…
The post RedState’s Water Cooler – January 14, 2019 – Open Thread: Support For Parents Whose Children Suffer From ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ appeared first on RedState.