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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Last week, Indiana and Idaho became the latest states to sign laws banning transgender surgeries and treatments for minors. They joined 10 other states that have already passed similar bills. More than a dozen others are considering them. The issue has sparked fierce debate throughout the medical community.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Some hospital directors and medical associations say there needs to be more surgical options for children who believe they're transgender. Many parents and lawmakers argue that kids are getting caught up in a dangerous, life-altering fad. But a new study, the largest ever conducted on the issue, concludes that there's good empirical reason to put the brakes on trans treatments for kids.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): For this episode of Morning Wire, Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham will tell us more about this study and how it aligns or doesn't with previous research on the issue. Thanks for waking up with us. It's April 16th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): So Megan, when you talk to medical professionals privately, they'll often tell you that the research on the impact of transgender surgeries, hormones, puberty blockers, etc. on children is comparatively limited. And I think that's counterintuitive to a lot of people given how heated the debates become. We're often told that this is life-saving care. People might assume that there are just reams of data out there on this topic, but there just aren't. Why is there so little information about trans diagnoses and treatments for kids?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, you know, there's a couple of pretty good reasons for that. And the first one, obviously, is that this is still a very new field. I don't think either of us grew up having these discussions in our families or with our friends. And the other reason I think the research is thin on the ground is because the topic is so politically fraught.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): One of the first major studies on the issue was published about five years ago in 2018. It came from Dr. Lisa Littman, who at that time was doing research in the Brown University School of Public Health. She published a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that was put out by the Public Library of Science. And it argued that adolescents who believe they're transgender could be reacting to their peer group or social media, what we've now come to discuss as social contagion. And that was leading to what she defined as rapid onset belief among these preteens and teens that they were transgender.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, it received immediate backlash. Brown University had featured this study on its news site because those were the kind of prestigious publications that universities typically like to brag about. Well, they ended up taking it down and issuing a statement apologizing to the trans community. The journal put the study through a second round of quote unquote expert assessment, which is also very unusual.
--:-- Megan Basham: I was not expecting it to be this controversial, actually. So that was a little bit surprising to me. I heard some inklings online before publication, and I thought maybe there'd be, you know, some people who were not pleased, but that's nothing new in public health. I mean, it's kind of commonplace that research does not please all individuals.
--:-- Megan Basham: So at Brown, it was interesting. The first emails that I received were congratulations for shedding light on a very complicated topic. But shortly after there was a social media uprising. There were people who were very upset by the research and were making claims that it was transphobic. And they were tagging the university and the journal. And I heard that Brown heard from other people as well. So yes, then it became fraught.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Lippman ended up leaving Brown and forming her own gender dysphoria research institute. Grove City College sociologist David Ayers told me that at the time, it created massive ripples throughout academia. She was also a physician. She was taken to the social science cleaners. Meanwhile, a psychologist in psychology today basically verified everything that she said. Said what we're seeing is this pattern is very real. But he hadn't gotten a memo yet. This was in 2018, and Abby Schreer's book hadn't come out yet, so they didn't realize that the marching orders were. You have to trash this concept, even though everybody's literally seen it.
--:-- Megan Basham: And even today, that kind of backlash is continuing. At a March 27th school board meeting outside of Milwaukee, district resident Steve Broadwell offered criticism of the LGBTQ curriculum.
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--:-- Megan Basham: Such nonsense is merely an effort to normalize the transgender social contagion that legitimate experts agree is most often an undiagnosed psychological problem. What? I want to warn you about hate speech. That's not allowed during public comment. Why is that hate speech? It's considered hate speech. It's by who? You call them a social contagion. That's what it is. It is hate speech.
--:-- Megan Basham: Mr. Rodwell will not be allowed during this public comment. You can't honestly believe that this is based on science. So if referring to findings like Littman's research is hate speech, it makes a lot of sense why a lot of scholars might not be willing to risk their reputations or their career prospects to study this issue.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right, but it sounds like the authors of this latest study were willing to take those risks. Tell us about that latest study. What did they find?
--:-- Megan Basham: So this study was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, and it surveyed more than 1,600 reports from parents of youth between 11 and 21 who felt that their child was experiencing rapid-onset gender dysphoria. That was the term coined by Littman in her 2018 research. And it's also important to note that this is the largest sample ever for a study like this, and the majority of the parents involved actually describe their politics as progressive rather than conservative.
--:-- Megan Basham: I spoke with Northwestern psychology professor Michael Bailey, who led the research team for this study. He says the findings concur with Littman's hypothesis that in most of these cases, the children did not exhibit signs of feeling like they were the opposite gender from a young age. It was indeed something that came on suddenly as they entered adolescence.
--:-- Megan Basham: The cases consisted of parents reporting on their adolescent and young adult children who did not believe that there was any evidence that their children had ever expressed gender dysphoria growing up and then suddenly did once they were adolescents or a little older. And that is really inconsistent with what we knew about gender dysphoria until about 10 years ago when these cases became common.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, another of Bailey's key findings was that 42% of the kids were diagnosed with other mental health issues before they began to decide that they were transgender. More than 72% of them had experienced some stressful event that precipitated that transgender belief. That included things like relationship problems, abuse, or in some cases, someone they knew committing suicide.
--:-- Megan Basham: One of our main findings was that parents reported on a history of emotional problems in these children. And on average, that was common, including formal diagnoses, the most common of which were depression and anxiety. And on average, parents said that the emotional problems preceded any complaints about gender by almost four years. That's a long time. So it appears that these youth had longstanding issues. And then for whatever reasons that we trying to understand came to the conclusion that they were transgender.
--:-- Megan Basham: Bailey conclusions correspond with what some journalists who cover these issues deeply have also been witnessing from an anecdotal position. Brandon Showalter is a reporter with The Christian Post who has written some really extensive coverage of families of children who want to transition or who have transitioned. And he recently contributed to a documentary film on the issue that was titled Dead Name.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he told me he's not at all surprised by Bailey's findings. The transitioners who are now starting to raise their voices and speak about how they were irreversibly harmed will tell you that, you know, I was actually struggling with a lot of other things, none of which were examined by mental health professionals who I thought were going to help me. Instead, I was just affirmed right away and told that I needed to explore undergoing this kind of experimental medicalization, blockers, hormones, or surgery.
--:-- Megan Basham: And so we're really failing a lot of vulnerable people who, some of them are in very real pain. And then there are the stories that the detransitioners themselves are beginning to tell. So Chloe Cole was 12 years old when she began to think that she was a transgender boy. And that was right at the onset of puberty, just as Littman and Bailey both found. And she was administered puberty blockers and testosterone. She then had a double mastectomy at age 15. Then at age 17, she realized that she made a mistake.
--:-- Megan Basham: In a recent interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and host of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast on Daily Wire Plus, she described how she came to the decision to transition. Just like Bailey's findings, she said other mental health struggles were a significant factor behind her belief that she was transgender.
--:-- Megan Basham: I was quite lonely throughout high school. I did end up developing depression, and this was a big thing driving that, definitely.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the study found that most of these kids had pre-existing mental or emotional problems. Did Bailey's study look at why these kids are deciding that transitioning is going to be the solution to those problems?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, it did. And it confirmed Littman's 2018 hypothesis that a lot of the kids who want to transition are responding to social influences that are around them. And that included peer groups and also social media. And then dovetailing with that, susceptibility to peer pressures historically impact females much more than males. So that seems to explain why rapid onset gender dysphoria is so much more prevalent in girls.
--:-- Megan Basham: Very similar to Littman's findings, Bailey's study found that 75% of those who were suddenly deciding they were born the wrong gender were female. And around 60% of the parents reported that their daughter had a friend who, quote unquote, came out as transgender around the same time that they did.
--:-- Megan Basham: There is evidence based on our cultural history, including fairly recent history, that natal females are more susceptible to social contagion compared with natal males. For example, those of us who can remember the 1990s may also remember the epidemic of recovered memories of sexual abuse. These were typically young women, not adolescents, but young adult women who in therapy came to believe that their fathers typically had sexually abused them despite having no memory of that coming into therapy.
--:-- Megan Basham: Most people now, I think, believe these memories were entirely false, but depended on suggestion, social contagion. There was also a related epidemic of multiple personality disorder.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then one other major factor that the parents reported was the medical establishment itself. So 390 parents in the study had visited a gender clinic or specialist. And of those, 52% said they felt pressured to transition their child. The rest were an even split between saying they weren't pressured or they weren't sure.
--:-- Megan Basham: Our finding that among the parents who consulted gender specialists, the most common reaction of the parents was that they felt that the gender specialists pressured them to let their child transition. And furthermore contact with a gender specialist was an especially strong predictor of child transition.
--:-- Megan Basham: Although I would expect that some critics of this study might say that the sample was biased if we just including parents who are reporting their concerns correct?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, and that is something that's already being mentioned in some of this online scientific chatter. But Bailey points out that studies cited by trans activist groups like the Trevor Project don't recruit families who believe that what they've experienced is gender dysphoria.
--:-- Megan Basham: For example, participants in a study that the Trevor Project and other groups like it often cite were recruited through social media ads targeting youth who already identified as part of the LGBT community. And then there's also been some conflict of interest issues for some of those pro-transitioning studies because they have received funding from drug companies like Arbor and Pfizer, both of which produce off-label puberty blockers.
--:-- Megan Basham: And again, the majority of the parents who participated in Bailey's study described themselves as politically left of center. Well, our sample is certainly a biased sample. Parents did not enter into our sample unless they were concerned that their children might have what is called rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is this socially contagious form of gender dysphoria or the false belief of having gender dysphoria.
--:-- Megan Basham: So these parents didn't really believe that their kids had actual gender dysphoria, let's say. So our results really do apply mainly to that subgroup. The question is, are these parents so biased that they can't see what's in front of their eyes watching their children grow up?
--:-- Megan Basham: My inclination is to believe that these parents were, on average, accurately observing their children, and they saw things that were concerning to them. And that's very consistent with some other studies.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, as a sociologist, Ayers argued that it doesn't make much sense to discount the judgment of the people who are actually in the best position to report what's happening with these children. And that would be parents.
--:-- Megan Basham: There is presently no reason to believe that reports of parents who support gender transition are more accurate than those who oppose transition. In other words, when the parents agree with the left, we can trust them. When the parents don't agree with the left, even when they're clearly left-wing themselves. Apparently, their views are suspect.
--:-- Megan Basham: And what we're finding is apparently a 25-year-old graduate of a liberal education department at a state university who's known your kid for two months is in a better position to tell you what your child needs and what's really going on than their mother's.
--:-- Megan Basham: And Ayers pointed out that another study out of England, also published this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that the recommendations healthcare professionals are giving parents to transition their children is not improving their well-being.
--:-- Megan Basham: There is another study that came out literally just a few days ago in the same journal as the study we're talking about here that showed conclusively using professional diagnoses that social transition kids weren't doing any better.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I'm sure that's going to be a tattoo, right? Even though that's not based on parents' perceptions, that's based on critical judgment. Based on referrals of a gender clinic in the UK. Not exactly a bastion of conservatism, right? But that's also going to be really attacked.
--:-- Megan Basham: But up to this point, parents are being told, you're not allowed to exercise judgment on this. You have to basically go along with whatever your child wants.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Well, just on a side note, did you ask Bailey if he had any concerns about his career given what happened with Lisa Littman?
--:-- Megan Basham: You know, I did wonder that and I did ask him about it. And what he said is that serious scientists can't let that prospect of backlash daunt them.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, one has to have a thick skin first. And second, one has to realize that there is a lot of controversy out there and try not to take premature positions. And as a scholar, that's my foremost identity and goal is to be a scholar.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, there is a long history of scientists facing a lot of pushback when they go against the consensus. So the best answer there is always just do more science.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Megan, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Get 10% off your Coffee Club subscription! BlackRifleCoffee.com promo code ‘WIRE’
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
