Why the surge in gender dysphoria among teenage girls? | Hacker News Reader

Why the surge in gender dysphoria among teenage girls?

theglobeandmail.com

15 pointskgwgk22 comments

I know this is controversial and I have adult friends that I believe are truly transgender and seem happy after transitioning, but man do I feel uncomfortable diagnosing prepubescent or adolescents as ‘transgender’. I think kids should absolutely be allowed to choose their identity and dress how they like and be called what they like. I’ve got a 2 year old boy and if when he’s five he wants to wear dresses and call himself Tina, I’m okay with that, no judgement, but at the point where there’s medical intervention is where I draw the line. Puberty and hormones are weird and unpredictable and you never know how someone will be when they’re 20 or 22 compared to where they are when they’re 12 or 9 or even 16.

If someone is a full grown adult and fully understands the consequences, they should be able to do what they like, but for children I don’t think adults should be pushing permanent life-changing medical treatments on them.

Edit: I'm just going to add another thing. As someone who thinks traditional gender roles are largely bullshit, I think it's unfortunate that kids who may prefer clothes or activities traditionally associated with the opposite gender are being pushed to believe that they actually are that gender. Why can't boys like to wear "girly" clothes and play with dolls without being told they're actually a girl inside? Why can't girls cut their hair short and play sports without being told they must really somehow literally be a boy?

I agree that it sounds uncomfortable for a child to make just a permanent life-changing decision like that, but the counter point is that transitioning is significantly easier on the body and mind before puberty happens.

It's definitely a catch-22.

In the vein of 'do no harm', I'd tend towards delaying it, even though it might be harder later, rather than proactively pushing a treatment that will later be revealed to be a mistake. It's too hard to present the options to a child without putting bias and pressure on them.

I agree on the value of delay. During childhood, we all wanted to be firefighters, police, the president, and astronauts. We don't start those children down a permanent path based on those choices, we (mostly) let them become adults before locking down career paths.

There are some exceptions to these rules, of course. One in particular is athletes. Society happily will fundamentally alter a child's or adolescent's body in pursuit of athletics.

There’s a such thing as a tomboy, but a person who identifies with ONLY male attributes is, by definition, male. If a girl seems to display only male attributes when given the choice/ability, it’s possible she may identify with only male attributes, in which case she is actually male.

I can't help but wonder how much is attention seeking - wanting to feel special, different - which is a disservice to those who really would normally have this... Condition sounds negative, but I'll use it for lack of a better term.

I've wondered that quite a lot myself. I see some serious parallels with those of my female peers who used self-harm as a similar plea for attention, usually because underlying suffering wasn't being dealt with. The literature on self-harm showed similar patterns of social contagion.

The bigger question for me is how could we sort between the two, and should we want to even if we could. Gender transition, and genderqueer presentation are relatively harmless ways to alleviate pain.

I don't think it's a conscious choice. I would think its a psychological phenomenon possibly more common in those who are naturally attention seeking but i doubt they intentionally mean to seek attention. i do agree that if they are attention seeking it could detract from the rest of the trans community.

I'm certainly not attributing malice to it, or conscious choice. As someone else said, the newfound acceptance of talking about it could have made it a new outlet of attention seeking. Most people at that stage in their life don't choose that kind of thing and don't self-reflect unless it's pointed out.

> wanting to feel special, different

Also, boasting about being broken, having depression, mental issues and suicidal thoughts is now frowned upon, so gender dysphoria has covered that vacuum. Before that it was geekiness.

Maybe this is society's growing pains as it learns to cope with social media.

I think this is fascinating, I think that ROGD could be a real thing but nipping science because it's politically inconvenient is not a good thing to do and has disastrous consequences. that being said i'm not sure that ROGD is actually politically inconvenient to the left, it merely expands the definition of trans. I do think this article uses slightly outdated terminology, neglecting to use AMAB (assigned male at birth) and AFAB (assigned female at birth) instead calling males or boys "girls who identified as boys."

I think that as girls in US culture approach puberty they suddenly realize that being a more-or-less generic young person will no longer allow them to maintain an acceptable status. They feel the pressure to dress and do their hair and own nice outfits, etc. Some don't want to do that, period. Others sense that they will not be deemed attractive no matter how hard they try. They want to exit from the "game".

That's curious. The article made me think of an anecdote recounted to me about four 20-something boys figuring out they identified as girls in rather short succession, where the witness also hypothesized there was a social effect.

Because it's becoming acceptable to talk about it

I tend to agree with you there, but what evidence would convince you of some different explanation?

Why assume that evidence wouldn't convince them of some different explanation?

because their comment is entirely unresponsive to the evidence discussed in the OP, which suggests that there is some kind of new thing happening in at least some of these cases.

If that is the only explanation then we would see far more boys being diagnosed.

Not necessarily. The underlying cause could be biased towards one gender. We don't know what causes it.

I said "If that is the only explanation...".

I would say it is far less acceptable for boys to talk about their gender dysphoria than is it for girls, if only because even if a girl wears boys clothes and doesn't 'pass' they'll receive much less attention than the opposite situation.

That's entirely without considering the stigma society imposes on men who want to talk about their mental health at all.

That assumes it is acceptable to talk about it equally across genders.

But it's not exactly implausible that people socially gendered as boys face stronger social pressure against revealing insecurities, in general, both in their peer groups and in general.

Even with no difference specific to gender dysphoria, this could prevent the same phenomenon from manifesting with boys, or at least create a higher threshold of societal awareness and acceptance of gender dysphoria before that acceptance combined with the degree of general acceptability of boys revealing insecurities produces a similar effect to what has been seen in girls in this case.

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