ARE PRONOUNS THIS ERA'S "WHAT'S YOUR SIGN?"

Abigail Shrier gave a talk to a Hillsdale extension seminar about the recent, probably unscientific, changes in the way behavioral science deals with gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is certainly real. It is also exceedingly rare. It afflicts about 0.01 percent of the population, most of whom are male.

For nearly 100 years of diagnostic history, gender dysphoria typically began in early childhood, between the ages of two and four, and usually involved a boy who insisted that he was not a boy but a girl. Children afflicted are insistent, consistent, and persistent in the feeling that they are in the wrong body. It is by all accounts excruciating—I’ve talked to many transgender adults, most of them biological males, who describe the relentless chafe of a body that feels all wrong.

Historically, this has been the classic presentation of gender dysphoria. When these children were left alone—when no one intervened medically or encouraged what we today call “social transition”—over 70 percent of them naturally outgrew their gender dysphoria. Most of those who outgrew it became gay men. Those who did not outgrow it became what used to be known as transsexuals. They did not believe they were women, but they felt most comfortable presenting themselves as females.

Today, however, we don’t leave these children alone. Instead, the moment children seem not to be perfectly feminine or perfectly masculine, we label them as “trans kids.” Teachers encourage them to reintroduce themselves to their classes with new names and new pronouns.

Much of her presentation deals with the irreversible consequences of letting kids cross, sometimes before they've even reached puberty.

My post, by contrast, builds on a post by my Chicago Boyz colleague, Sgt. Mom, who predicts, "The trans-gender idiocy will, I think, collapse of it’s own weight pretty shortly."  Think of my title with her continuing observation, "It’s honestly another fad, pushed by deranged activists and a complicit established media – but what are our options to hurry along the inevitable collapse?," in mind.

Bet on emergence.

That image is being outrageous to make a point, but it is a stylized fact about human interaction that has survived peer-reviewed scrutiny, dear reader.  For example, "Once one stumbles past the clunky writing and ideological jargon, what’s actually being noted here is the not-so-groundbreaking revelation that lesbians aren’t attracted to male bodies. In other words, that sexuality is tied up with the biology of sex."  But in a world where Andrew Sullivan can be denounced for "white cis privilege" by some of the alphabet people, perhaps it's only emergence that is going to bring about changes in behavior.  That is why "what's your sign?" doesn't work as well as a pickup line compared to fifty years ago.

It's tough enough, National Review's Ginny Gentles notes, being a girl even if the biggest risks are the rock-'n-roll and drugs as motivation for mechanical sex.

Teenage girls had enough to deal with as it was. They entered the pandemic with worrisome rates of depression and anxiety. After over a year of social isolation and school closures, they’re emerging miserable and dangerously unhealthy. As the country slowly emerges from the pandemic, an alarming number of media reports reveal the dire and devastating consequences of policies that closed schools, libraries, and community centers, and severely limited children’s access to sports and meaningful extracurricular activities. Social isolation, disengagement from academic instruction and community, and loss of a stable daily structure resulted in rising rates of eating disorders and mental-health-related emergency-room visits.

In the same way that the younger baby boomers got to see what a social dead end "do your own thing, man" and "if it feels good, do it" became after a few years, the younger troubled girls will, for the most part, see that crossing does not cure depression.

Detransitioners, as well a growing group of compassionate older women who transitioned, desperately want to protect children. These individuals have lived through dysphoria, intense emotional distress, and medical transition and its consequences. They want teenagers to know that transitioning cannot and will not resolve their underlying mental-health challenges. In fact, those issues could be compounded by regret, sterility, and the health risks of cross-sex hormones, including weakened bones and increased risk of heart disease and strokes.

And not being able to get a date of any kind?

I return to Ms Shrier for an elaboration on the eating disorders Ms Gentles referred to.

Across the West, teen girls are now the leading demographic claiming to have gender dysphoria.

What is behind this is social contagion—the spread of ideas, emotions, and behaviors through peer influence, one more instance of teenage girls sharing and spreading their pain. There is a long history of social contagion with this demographic—anorexia and bulimia are also spread this way. And we know that teen girls today are in the midst of the worst mental health crisis on record, with the highest rates of anxiety, self-harm, and clinical depression.

The teen girls susceptible to this social contagion are the same high-anxiety, depressive girls who struggle socially in adolescence and tend to hate their bodies. Add to that a school environment where you can achieve status and popularity by declaring a trans identity.

Once upon a time, putting the hippie garb on was a way to get status and popularity, without any irreversible consequences.

I leave it to others more conversant with cognitive development to talk about sex differences in intellectual function.  Boys tend to provide the outliers, whether as math or chess prodigies or as dullards, or on the autism spectrum, while girls tend to be susceptible to these social contagions, which can include the eating disorders both essays mention, as well as to claiming to have been hexed by a witch.