Thread by @reclaimingtrans

One of the main purposes of "ROGD" isn't just to label young trans people as "mentally disordered" but to claim that their "disorder" is of a different degree and kind compared to other (adult) trans people's "disorders". That they're not as "broken" as other trans people.

It's so transphobic parents can say that their kids aren't like those "sick mutilated freaks", those adult trans people over there. No, those adults with other more severe "mental illnesses" have corrupted and confused their poor child. "ROGD" isn't as bad as other kinds of GD.

In this framework, the kind of gender dysphoria that adult trans people have is not only worse and much harder, if not impossible, to cure but it can also cause those who have it to become "groomers" who prey on youth and infect them with "ROGD".

It divides trans people into "victims" and "predators". Trans women, especially queer trans women, are accused of being dangerous "autogynephiles" preying on "innocent youth" of both agab. But "homosexual transsexuals" of both agab can also be cast as "predators".

Trans women (and sometimes trans men) are framed as "perverts" trying to corrupt youth in order to indulge their fetish. Other trans people are cast as "self-hating, self-mutilating gay people" trying to "infect" gay and lesbian youth with their "internalized homophobia".

Basically any trans adult can be cast as a "predator" who's a threat to young people and trying to "infect" them with their "disease" of gender dysphoria. Since society is so transmisogynistic, trans women are hit hardest with these accusations but they're not the only targets.

I started understanding this function of "ROGD" when transphobic parents & therapists started focusing more on "ROGD boys", meaning young trans girls. They had a problem because many of these girls were queer & thus according to transphobic psychology should be "autogynephiles".

But transphobic parents didn't want to believe that their "sweet confused son" could be the same as those "dangerous fetishists" who were "invading women's spaces". So anti-trans therapists decided that these girls' "ROGD" wasn't the same as adult trans women's gender dysphoria.

Adult trans women were "autogynephiles" or "self-hating gay men" trying to prey on or instill self-hatred in these "poor innocent boys" who were "just autistic" or "sensitive" & had been "confused" by trans women they'd met online. Their child's "ROGD" was totally different.

Anti-trans parents of both trans boys and trans girls use "ROGD" to keep their children "pure" & "innocent" compared to adult trans people, whose GD makes them "perverted" and/or "severely disordered" & therefore dangerous to children. "ROGD" kids are "victims", not "threats".

Older psychoanalytic theories also believed that transness was caused by growing up in dysfunctional families, including child abuse. "ROGD" shifts the blame from family members to "dangerous" outsiders, technology, social crazes, etc. "ROGD" protects & upholds family authority.

"ROGD" is used to justify both conversion therapy for "innocent youth" and suppressing and punishing "perverted and deranged adults" who are "guilty" of encouraging a "dangerous trend" in young people. It pathologizes all trans people while dividing us up.

Young trans people with "ROGD" can be "saved" while trans adults with more "severe" GD at best can be contained and disciplined into not "infecting" others with our "confusion". But most transphobes don't truly believe any trans adults are truly redeemable. We're too dangerous.

Mere awareness of our existence can supposedly "corrupt" young people. We've passed the point of no return, most of us are "too broken" for therapy & if we've transitioned our bodies are "ruined". So we're considered disposable so that the young people with "ROGD" can be "saved".

The best trans adults can do according to transphobes is detransition and then talk forever after about how transitioning ruined our lives, devote the rest of our lives to being a scare story to "protect" others from the "irreversible damage" of transition and being trans.

It's not enough to stop being trans ourselves, we have to commit to destroying the possibility of transness, embrace & internalize transphobia & work to spread it in the larger culture. Transphobes want to recruit trans people, de-trans us & turn us into agents of transphobia.

Transphobes, underneath all their talk about how trans people aren't real, recognize that we are a distinct group of people. They just see us as "mental defectives" who will never be "normal" or fully rational and therefore need to be controlled by the "mentally fit".

We're only considered "cured" if we recognize ourselves as forever "disordered" and in need of treatment and work towards controlling and wiping out our "disorder" as much as possible. They do want us to be a social influence but for transphobia instead of trans liberation.

That is if they decide they want to keep us around at all. As anti-trans rhetoric keeps growing more extreme & becomes more central to reactionary politics, "solutions" to our existence will grow more extreme as well. Increasingly, our mere existence is cast as a threat.

"ROGD" is dangerous not just to transmasc youth but to trans people of all ages and genders. It provides justification not only for anti-trans conversion therapy for youth but for the social control and elimination of trans adults. The full implications must be named & resisted.