NEW STUDY: Trans identification has surged in young adults, driven by natal females; increase is greater in whites.
From 2014-2022, trans identification:
▶️Nearly quintupled in 18-24 year olds
▶️Quadrupled in 25-34 y/os
▶️Stayed flat or declined in those age 35+
▶️By 2022, 2.78% of 18-24 year-old adults identified as trans, up from 0.59% in 2014.
▶️The increase was driven by those identifying as trans men or gender non-conforming; identification as a trans woman did not change significantly among young adults and declined significantly among all adults.
▶️The increase in identifying as trans was larger among White individuals than among Black or Hispanic individuals.
In a new essay posted on the Yale Law website, researchers in the pediatric gender medicine space such as @Jack_Turban lambasted the Cass Review for saying that trans identification has "increased exponentially." But this new study finds what looks like exponential growth when trans identification is broken down by birth year: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
Trans identification nearly quintupled among 18 to 24 year olds and quadrupled among 24 to 34 year olds from 2014 to 2022: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
A breakdown in the types of trans identification in 18 to 24 year olds from 2014 to 2022:
Percent of US 18- to 24-year-olds self-identifying as transgender, by racial/ethnic identity, 2014–2022:
Percent of US 18- to 24-year-olds self-identifying as transgender, by residence in a Democrat-leaning or Republican- leaning state, 2014–2022:
As one person commented, @Jack_Turban has argued that trans identification has recently decreased in adolescents.
@jack_turban The findings in the new study are likely to be fairly accurate, since they are based on nationally representative data and an enormous data set. link.springer.com/article/10.100…
I posted the wrong graph earlier in the thread with this one:
Percent of US 18- to 24-year-olds self-identifying as transgender, by residence in a Democrat-leaning or Republican- leaning state, 2014–2022:
This study raises questions:
▶️Why has trans identification surged in young adults but not in middle-aged or older adults?
▶️Why has trans identification surged in natal females but not in natal males?
▶️Why has trans identification risen more in whites?
What do you think?
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Dr. Rachel Levine, a former Biden administration health official, tells @TheAdvocateMag that "the evidence base is strong for the safety and efficacy" of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
A slew of systematic literature reviews have found this is not the case. Instead, they have found that the relevant evidence is weak and inconclusive. They have suggested that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health erred in making strong recommendations for these treatments. Evidence-based medicine guidelines discourage making a strong recommendation based on weak evidence.
Despite subpoenaed email records showing that Dr. Rachel Levine pushed WPATH to remove age limits on pediatric gender-transition treatments and surgeries for political reasons, Dr. Levine denied ever having done so in an interview with @TheAdvocate.
The New York Times reported last year: nytimes.com/2024/06/25/hea…
One excerpt from an unnamed member of the WPATH guideline development group recalled a conversation with Sarah Boateng, then serving as Admiral Levine’s chief of staff: “She is confident, based on the rhetoric she is hearing in D.C., and from what we have already seen, that these specific listings of ages, under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care. She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out.”
Another email stated that Admiral Levine “was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to care for trans youth and maybe adults, too. Apparently the situation in the U.S.A. is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them.”
Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes has a new episode of his podcast If Books Could Kill, about the US v. Skrmetti Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee's ban on pediatric gender-transition treatment.
Michael Hobbes, referring to a video, published in 2022 by @MattWalshBlog, of a Vanderbilt doctor talking about the money that gender-transition surgeries bring in, including bottom surgeries: “Bottom surgeries are essentially not performed on children," Hobbes says. "So the fact that she's talking about bottom surgeries here makes it very clear that she's talking about adults.”
This depends on your definition of "essentially." Phallopasties are not recommended by @WPATH for minors, but vaginoplasties are. Dr. Marci Bowers, a gender-affirming surgeon and a former WPATH president, recommends that trans girls get a vaginoplasty the summer before they leave for college, when they are 17 or 18.
A 2023 paper on a limited dataset of US minor patients did find evidence of one vaginoplasty in 2021. This suggests that if the study authors had access to all records in the nation, they would identify more such surgeries in minors.
Consequently, Hobbes is incorrect to presume that the Vanderbilt doctor was not referring to minors in the speech that Walsh published. It is entirely possible she was.
If, for the sake of argument, no one can prove that pediatric gender-transition treatment prevents suicide death only because such deaths are so rare, then why has this treatment been sold, first and foremost, as “lifesaving”?
Why have people who have called that claim into question been savagely attacked and sidelined?
Marci Bowers, former head of WPATH, herself told me last year that suicide death has never been a good metric of the success of this treatment.
Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes is himself one of the prime sources of misinformation about pediatric gender-transition treatment. He has routinely falsely claimed that there is no evidence that children get these drugs after absent or cursory assessment periods. There is copious evidence that this happens routinely at some of the top gender clinics in the nation. Despite all this evidence, Hobbes has never acknowledged his fault.
But you can see here that he is combining his longstanding claim about assessments with a claim about what he characterizes as false claims that there are large numbers of kids getting these drugs. That question should not necessarily be conflated with the assessment question.
About 1 in 1,000 youth with private health insurance went on cross sex hormones by age 17 between 2018 and 2022. That number was higher for natal girls and was probably higher for all youth by the end of that period.
One thing that has concerned some people is not necessarily the number of kids getting these drugs, but the rate of increase of that number. They have been concerned over where that figure might end up.
If suicide deaths are so rare even in youth with gender dysphoria, then why have leading gender clinicians routinely told parents that absent blockers and hormones, their child was extremely likely to wind up dead? That’s what the mantra “Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?” implies. We now know from the leading litigator in this field that that threat was a false one, at the very least in the suggestion of how likely suicide death was in the first place.
Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes, a prime source of misinformation about pediatric gender-transition treatment, slams @HelenLewis of @TheAtlantic for criticizing people such as him.
Ten years ago Thursday, the movement for gay and lesbian equality scored a victory that only a decade before had seemed unimaginable. We won equal rights to civil marriage in every state in the country. In 2020 came another stunning win. In a majority opinion written by one of President Trump’s nominees, Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court found that gay men, lesbians and transgender men and women are covered under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and protected from employer discrimination.
In 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform, and the current Republican Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is a married gay man with two children. Gay marriage is backed by around 70 percent of Americans, and discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people is opposed by 80 percent. As civil rights victories go, it doesn’t get more decisive or comprehensive than this.