Study dispels harmful gender dysphoria myth

A first-of-its-kind study by Schulich Medicine & Dentistry researchers dispels a controversial gender dysphoria theory that activists and experts have called inaccurate and harmful to transgender people. Greta Bauer, PhD, and her team at Trans Youth CAN! found no evidence in a recent study to support the idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) - a proposed condition often used as an argument against providing gender-affirming medical care to young people. "It's impacting policy, and there is no research on any actual adolescents that supports this hypothesis," said Bauer, professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and the CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair. Gender dysphoria is the condition of feeling one's gender identity to be at variance with the gender they were assigned at birth. In 2018, researchers in the U.S. claimed ROGD was a unique pathway in which youth going through puberty experienced sudden gender dysphoria influenced by social and peer contagion along with other factors including poor mental health or parent-child conflict. Bauer said that paper has "taken on a life of its own" in the three years since its publication, purporting that youths' gender identity could be influenced by their queer peers and fuelling the notion that young people might identify as trans or non-binary as part of a temporary phase. "The ROGD hypothesis perpetuates the fear that says, 'you shouldn't let your kids hang out with trans people.' It's harmful," Bauer said.