Transgender identity is on the rise with teens. After all, for all of us old folks out there, who heard much about this sort of stuff when we were going out to the creek getting tadpoles? Or fishing down at some local stream, that is now too polluted to even fall into anymore? Anyway, let’s see what a fairly politically correct article has to say about this:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201811/why-is-transgender-identity-the-rise-among-teens
“As attested by current controversies, rates of transgender identity appear to be on the rise, particularly among young people. Increased social acceptance of a previously stigmatized condition likely plays a role in this process, but other findings are clearly puzzling: Transgender identity is now reported among young natal females at rates that clearly exceed all known statistics to date. In a recent survey of 250 families whose children developed symptoms of gender dysphoria during or right after puberty, Lisa Littman, a physician and professor of behavioral science at Brown University, found that over 80 percent of the youth in her sample were female at birth. Littman’s study reported many other surprising findings. To meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria, a child typically needs to have shown observable characteristics of the condition prior to puberty, such as “a strong rejection of typically feminine or masculine toys," or “a strong resistance to wearing typically feminine or masculine clothes." Again, 80 percent of the parents in the study reported observing none of these early signs in their children.
The plot thickens again: First, many of the youth in the survey had been directly exposed to one or more peers who had recently "come out" as trans. Next, 63.5 percent of the parents reported that in the time just before announcing they were trans, their child had exhibited a marked increase in Internet and social media consumption. Following popular YouTubers who discussed their transition thus emerged as a common factor in many of the cases. After the youth came out, an increase in distress, conflict with parents, and voiced antagonism toward heterosexual people and non-transgender people (known as “cis” or “cisgender”) was also frequently reported. This animosity was also described as extending to “males, white people, gay and lesbian (non-transgender) people.” The view adopted by trans youth, as summed up by one parent, seemed to be that: “In general, cis-gendered people are considered evil and unsupportive, regardless of their actual views on the topic. To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories with this group of friends. Statement of opinions by the evil cis-gendered population are consider phobic and discriminatory and are generally discounted as unenlightened.”
Parents further reported being derogatorily called “breeders” by their children, or being routinely harassed by children who played “pronoun-police." The observation that they no longer recognized their child’s voice came up time and again in parental reports. In turn, the eerie similarity between the youth's discourse and trans-positive online content was repeatedly emphasized. Youth were described as “sounding scripted," “reading from a script,” “wooden,” “like a form letter,” “verbatim,” “word for word," or “practically copy and paste." Littman raises cautions about encouraging young people’s desire to transition in all instances. From the cases reviewed in her study, she concluded that what she terms “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) appears to be a novel condition that emerges from cohort and contagion effects and novel social pressures. From this perspective, ROSD likely exhibits an aetiology and epidemiology that is distinct from the "classical" cases of gender dysphoria documented in the DSM.
Littman hypothesizes that ROGD can be cast as a maladaptive coping mechanism for other underlying mental health issues such as trauma or social maladjustment, but also for other exceptional traits like high IQ and giftedness. The peer support, prestige, and identity leveraged by the youth who proudly come out as trans certainly appears to be protective in their circles. As Littman’s study shows, this social signaling strategy also comes with strong disadvantages, particularly as it increases conflict between trans youth and the "cis" majority of the population, which, tellingly, includes a majority of the LGBT community. The notion reported by parents that the ROGD appears to be "scripted" is also telling. Medical anthropologists describe the process of outsourcing negative feelings to cultural narratives and systems of beliefs as “idioms of distress." These beliefs can be partially grounded in science and biology (as is the case with current brain-based mental health culture), or not at all (as is the case in cultures that explain mental illness through the idiom of spirit possession). When extreme forms of distress and coping arise through novel social pressures and spread through implicit imitation, strange epidemics of "mass psychogenic illnesses” have been documented. These have extended to dancing plagues, possession epidemics on factory floors,fugue states, or epidemics of face-twitching. These conditions are described as “psychogenic” (originating in the mind) when no underlying physical cause can be determined. But the term “sociogenic," which highlights the social context in which these conditions occur, is a better description.
Risk factors for proneness to mass sociogenic illness remain hotly debated. Tellingly, for our investigation, it is broadly recognized that females, perhaps due to their higher sensitivity to social cues on average, are overwhelmingly more prone to such phenomena. Once more, this should not be read as a moral story. Medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew, one of the world’s leading experts on mass sociogenic epidemics, has long argued that phenomena that are still unjustly termed “mass hysteria” should be renamed “collective stress responses." It is clear from Littman’s study that the rise of rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which seems to predominantly involve natal females, points to a complex web of social pressures, changing cultural norms, and new modes of distress and coping that warrant further investigation. For parents, educators, and clinicians alike, caution is warranted in dealing with this growing phenomenon.”
Are you ready for it: the rise in transgenderism, has, in large part a social cause, and is like everything else in this leftist world, a social construction. The Vatican, which is no longer a fountain of morality, having its own sexuality problems also had something informative to recently say about all of this:
https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2019/06/11/vatican-whistleblower-says-gay-mafia-is-blocking-needed-reforms/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-11/vatican-condemns-transgenderism-attempt-annihilate-nature
“The Vatican has blasted modern gender theory, claiming in a new document that it seeks to "annihilate the concept of 'nature'." The document, which carries the title "Male And Female: He Created Them" was released by the Vatican June 10 without prior announcement. Described as an aid for Catholic schoolteachers and parents on how to address the topic of gender theory in line with Church teaching, the document questions the motives of transgender people, saying their gender transition is "only a 'provocative' display." As NCR reports, the text opens by saying that society is facing "an educational crisis, especially in the field of affectivity and sexuality." It then claims that cultural "disorientation" has destabilized the family as an institution, "bringing with it a tendency to cancel out the differences between men and women, presenting them instead as merely the product of historical and cultural conditioning."
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“From the point of view of genetics, male cells (which contain XY chromosomes) differ, from the very moment of conception, from female cells (with their XX chromosomes),”
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In cases where a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, it says "it is medical professionals who can make a therapeutic intervention." "In such situations, parents cannot make an arbitrary choice on the issue, let alone society," it recommends. "Instead, medical science should act with purely therapeutic ends, and intervene in the least invasive fashion, on the basis of objective parameters and with a view to establishing the person's constitutive identity."
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Finally, the document denounced theories that attempted to “annihilate the concept of nature” and “educational programmes and legislative trends that ... make a radical break with the actual biological difference between male and female”. The Vatican says this “radical separation” between gender and sex has the goal of achieving “a society without sexual differences.” As one would expect, Reuters reports that LGBT rights advocates denounced the 30-page document as harmful and confusing, saying it would encourage hatred and bigotry.”
Well, since the document, like all criticisms of the new morality is hate, Big Tech will just have to ban the Vatican! That will be an interesting fight, more exciting than those who speculate on the internet about who would win a in a battle between a duck and a rooster, or a tiger and bear. More humane as well. Here is the Vatican statement to download before it too disappears down the memory hole:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/images/local/CONGREGATION_FOR_CATHOLIC_EDUCATION_EN.pdf