The Research TERFS Have Always Needed
Illustrated by Kimi Moana Whiting (she/her)
You know, when pondering what are the biggest problems or concerns on planet Earth, the identity of trans children is always up there among ‘most pressing’.... yeah nah, not really, or at all. That shit’s weird. Unfortunately, that’s not the way a lot of people think, and people have long been particularly concerned about trans youth (transgender children).
We all remember when trans youth became a contested topic, stories started popping up in the media. I remember when Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s child came out as trans, and they fully supported the transition: the media went crazy. Everyone was asking questions. Should children be allowed to transition? How young is too young to let children explore their identity? Is allowing trans youth to begin transitioning a way we can prevent transphobia in adulthood? Or are adults enabling silly kid behavior with long-lasting consequences? I’m here to help answer some of these questions for you.
Before we get into the science of things, I’m going to explain what children ‘transitioning’ looks like, because there’s a lot of misconceptions about it. People assume that a child transitioning looks the same as an adult, which leads to people passionately against processes that children don’t even go through!
For starters, trans youth can’t and don’t get surgery. In Aotearoa, and pretty much any other country, you need to be over 18 to have any gender affirming surgery. Children can’t get this, even teenagers can't get this (unless they’re 18 or 19).
Trans youth do not get put on hormones. They can be prescribed puberty blockers which stop the process of puberty from beginning or advancing any further. These effects are completely reversable – if you stop taking the blockers, you will begin going through puberty as you would have before.
Hormones and surgery are considered physical transitioning, trans youth only transition socially. This means generally changing your name and pronouns, dressing in different clothes, and changing your hair – but it looks different for everyone. Regardless of how you might socially transition, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from reversing all of this down the line. What this means is that even IF youth detransitioning (the process where one transitions a second time back to their ‘original gender’) was a common phenomenon (which it’s not), the only thing holding someone back is social perceptions.
Detransitioning is only a problem because people make it a problem. What harm can a kid experimenting with their style, name and pronouns really do? Kids go through so many different phases when it comes to style, and so many teenagers and young adults change their sexuality through life. We don’t seem to have problems with this. So why is something as sensitive as children’s gender identity not embraced, wherever their journey takes them?
Alright, now that we’ve established all this, let’s get into what the studies say. For too long, there has been no formal research around trans youth. Today, there’s awesome work being done by the TransYouth Project, started at a Princeton lab, which they describe as their “largest project and is the first large-scale, national, longitudinal study of socially-transitioned transgender children to date”.
The study has over 300 trans children aged three to 12 and is aiming to follow them for 20 years: they’re really doing the work the world needs.
Just over a month ago, they published a study that broke through to the news and had a really significant finding that only 2 per cent of trans children in their study ended up detransitioning. Now it is important to note that this study has only been measured over a five-year timespan, but it’s because that is all the time they’ve had to study so far. It’s the first published piece that looks into trans youth detransitioning, which has forever been generally the biggest argument against trans youth. It’s always been made out as something that will happen, and we didn’t really have the research to argue whether this was true or not, regardless of anecdotal experiences.
Maybe, if you’re super extreme in your beliefs, you might think this is still a concerning number. Being generous we can account the further 4 per cent of trans youth which the study found didn’t detransition, but went on to come out as non-binary. So, let’s pretend that the number of trans youth who detransition is 6 per cent, while we’re evaluating if this risk is worth it for the other 94 per cent of kids who remain aligned with their identity.
Car insurance companies (in America) found that drivers will file a claim every 17.9 years on average: over the span of a lifetime, the average person will get into a car crash three to four times in their life. But we don’t question driving, we do it because we need to get places, regardless of an essentially 200 per cent chance of crashing at some point in your life. A 6 per cent chance of detransitioning is really nothing when you look at other statistics in different contexts.
What are the repercussions of a car crash? Debt, injuries, even death. What about trans youth ‘detransitioning’ (again, remember nothing is irreversible)? Maybe a bit of money spent on new clothes, and dealing with social judgement. That’s it. Do we want to ban the other 94 per cent of children from allowing themselves to find their sense of self before growing into an adult over a 6 per cent chance of not keeping that identity? Detransitioning in children, again, is only an issue because people decide it’s an issue.
A different study by TYP had really interesting results. Participants were sorted into three groups. There were trans youth, cisgender youth and the (also cisgender) siblings of trans youth. While there’s a whole network of noteworthy findings, the ones that stuck out to me the most were:
Throughout different locations, trans youth across the study showed signs of being trans before age three.
Trans kids would generally answer questionnaires the exact same as cisgender kids of their identity (i.e., trans girls answered questions the same as cis girls, and vice versa).
When it came to gender stereotypes however, trans youth and their siblings answered differently to the cisgender group, showing less support for gender stereotypes.
Another crucial finding from a different study found that parents’ views on gender stereotypes correlated with their children’s. This brings us to another key point. All research by TYP has been done with voluntary parents and their children.
TYP of course acknowledges this in all of their studies, because there isn’t really any other way to get participants. If they aren’t accepting, they’re probably not going to want their kid to join a 20-year study on trans youth. What this means is that the effects of trans youth raised in transphobic households isn’t being measured, and really can’t be measured until they leave home. But I think it also reflects how crucial having accepting guardians are to a smooth transition.
We can assume that parents accepting of a trans child would likely raise them without forcing them into gender roles. They let their kids choose the toys they want. We can assume that transphobic parents police their children's identity to an extent, leading to far more confusion in gender identity, and a lower chance of realising their identity at a young age. This of course is me coming to conclusions based on ‘common sense’, but I really doubt that I’m wrong here.
Now some will argue that this is good and transphobic parents are doing their children right by letting them come to their own conclusions when they’re adults. Aside from the social trauma this brings, it also brings irreversible changes to their children. We argue about making irreversible changes to our trans youth, but, one more, hormone blockers are completely reversable: puberty, not so much. Whatever your thoughts are about ‘passing’ (when someone trans passes as the gender they identify with without ‘evidence’ or being trans), it is every trans person’s right to not feel dysphoric (unease felt as a result of body not ‘matching’ their gender) and a completed puberty cycle can make dysphoria far worse.
At the end of the day, trans youth are just children, and usually children at risk of bullying and mental illness, which means we need to be far more careful in debating these issues than we have been. To my dear conservatives, if you don’t support abortion in the name of saving children's lives, why are you so passionately against something harmless to the point where you’re fucking over the mental health of these children? Over 75 per cent of trans youth have some form of anxiety disorder, and 50 per cent have considered suicide. These are our children, and your transphobic views are the reason this statistic is so high.
The evidence we have so far proves that there is absolutely no reason to be transphobic and yet somehow there’s still a shit ton of transphobia in the world. Just a couple of weeks ago, Florida’s Medical Board voted to begin the process of completely banning all gender-affirming healthcare for minors (hormone blockers, for example, which we’ve established is entirely harmless and reversible) and have entirely banned Medicaid from covering any gender-affirming care for any trans patient. How are we still running in circles?
We need to all actively work together to destigmatize trans youth.
NO CHILD SHOULD EVER WANT TO KILL THEMSELVES
While yes; it’s an issue of social justice and identity, it’s beyond that. This is about the safety of our kids. Until we all learn to love those who might look or be different from ourselves, we will continue hurting children. So, this parting line is for any transphobe who thinks they’re concerned with their children's safety: You are the most dangerous thing in their lives.