At the risk of upsetting one of my rare regular readers - this article at The Conversation "Why
rapid on-set gender dysphoria is bad science" shows what a ridiculously partisan and untrustworthy field this is.
As I said in my earlier post, it is patently clear that those with intense "pro transgender" take on the matter feel they must immediately attack and try to shut down anyone who dares suggest that there might be more to look at than just what a transgender child/person says about themselves.
It is a ridiculous attack on the paper surveying parents which made it plain it was aware of its limitations, and acted more as a call for further research.
But no no no, we can't have that, can we?
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Imagine, if you will, that the modern internet had come about in the late '70s or '80s, albeit in a hypothetical universe in which the contempt for gays at the time was copied from a generation ago in this universe. Now, consider a couple of consequences of that wide availability of information and communication.
Partly, kids who were realising that they were different, as they had been for as long as humans have existed, were able to find out that, no, they are no freaks and abominations. Imagine they were able to find that there are others like them, and that there exists the possibility of them living a contented life.
The flip side of this is that there is resistance to this. Social conservatives of religious and other varieties promote the same narrative they have since as long as there have been humans. There are communities for them to share their contempt and hate.
These two forces will collide. Inevitably, some of the offspring of the conservatives will be gay. They will be gay regardless of being brought up in households and local communities in which they are told that people like them are less than human, and should be treated as less than human.
Those kids will realise their sexuality contravenes the mores of their parents at about the same time as their heterosexual peers are beginning to deal with their sexuality. Conservative parents will have a couple of reactions to the discovery that their offspring doesn't fit their ideology. Firstly, they will blame insidious influences such as films, books, public figures, and those with whom their offspring are friends, and those with whom they find community online. Secondly, there will be surprise, even shock. Considering these realisations occur in synch with human development, this surprise is misguided. They would not be surprised if their offspring realise a heterosexual identity at the same age.
Consequently, these conservative parents take to the online world to form their own communities. In those communities they come to believe that their offspring have been the targets of influence, and but for that influence their offspring would have been straight, contrary to the lived experience humans since there have been humans.
Had the researcher in question had been around in that world, we would be having the same conversation. The conservatives would be wringing their hands about the 'gay agenda'. They would be alarmed that their spawn should have any contact with gay peers, because you never know when one could catch Teh Gay. Of course, there would be the last ditch effort of trying to pray the gay away - or burn it away with electric shocks, unlike those savages in the middles ages who burned it away with fire.
And here we are with another issue. Same fears, same tactics, same libels.
Maybe the researcher in question was just plain stupid, but given the way the conservative movement has made appeals to selective (to be generous) research on everything from effects of pollution to who should be able to vote, my guess is that the researcher worked backward from a conclusion. It's amazing how desperately people will hold onto a worldview, and tragic how much damage can be inflicted in that fight. On that note, the Trump administration's actions this week may very well split the United States.
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