The Myth of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)
If you have searched online for anything about transgender adolescents it’s likely you have come across the term “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD).” As a gender specialist, I have received many frantic voicemails and sat with a surprising number of parents who have been exposed to false literature presenting ROGD as a real phenomenon and are now afraid to believe their adolescent telling them that they are trans or nonbinary.
“But there were never any signs!”
“It just doesn’t make sense, we know our kid, there’s no way.”
“Their whole friend group is trans so that’s probably what started this.”
“How did this happen so fast?”
The disbelief that often accompanies an adolescent coming out as trans has dangerously permeated the fringes of the medical community, distorting the larger cultural narrative around trans adolescents. The term ROGD was coined by Dr. Lisa Littman in a study she conducted and published through Brown University’s academic journal PLOS ONE(1). Her assertion was that ROGD is a real phenomenon and that social influences, parent-child conflict, and maladaptive coping mechanisms may be contributing factors for some individuals. The term invigorated controversy in both the medical community and broader queer community at large.
What was so wrong with the research?
The research utilized a pathology framework: the tool which doctors would study a viral contagion or influenza. Littman garnered data from transphobic sources (2) only, so of the parents she surveyed, 76.5% believed that their child was incorrect in their belief that they were transgender. The article employed transphobic language and regarded gender dysphoria as a “psychological affliction” and “viral contagion”. Littman incorrectly synonymized the impressionability of anorexia and bulimia to that of gender dysphoria, asserting that adolescents identifying as transgender may be doing so due to influence from their peer group. Gender dysphoria, an actual diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders (DSM-5), is defined as a "marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth”; not something you catch like a virus or pick up from a group of friends to fit in.
On August 27, 2018 Brown University removed their press release about the publication due to concerns over the “research designs and methods”. That same day, PLOS ONE conducted a post publication review and insisted that revisions be made. The academic journal’s correction notice stated that the study was of parent observations and interpretations but failed to “collect data from the adolescents and young adults (AYAs) or clinicians and therefore does not validate the phenomenon.” (3)
Why is this so dangerous?
Littman’s so-called research creates a false “medical” foundation behind transphobia, prompting parents to question the truth in their child’s trans identity under the guise of medical validity and manipulates parental disbelief and shock into denial and rejection. To make matters worse, Littman’s work is often one of the first publications that concerned parents will come across online. Many anti-trans organizations point to her work as an evidence base for their transphobic claims. Although drawing attention for its contentious nature, Littman’s term ROGD is not a recognized clinical term or phenomenon and is not used medically.
So is ROGD even a thing?
To put it simply, ROGD does not exist and is not a diagnosis. Rather, the small truth to extract from Littman is that the perceived rapidness of coming out is actually a parental temporal misalignment. In essence, temporal misalignment asserts that your child has likely explored, researched, questioned and educated themselves long before coming out to you. It is possible that your child was holding back sharing their identity with you, not because they didn’t trust you to support them, but because of the pathologizing of trans identities that results from shoddy psuedo-science that figures such as Littman disguise as true research. While the young person’s coming out may seem ‘rapid’, it is important not to conflate eagerness with naiveté.
Where do we go from here?
It must be incredibly jarring as a parent to feel like you are suddenly finding out your child isn’t “who you thought they were”. The truth is that your child is still the same person, they are just being more authentic with you now. While the part of you that is terrified may be present, I encourage you to allow the part of you that has the capacity to truly listen to and trust your child to take the lead. The fear you experience won’t last forever, but the impact of your love and support of your child will.
Did you child recently come out?
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1. Littman, Lisa (August 16, 2018). "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports". PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0214157.s001
2. https://Transgendertrend.com ,https://4thwavenow.com, https://youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org
3. Littman, L. (2019, March 19). Correction: Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Retrieved February 2, 2021, from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0214157
Thank you to my research assistant J. Rowland
