Revisiting Flawed Research Behind the 80% Childhood Gender Dysphoria ‘Desistance’ Myth

This piece is pretty academic but what it boils down to is: 

Again and again we hear it states as ‘fact’ that 80% of transgender prepubescent kids will ‘desist’ (not be transgender) as adults. 

THIS. IS. BULLSHIT. 

Reasons:

• The first studies on this topic was conducted by the practice of Dr. Kenneth Zucker and the VUmc Amsterdam, both practices with very questionable ideas about transgender youth and both proponents of not allowing trans kids to live authenticly. These are not objective sources. 

  There were two similar studies, both were equally bullshit with a few differences in assumptions and errors but yeah, very very bullshit.

• The studies grouped ‘gender nonconforming children’ together without trying to seperate kids who expressed a strong conviction that they were transgender and/or a desire to transition from kids who simply enjoyed playing with dolls. Thus a lot of kids are called ‘desisters’ when they never felt transgender to begin with. 
• The studies only measures whether the kids chose physical transition at the point of reaching adulthood, and does not do follow up studies to see whether they identify as cisgender their whole lives. 
• The Zucker and VUmc study ignores that a significant number of the children in the study were exposed to abusive conversation therapy in Kenneth Zucker’s clinic. Which, ya know, is incredibly traumatizing and drives kids back in the closet. 
• The studies had lost touch with a lot of the people they had studied as children and they marked all non-respondents in the study as ‘desisters’. Yes, you read that right: if a transgender child that had suffered 

  conversation therapy did not want to transition in the same clinic or talk to that doctor in adulthood, that child was marked as a ‘desister’. Really. 

• The studies only counted as transgender those who responded to the study AND sought physical transition at the point of reaching adulthood. Thereby excluding a lot of transgender experiences. 

So, in short, this is bullshit. 

The 80% desistance figure is largely composed of people who simply wanted nothing to do with these shitty doctors and people who never had transgender experiences to begin with. And then there are transgender people who did not want to transition physically or who transitioned later in life. 

Reliable studies on this topic are lacking but most observations suggest that children who express a strong consistent transgender identity as 

prepubescent kids are very very likely to also identify as transgender in adulthood. 

STOP USING THIS ‘MOST TRANS KIDS DO NOT BECOME TRANS ADULTS’ AND 80% DESIST SHIT. PLEASE. IT’S BULLSHIT. 

Revisiting Flawed Research Behind the 80% Childhood Gender Dysphoria ‘Desistance’ Myth