ROGD Proponents Now Wish Littman "Spared Us the Headache" of Claiming a Rapid-Onset

Ordinary adolescent-onset gender dysphoria has completely eclipsed a previous theory of gender dysphoria that emerged rapidly due to social factors among proponents of the ROGD idea.

by Evan Urquhart

Late last week, Leor Sapir and Lisa Littman issued a response on a Substack blog to criticisms of a recent letter to the editor they’d submitted (along with Michael Biggs) to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, and it provides final, definitive proof that ROGD proponents have dropped the idea that some gender dysphoria is characterized by being rapid-onset. In a substack post, Sapir and Littman spend time defending the idea that some of the USTS respondents might fit the description of a rapid onset, but ultimately admit exactly what I said was true: They no longer wish to make any distinction between later onset gender dysphoria and ROGD. 

In the initial letter, Sapir and Littman claimed to have found evidence for rapid onset gender dysphoria in some of the data from the 2015 U. S. Transgender Survey. They said, because respondents between the ages of 18-24 had an onset of about 3 years, instead of about 14 for the full group of participants, this was evidence for ROGD among this younger cohort. This was a bizarre claim, as 18-24 year olds were mathematically certain to show a shorter onset period than 24 and older because they were younger. The longest period that group could theoretically have between realizing they were trans and coming out was much shorter, so by comparing their data to much older people, some of whom had waited decades before coming out, it ensured the younger group would have a shorter onset.

I was one of several people who pointed out that the three year median onset they found is hardly rapid, particularly in the life of a teenager. I then wrote in a follow up for Assigned where I showed that, while none of the ROGD proponents have ever bothered to define rapid onset, in 2018 Lisa Littman used parents who felt their child had never displayed any gender dysphoria and parents who gave a time frame between one week and three months of onset as examples of rapidity. (This accounted for 58 percent of the parents’ reports). Her earlier embrace of very short time windows is evidence that Littman, who once emphasized how quickly and suddenly gender-dysphoria came on in the group she studied, has moved away from any requirement that “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” must have a rapid onset.

Now, on a blog called “Reality’s Last Stand” Littman and Sapir have confirmed they now claim all adolescent onset gender dysphoria is ROGD, that ROGD was a poorly chosen name, and that what distinguishes ROGD from ordinary gender dysphoria are that camp’s idle speculations about its causes.

The post does not immediately get to these admissions about their ROGD framework. In the beginning they spend a while describing the USTS data, particularly highlighting the 2127 respondents who said that they started feeling something off about their gender less than 2 years before coming out as transgender. Littman and Sapir also spend time arguing that USTS respondents can’t be trusted to recall these time frames accurately, making an unwarranted assumption that any memory errors would be in favor of their hypothesis.

However, everything in the portion where they analyze the data can safely be thrown out (as can the original letter), because while the thrust of the letter was that they’d found evidence of ROGD because younger trans people have spent less time in the closet, Sapir and Littman are very clear that they do not want to be held to any definition of rapid. In fact, they even go so far as to say that Littman was wrong to have used the word “rapid” in the first place.

screenshot from Substack

This is a neat trick! All gender dysphoria that appears later than early childhood has now been retconned to fit the ROGD rubric. Apparently, what distinguishes ROGD is no longer that, unlike other adolescent-onset gender dysphoria  it comes on completely out of the blue, but that it has a different etiology (or cause). They claim this difference in cause is the most important thing, but conveniently it’s also difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove. Once you define rapid, you can show (or fail to show) that something has occurred rapidly by your definition. You can look at the differences (or lack of differences) between people who fit the definition of rapid onset and those who don’t fit it. But proving causation is notoriously tricky. It’s hard to begin to imagine a study that could demonstrate a group of trans people’s identity was caused by any particular factor, and Sapir and Littman do not propose one.

Interestingly, Littman’s original study did not propose a “novel and unknown etiology.” It proposed that a distinct group of trans youth existed who could be distinguished from all others because their gender-dysphoria came on rapidly. It proposed that this group would be more likely to have many transgender peers and consume trans content online. By dropping the requirement that these youth’s trans identity comes on rapidly, Sapir and Littman are driving a stake through it’s heart, making it impossible for researchers to distinguish it in their data, except by referencing the two things the theory purported to explain: More transmascs are showing up at gender clinics in adolescence.

The above has been well documented, and there are dueling explanations for it. One is that trans people have found it easier to put words on their experiences, leading to a greater propotion of young people to understand themselves as trans. Meanwhile, social factors among parents and/or doctors have led to more transmasculine adolescents at gender clinics, despite trans identification being roughly equal between the sexes at the relevant age groups.

ROGD proposes, in contrast, that young women are erroneously identifying as transgender due to peer and online influences. At one point, it provided quantifiable predictions for how we would know whether this was a better explanation than the standard one: By the uniquely rapid onset for gender dysphoria among those impacted, and by a predicted increase in regret and detransition. ROGD proponents have already backed away from predicting increased regret and detransition as data have failed to show it. Now they’re doing away with the only other distinguishing characteristic, rapid onset.

In sum, we have moved out of the period when ROGD proponents attempted to operate within the bounds of scientific research which makes testable claims and predictions, and into a period where proponents are openly embracing pseudoscience.

In the blog post, at one point, Littman and Sapir describe a trans man who they believe “fits the ROGD profile perfectly.” He is autistic and had difficulty fitting in between the ages of 10 and 12. At 12 he discovered online content relating to transmasculinity, and after a year of exploring this new idea and how it might relate to him, he eventually comes out to his parents as trans at 13. Five years later, he responds to the USTS, as a trans man.

Sapir and Littman tell the story very differently, referring to an 18-year-old trans man who has been consistent in his identity for six years, and out to his family for five, as a girl. But there is no daylight between their description of the perfect ROGD example and a trans man living happily, minding his own business, certain in his identity and the rightness of his transition.

screenshot from Substack

What Littman and Sapir are claiming is that they know better than trans men who we are and what is best for us. That’s no surprise, because what the transmasc community has said it is from the beginning is that ROGD is really just a baseless conservative attack on the agency of trans men by sexists who seek to leverage prejudices and stereotpyes of teenage girls against the trans community, on an increasingly thin pretext.

This sexism shows up well in one particularly bizarre passage in the blog, where the authors attempt to justify the idea that 3 years could be considered “rapid” onset by making an analogy to vocation, saying, “Now, imagine we were to come across a teenager who, in the space of 3 years between age 12 and 15, figured out, definitively, that her calling in life is to be a biochemical engineer. Could we not reasonably say that this teenager had a rapid-onset of vocational identity?”

Imagine we were to come across a biochemical engineer who had been working in the field for five years, after considering a number of different professions for three. We would call that person a biochemical engineer. Imagine we were to come across a trans man who had been living as a man for five years. Any reasonable person would accept that this was, simply, a trans man. Sapir and Littman? In this post they have made clear that there is no period of time is long enough for a trans man to demonstrate that he is exactly as he presents himself. To them he will forever be a teenage girl, whether he is 19 or 28 or 57. They seek to keep him locked forever in the person he was at 12, never growing up, always in need of adult guidance, never trusted to make decisions for his own life, never accepted as the adult man he has grown into.

That’s not science, folks. That’s patriarchy.