What the F Is Going On
Theories of social contagion and beyond
When I first started speaking out over a year ago—that is, when I first steeled myself to try to tell a much more complicated story in the mainstream media about kids with gender dysphoria or identifying as trans—I avoided the terms social contagion and rapid-onset gender dysphoria. Though I had spoken with Lisa Littman even before her paper came out—the one that was vociferously objected to, but which held up in the face of scrutiny—and I knew about Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage, a certain amount of the media blackout on free thought and critical thinking was hard to shake.
It’s not that I wasn’t skeptical of what I’d been writing about trans kids for major media outlets, or curious about the exponential rise in kids with gender dysphoria appearing suddenly around 2015. It’s that it felt like we had all silently entered into an agreement that we were going to pretend things were different than they seemed. I was a powerless freelancer, trying to push back gently but stay in the good graces of those who employed me. I worked a few details into stories about, say, Sweden’s policy shift or that maybe not all gender-diverse kids need medicating, but I also participated in the spreading of the narrative that trans kids were a discernible, identifiable, diagnosable and deeply oppressed group. Partially I believed it. But it was also a requirement of the job.
Eventually, as you know if you’re reading my Substack, I couldn’t in good conscience continue. I did what heretic writers do these days: I came here, but only after trying for months and months to sell complex stories to mainstream outlets, and failing. I went on some podcasts and started talking about my attempt to diversify the left and center media narrative. I wasn’t trying to write exposés or ban anything; I just wanted to tell the sides of the story that the media had decided weren’t worth telling because they might hurt people, or hurt a movement—even though that’s really a violation of journalism’s mission.
One of the questions that kept coming up on podcasts was: Why does this matter so much to people? And why is the idea of rapid-onset gender dysphoria so deeply offensive to some?
I might have different answers to those questions every day. Yes, there is a social contagion among teens, clusters of kids getting the idea from one another and reaching for trans as the answer to what ails them. No, we don’t have good research (because the reaction to Littman’s paper was so severe, instead of investigating the scientific community took to denying), but many of us have heard story after story of the awkward, autistic teen who comes out and finds social acceptance in exchange for surrendering a certain amount of biological reality and embracing this shared philosophy. (I know many readers will object to my describing gender identity ideology as a philosophy. Go ahead, I’m open to being told why I’m wrong!) Or the gay kid who can’t accept himself and finds a hermitage in the idea of gender identity.
But why is it so effective? When in the last few hundred years has any philosophy spread so quickly? When have ideas about the basic facts of life—humans come in two basic kinds, and they get together and make more of those kinds (I was not a science major but I think that covers it)—been so fiercely and quickly abandoned and replaced with what I think we can safely call fringe ideas, like that biological sex is mutable and gender identity isn’t.
What I found in researching my last book and the one I’m working on now is that when ideas about gender change—that is, when we shift what is acceptable based on sex—the society responds deeply and emotionally, one way or another. And it’s not even all that hard to change those ideas. In many American generations, there have been zeitgeist shifts around gender. In the 1930s, women were deeply discouraged from doing anything remotely considered “men’s work,” because the rate of unemployment was so high—they needed to leave those jobs for the fellas. A decade later, they were told that their nimble fingers, trained on domestic tasks, were perfectly suited to the factory jobs the men had left to fight in the war. It was normal to work outside the home. A generation earlier, it wasn’t.
Whether or not they affected the majority of the population, these ideas about who a person should be and what they should do because of their sex were picked up by the press, documented and, as such, promoted. The public learned that these were viable options: for girls to play baseball. For men to wear paisley. For women to work outside the home. Or for women to stop working in the factories and take up their rightful, patriotic position as homemakers. Ideas about who men and women, girls and boys should be have been effectively packaged and sold in America. They are woven into capitalism.
In the 19th century, there were debates in the white press about whether or not white girls should be raised as tomboys. (There was no debate in the white press about what black girls should do because those girls had very few options, and the word tomboy didn’t appear in black newspapers until the 1950s when sports began being desegregated.) Some raised the dangers of tomboyism, that it would siphon blood away from the womb for girls to play sports and climb trees. But there were also articles calling tomboys the healthiest way to be girls, many defenses of this new way of life. The idea of how someone should be based on sex touched people deeply, and when that shifted, it thrilled some people and upset others.
Social contagion is one aspect of what’s happening, and so is the natural excitement (good or bad) about new gender ideas, but the gender industry has also exploded. Nonprofits have huge budgets to promote the idea of gender identity, to sell schools materials and trainings that push the zeitgeist shift further and further, to expand medical offerings and lawsuits. (An NPR story shows 17.5 percent of Planned Parenthood customers at one clinic were there for gender-affirming care.)
The idea of gender identity, and of identifying as transgender, is not just one that’s spread through a generation as a social contagion. It is one that has touched people deeply. And if we’re going to challenge their devotion to this idea, we have to accept that it has given them real meaning and purpose.
I think the miracles of the universe could give them that same meaning and purpose. For me, the fact that the it takes so long for the light of stars twinkling in the sky to reach us that what we’re looking at may have burned out thousands of years ago is all the religion I need. Eggs and sperm create new humans: amazing. When you burn clay at thousands of degrees, it hardens into pottery, the dull paint you slathered over it blossomed into brilliant, saturated gloss.
I could go on, but I’ll spare you. I’ve found it incredibly challenging to summon optimism and hope throughout my life, but I do think there’s one thing we could teach all children to experience and appreciate, and that’s wonder. Maybe rather than certainty—the defensive certainty that ROGD isn’t real, that gender identity is—we could aim to marvel at the fact of our existence, and what we’ve done with it. Maybe that will lead to inquiry. Maybe that will lead to more information. And maybe that will lead to more curiosity.
PS: If you’re curious about ROGD, today is ROGD Awareness Day per the international parent and professional group Genspect. Through their videos, you can learn about the difference between current and past populations with gender dysphoria. I highly recommend it for journalists, especially those who think it’s BS.
Lisa, I'm a big admirer of your work. Thank you for your courage, integrity, and superb writing!
With the greatest respect, I'd like to take you up on this invitation: "I know many readers will object to my describing gender identity ideology as a philosophy. Go ahead, I’m open to being told why I’m wrong!"
I echo Elizabeth Hummel's response, and, as a practitioner and decades-long student of philosophy, I'd like to expand on her excellent point that philosophy does not require faith. The word philosophy is derived from the ancient Greek words *philos* (love) and *sophos* (wisdom) and has generally retained that original meaning, the love of wisdom. Of course, wisdom is a notoriously subjective criterion, but most would agree that, for a belief to be wise, it should also be true. Not all philosophies are wise, and most philosophies contain errors, but a necessary component of any philosophy is one or more at least passably decent arguments in support of its claims that it is true.
Gender identity ideology is not only based on faith, but it notably lacks coherence. Even many faith-based positions can be coherent, if you accept one or more supernatural premises. That's what distinguishes theology from philosophy. But the central tenet of gender identity ideology is that "gender identity" is innate, and that idea depends upon a necessarily circular argument - a fallacy.
The only possible arguments to support that tenet must begin by *assuming* that gender identity is innate. In other words, they rely on one of the oldest, most-discredited of all logical fallacies: assuming the conclusion.
Absent the postulate that gender identity is innate, the only approximately reasonable arguments available to support gender identity ideology must also assume that "identity" has, in some way or other, a kind of metaphysical primacy that allows it to trump biology, with regard to specifying personhood. In other words, one's "authentic self" is discoverable via one's *identity*, as opposed to one's *body*. Any careful study of personal identity will reveal that it's a difficult concept to define with precision. And gender is even harder to clearly define, at least in any way approaching a universally accepted consensus.
In short, the theory of gender identity is extremely thin, with respect to its empirical bona fides. Consequently, it dissolves like a paper suit in a rainstorm when it's subjected to any kind of philosophical analysis. The only way to be as ardently committed to it as its followers apparently are, is to adopt it as part of an ideological doctrine.
That doctrine cannot be adequately defended with the tools of philosophy.
Thank you for your journalistic integrity, in the face of very real career obstacles. 20-foot high concrete barricades might be a better way to put it. People should become paid subscribers to this Substack to support this work--there are very few writers getting rich on this platform, or even scraping by, and there are very few with Lisa's left-wing credentials. As to "philosophy" vs "ideology" to describe the set of beliefs that has taken over our institutions and some people, I opt for the latter, because at its center gender ideology is based firmly on unverifiable faith-based tenets. Such as: sex is a spectrum and is not a binary. People can change their sex. Trans women are women. There is no science to any of that, just science-y sounding stuff. It's way more like theology than science. "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" seems very similar to "Am I a demi-girl, genderqueer, or skunk-gender?" While a particular "philosophy" MIGHT have some faith-based tenets, faith is not a requirement of a philosophy. A philosophy is not as rigid. A philosophy does not characteristically produce zealous proponents and heretics, but an ideology or a religion always does.