Teenage Girls and ROGD

Why are so many teenage girls choosing to trans themselves out of their gender? What's with the sudden rise in this demographic and rapid onset gender dysphoria?

In the last 10 years, the number of teenage girls wanting to transition has skyrocketed. Previously, the main demographic which experienced gender dysphoria was young boys. These boys, usually starting around 3 years old, and not at puberty, were diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Now the main demographic of people being diagnosed with gender dysphoria is teenage girls, and a new diagnosis is being brought to life: rapid onset gender dysphoria.

What is Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria?

ROGD is gender dysphoria which develops rapidly, usually at puberty, or following a trauma. It is not the insistent, consistent claim from a young age that the sufferer is the opposite sex which we are used to, which the majority of these children grow out of. Rapid onset gender dysphoria is now the most common experience of those who go on to be medicalized, and most of the sufferers are teenage girls. People with rapid onset gender dysphoria also tend to grow out of it if they are not affirmed, but with WPATH, a trans activist group, running the medical field, these girls are affirmed right away.

ROGD is a term coined by parents, mostly mothers, of children with such symptoms. ROGD parents believe in the social contagion idea, and that their children are having symptoms of gender dysphoria due to social influence. They fight hard to hold the line and not allow their children to transition, usually resulting is dessistance.

“We are a group of parents whose children have suddenly—seemingly out of the blue—decided they identify strongly with the opposite sex and are at various stages in transitioning.  This is a new phenomenon that has only recently been identified.  Researchers are calling it Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), and it is epidemic among our most vulnerable youth.”

This sudden onset of symptoms is commonly seen with social contagions.

The Numbers

In November 2017, the Guardian reported that 70% of referrals for gender affirming care were for females. Just 10 years ago, over 75% were for males. This change in demographic can be seen across multiple countries, including the US, Sweden, and Finland.

Social Contagions

For every generation, there is a social contagion. The victims are always the same demographic: mostly teenage girls. Teenage boys fall into the trap as well, but it is an epidemic among the girls, who influence each other more, and are more likely to mirror those around them than their male peers.

I fell victim to two social contagions. When you add mental illness and trauma to the mix, on top of puberty, discovering yourself, and everything else that happens as a teenage girl, it's almost impossible not to become a victim of one.

Between 10 and 30 years ago, anorexia nervosa paired with bulimia was a severe social contagion affecting this population. Teenage girls everywhere were starving themselves and throwing up their food, including me. There were, and still are, although they are less active, “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” groups on social media, where girls compare their bodies to each other and encourage each other to starve themselves and vomit their food up. Online pro-ana communities are toxic and dangerous.

Another reason anorexia and bulimia became such issues is because of media. Runway models have died on the walkway, having starved to death, and had heart attacks. We watched girls in the 90s and 00s starve themselves and be called beautiful, and other girls wanted to be called beautiful too, so they starved themselves like the models.

This social contagion began to come to an end when France raised the minimum BMI for models to a healthy weight. Underweight models were no longer put on the glamorizing runway, and the social contagion died down.

The transgender community found me through one of these pro-anorexia communities I mentioned existing online. Already vulnerable, pliable, and naive, I was convinced that all of my problems, including my eating disorder, existed because I was born in the wrong body. This is not uncommon.

The Overlap

It is easy to see the overlap between social contagions of the past and the transgender movement. They are fast moving, spread by the media, and the effected demographics are the same.

What is different?

The difference between anorexia and other illnesses of social contagion, is that anorexia is not affirmed by adults or doctors. The adults and doctors in an anorexia child’s life will not agree with her when she says that she is fat. They will not encourage her not to eat or give her tips. They will not give her diet pills nor schedule liposuction. But if a child says that they are born in the wrong body, these days, many adults and certainly doctors will agree with the child and offer hormones and surgery.

TikTok Tics and Other Illnesses

Another recent social contagion effecting this same demographic, teenage girls, is the phenomenon of tics, spread by TikTok. All over the world, girls are reporting and going to the doctor to be diagnosed with tics, both auditory and physical.

“We watched this happen in front of our eyes,” Aidan’s mother, Rhonda, recently recalled. “It looked like Aidan was going crazy.” The NYT reported a mother’s testimony about watching her daughter suddenly develop tics. This sounds much like the mothers of ROGD children.

Girls in friend groups, whole schools, and girls with similar algorithms on TikTok, are being afflicted by this social contagion and having real symptoms.

But how did it start? It started because these are a group of people, predators, who spent a long time faking tics. They would make videos of themselves having “tic attacks” and post the recordings to social media, gaining a lot of attention popularizing the idea of having an illness. Isolation and the pandemic also contributed.

This has been done on TikTok with many mental illnesses, including extremely rare ones, like DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder. At one point I remember DID trending on the app… how could such a rare illness have millions of likes on videos about it? And why are so many teenage girls saying they have DID, or developing tics, or saying they are transgender, for that matter?

The answer is social contagion.

Sources:

ROGD:

https://www.parentsofrogdkids.com

TikTok tics:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/tiktok-tics-gender-tourettes.html