Another Cultural Phenomenon

My wife and I normally pray before bed. We pray for our family, friends, church, work, Apparo Academy, our nation, and other issues as they become apparent to us. Last night, when I was thinking about the whole transgender identity phenomenon going on, I remembered from my studies about China another societal craze that harmed little girls and affected their lives as women until death - one that lasted for centuries.

But before I tell you about that, I read just this morning an interesting article, "Teen Transgender Identity: A Response to Critics | Psychology Today by Samuel Paul Veissière Ph.D., on the issue of transgender identity from a clinical perspective. Transgender identity is defined as distress with, or inability to identify with, one's biological sex, which often leads to a desire to spend one's life as the opposite sex. The DSM-5, the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals, refers to this condition as "gender dysphoria."

Transgender identity can cause severe misery, depending on its degree of social stigma, and historical and cross-cultural evidence suggests that conditions resembling "transgender identity" have been observed in all communities, with varied degrees of acceptance, suppression, or even promotion. Individuals who were born males but dress and live as females, such as the hijra in India, katoey in Thailand, bakla in the Philippines, and travesti in Brazil, have been widely accepted long before the current transgender movement in the West.

But there is a difference between what is happening here in the United States and Canada.

Gender dysphoria is expected to affect 0.005 percent of natal males (1.6 million) and 0.002 percent (640,000) of natal females. The increased incidence of males is most likely due to a higher percentage of male homosexuals globally (3 to 4%), compared to lesbians (1 to 2%). But transgender identification issues appears to be on the rise in the US, particularly among young people.

Lisa Littman, a physician, and professor of behavioral science at Brown University, discovered that more than 80% of the young people in her research of 250 families whose children exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria during or soon after puberty were female at birth. To meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria, a child must have displayed apparent symptoms of the disorder before puberty, such as "a strong rejection of typically feminine or masculine toys," or "a strong resistance to wearing typically feminine or masculine clothes."

63.5 percent of parents reported that their child's internet and social media consumption had increased significantly in the weeks preceding their child's announcement that they were transgender and that there was an increase in discomfort, conflict with parents, and expressed hostility toward heterosexual and non-transgender people (known as "cis" or "cisgender"). Trans youth held the viewpoint that cis-gendered people are generally regarded as evil and unsupportive.

"Rapid-onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD)

Parents also reported being called derogatorily "breeders" by their children or being harassed on a regular basis by children who played "pronoun-police." Littman warned against fostering young people's urge to shift in all situations and concluded that "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD) appears to be a novel condition resulting from cohort and contagion effects and relaxed social constraints. Littman's research suggests that ROGD is a maladaptive coping mechanism for other mental health disorders and exceptional features such as high IQ and giftedness. This social signaling has drawbacks, such as increased friction between trans adolescents and the "cis" majority of the population. Society is still researching all the risk factors for such widespread sociogenic diseases, and according to Littman, females are overwhelmingly more prone to such phenomena.

Now the comparison to a similar phenomenon in China.

Have you ever heard of Foot Binding?

Foot binding was a cultural practice that involved tightly bandaging the feet of young girls to restrict their normal growth and make them as small as possible, usually between 3 and 4 inches in length. The picture above is an example of an elderly woman who binding would have begun in her pre-teen years. It practice started in the 7th century CE and lasted until the 20th century CE, and was seen as a sign of beauty, status, or social prospects. It was extremely painful and often led to a lifelong disability.

Footbinding was viewed as a rite of passage for young girls and was believed to be preparation for puberty, menstruation, and childbirth. Footbinding was also a prestige symbol, and the popular belief was that it increased fertility because the blood would flow up to the legs, hips, and vaginal areas. It ensured a girl’s marriageability in patrilineal Chinese culture and was a shared bond between daughters, mothers, and grandmothers, making it an accepted communal and cultural practice.

Opposition to the practice became widespread only when missionaries to China argued that it was cruel and unusual and that the majority of the world would look down on it.

Peer Pressure and Communal Camaraderie

Transgender identity is now reported among young natal females at rates that clearly exceed all known statistics to date. But the societal contagion phenomenon of Rapid-onset Gender Dysphoria among females in America comes from peer pressure and communal camaraderie, ignorance of the long-term effects, and increased social acceptance as we become desensitized to the condition.

Let's not allow this phenomenon to get out of hand and propagate such cruelty to our young girls because they are "feeling" accepted rather than "truly knowing" when the statistics show there should not be so much of it. And certainly, let us not allow it to last 400 years as they did in China with foot binding.

Please include our nation and our young people in your prayers as well.