I've recently been seeing ROGD - rapid onset gender theory - popping up on my substack feeds lately (mostly from the illustrious writing of trans rights advocate Erin Reed and blogger Laura Jadeed), and I thought that it was a good time to cover the topic, at least somewhat, for my own enjoyment!
Rapid onset gender theory is the academic form of the "kids nowadays are changin'". Basically, ROGD argues that being trans is so popular, the allure so great, that children can't help but be trans'ed by the internet. Parents are surprised as their child changes from a happy go lucky, "correctly" gendered child to a transgender rebel overnight. The answer lies online - children, flocking to whatever is most popular, see strange and confusing messages that inevitably lead to the same result: trans-ness.
If this sounds familiar to you, you might be older than ten years old. In 2012, with many states in full opposition to gay marriage, advocates of a same-sex marriage ban needed to find some academic purpose to fuel them. Refuting gay people for sinning is fun and all, but doesn't help pass bills if there happens to be a secular plurality. There needs to be something beyond bigotry to justify law. Enter a new argument, tie it to a snazzy million dollar study, and you have more legally justifiable discrimination than you can shake a stick at. This of course, is the Regnerus study.
This 2012 study pooled together respondents of surveys that were children of gay parents or straight parents, then compared their outcomes. The findings were shocking. Children with same-sex parents were more likely to:
Suffer from depression
Attempt suicide
Be molested
Have an STI
Be unemployed as adults
Etc. etc.
With Regnerus' study backing them, Michigan lawmakers in 2014 decided they had the ammunition they needed to prevent gay marriage from ever destroying the sanctity of their citizens' marriages (a very real, very important threat). Finally academia was worth something in the eyes of long science-hating Republican representatives, as they prepared an amendment in the Michigan state constitution to prevent same-sex marriage.
Except of course, the study was a crock of shit.
Pretty soon after the publishing of Regnerus' study, a vast array of psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists descended upon the paper. One issue immediately came up concerning the way Regnerus had identified survey respondents. You see, Regnerus did not have a sample of the American population, but rather, a marketing firm supplied focus group. This is not a representative sample, so immediately the study should be met with great skepticism. Other issues included the online nature of the survey: some respondents indicated that they had hundreds of sexual encounters in one week alone. There is always some online noise when using open surveys, but this indicates some clear issues.
Of course, the biggest lynchpin of bullshit in the entire study is that the primary investigated variable of the study, the presence of gay parents, is never investigated. Respondents were asked if they knew whether their mother/father had a sexual relationship with someone of the same-sex whenever the respondent was younger than 18. In fact, there was only two respondents in the study that affirmed they actually had same-sex parents. Other than that, everyone who answered yes to the above question was considered "raised by same-sex parents".
This is a farcical attempt at data manipulation. Once authors learned these horrible truths, the data-set was re-examined. In 2015 it was found that Regnerus' own surveyed population hurt his argument, as individuals raised by same-sex parents had the same health/safety outcomes as those without. The idea was completely debunked, though conservatives would still use it for years afterwards.
Let's go back to ROGD, our modern day Regnerus' study.
If you're unaware of the basis for ROGD, it comes from a sociologist named Lisa Littman in 2018. Littman surveyed a population of adults and found that most parents believed that their child's transition was "out of the blue" or that the dysphoria came suddenly (>75% of respondents). Additionally, most parents reported that their child had spent a lot of time online lately and surprisingly, most parents didn't even think their kids really had gender dysphoria.
On its face, there is already one issue: this study is asking parents about their kids, so it's not a direct assessment of the patient population. However, there was a much larger glaring issue on publication: Lisa had decided to exclude the process in which she'd sampled this population. After many questions from curious scientists, Littman updated her study's methodology. It was a shocking reality check.
Lisa Littman had only asked parents from websites that exclusively denied the existence of transgender individuals. These websites, called Transgender Trend or 4thWaveNow, were directly tied to a population of people who spent all day arguing about the non-existence of gender dysphoria. What a surprise it was, then, that they all agreed on a survey about the non-existence of gender dysphoria.
To Littman's credit, one place surveyed of the four wasn't exclusively about ending transgender care for youth. It was a Facebook group for parents of transgender children, which survey takers spread the survey to after taking them on the prior mentioned websites. Thus, there are probably some regular old parents of trans kids, but it's definitely a minority.
With such clear bias, the study was rightly lampooned. The article it was originally published in was heavily edited and multiple studies have since confirmed that the very idea of ROGD is preposterous.
Ever the scientist, Lisa Littman was staunchly opposed to critics and launched a new study to support her theo- just kidding. Littman would never again mention ROGD in any of her academic works, nor did she try to use a new study to prove herself right over her critics. She's had two publications since - one being about how people detransition, Like Regnerus, Littman sheepishly admitted to the faults of her work and then scampered off into the sunset, doing little to stop the army of anti-trans lunatics who found a new academic gospel.
Therein lies the rub. Littman doesn't attempt to bolster her theory with new research, like a real scientist would, because she knows it's crap. Anyone who helped her make the study, including whoever funded the monstrosity, also knows it's crap. Just like Regnerus' study 10 years ago, the science was never the point. In fact, they weren't really trying to do science in the first place.
I've talked about this before, but simply, the right wing doesn't care about science. The veneer of science, which offers authority, is definitely useful though. That is something to care about - the power and control that science can provide. Unfortunately, there is an inherent check on science's power: it has to be true. Churning out these horrible studies does nothing to help with truth, with science, but it benefits the person(s) who paid for it.
In the end, not even the creators' of this theory can stand behind it. They know it's a deeply unserious attempt at discovering truth and don't want to stand by it. To others, the academic text acts as a smoke screen. To these people, all those words don't make sense and they don't really need to: it all points to the truth, anyways. Actually understanding the work isn't necessary and it never was. That's the way the authors approached their work too - there isn't any attempt here to gain any additional understanding of the Universe. They know it's not scientifically rigorous in any way and that was never the goal.
We should engage with ROGD like Lisa Littman did - we should walk away from it and pretend it was never published!