Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, explained how activists censored his academic research paper about “gender dysphoria” in adolescents.
Though Bailey has written on a number of controversial topics, from IQ to sexual orientation to pedophilia, he never had a research paper retracted after being published until recently. This past March, he reportedly published an article in the prestigious academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior only to have it taken down a little under three months later. The topic: Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). He explained in The Free Press:
ROGD was first described in the literature in 2018 by the physician and researcher Lisa Littman. It is an explanation of the new phenomenon of adolescents, largely girls, with no history of gender dysphoria, suddenly declaring they want to transition to the opposite sex. It has been a highly contentious diagnosis, with some—and I am one—thinking it’s an important avenue for scientific inquiry, and others declaring it’s a false idea advocated by parents unable to accept they have a transgender child.
I believed that ROGD was a promising explanation of the explosion of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls because these young people do not have gender dysphoria as usually understood. Until recently, females treated for gender dysphoria were masculine-presenting girls who had hated being female since early childhood. By contrast, girls with ROGD are often conventionally feminine, but tend to have other social and emotional issues.
ROGD theory essentially postulated that social pressures convince vulnerable girls to feel that their general angst stems from an underlying transgender identity, which then causes them to declare themselves transgender. The girls will often desire (and sometimes may receive) “drastic medical interventions including mastectomies and testosterone injections.” According to Bailey, the evidence seems to suggest that girls in progressive communities among the same peer group are adopting a transgender identity around the same time. No studies had been conducted on the topic because researchers were often met with considerable backlash.
To protect her identity and family, Bailey’s co-author, “Suzanna Diaz,” specifically chose to remain anonymous. He explained that he did rigorous research to fact-check and verify her findings. Their research determined the following:
Our article was based on parent reports of 1,655 adolescent and young adult children. Three-fourths of them were female. Emotional problems were common among this group, especially anxiety and depression, which many parents said preceded gender issues by years. Most of these young people had taken steps to socially transition, including changing their pronouns, dress, and identity to the other sex (or in some cases, to neither sex). Parents observed that after their children socially transitioned, their mental health deteriorated. A small number—seven percent of those whose parents answered Suzanna’s survey—had received medical transition treatment, including drugs to block puberty, or cross-sex hormones.
The research also reportedly found that young people with those emotional problems were likely to have socially and medically transitioned. Often, parents were referred to a gender specialist, with 52 percent of those parents saying they felt some pressure from the specialist to transition their child.
Bailey noted they were wholly transparent with those probed that their data would be shared while their identities would be protected. In the end, due to pressure from activists, Springer Nature Group, the giant academic publisher of Archives, retracted the article for allegedly violating its editorial policies. Bailey maintains that the article contains no falsehoods or manipulation.
Read the full account here.
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