What parents don’t know: Trans youth study reveals fatal flaw at the heart of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) pseudo-diagnosis (1 of 3)

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Zinnia Jones

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3

Origin and scope of the “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) pseudo-diagnosis of trans youth

Zinnia JonesRapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is an alleged new social phenomenon of inauthentic gender dysphoria suddenly appearing among cisgender adolescents in growing numbers and in social clusters, unlike other currently known forms of gender dysphoria already seen among trans people. This claimed syndrome was first named by Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University in an abstract (Littman, 2017) and later study (Littman, 2018) based on sampling readers of three prominent anti-trans communities which featured claims throughout 2016 of a growing trend of “sudden onset” of this false gender dysphoria in cis adolescents.

The proposed condition of ROGD thus suggests that, as apparent trans adolescents may actually be misdiagnosed cis youth, the effective gender-affirming treatment given as a standard of care for trans youth would be inappropriate or harmful for this group of youth, and so this gender-affirming treatment should be withheld from them.

Following Littman’s 2018 study, this claimed condition has been widely promoted in the public discourse by anti-trans advocacy groups, right-wing legal groups, conservative legislators, “intellectual dark web” commentators, and those of any stripe whose politics include the invalidation of trans youth. The spectre of this contagion of mistaken gender running rampant among youth has recently been the subject of alarm among Republican lawmakers, as always under the banner of “protecting children”, working to ban access to medical transition for trans adolescents – and in at least one state succeeding.

Littman’s study has a fundamental flaw in its methodology that broadly undermines its reported findings. According to Littman, a key feature distinguishing ROGD from classic gender dysphoria is that ROGD appears very quickly in a child who was heretofore apparently cisgender with no sign of gender incongruity. The observations of this rapidity consisted entirely of reports from anonymous parents on their own perception of their child’s gender identity and development, almost universally expressing surprise at the sudden nature of their child’s statement of a transgender identity. The youth themselves were not surveyed on their own experiences of gender incongruity throughout their childhood, how long they had experienced gender incongruity or considered themselves transgender, or how long they had waited to make their trans identity visible to these parents for the first time. Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Gender dysphoria, Hoaxes, Media, Outcomes of transition, Sociological research, Statistics and demographics, Trans youth, Transgender medicine, Transphobia and prejudice | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Twice in a million: Heather McNamara on surviving two rare CVST strokes

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Zinnia Jones

By Heather McNamara

The first intelligible words I remember speaking when I woke up were “I wish I hadn’t…” 

My mother answered from beside me “Wish you hadn’t what?”

“I don’t know? Drank so much? Eaten so much?”

“It wasn’t one of those,” she said. “The doctor told me. It was a CVST. It’s a very particular kind of stroke that happens because your blood is clotting in your veins.”

“What should I have done differently, then?”

“There wasn’t anything you could do. It was just going to happen.” Continue reading →

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AstraZeneca or not, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis is a complex and potentially fatal emergency. Is the world prepared?

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Zinnia Jones

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. The COVID-19 pandemic and investigations into the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots are rapidly evolving situations. This information may be superseded by later findings. This article was last updated on March 31, 2021.

Zinnia JonesOver the past month, several European nations have halted, resumed, then once again halted their use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine upon several reports of serious and fatal blood clots in those who received the shot. Initial responses to these reports focused on comparing the rates of occurrence of blood clots as a broad category between populations that had received and had not received the vaccine. Blood clots, discussed generally, can refer to such conditions as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or arterial (ischemic) stroke.

However, additional information soon clarified that these reports of blood clots after the AstraZeneca vaccine were not distributed among these various types of conditions in the same way that is seen to occur in the general unvaccinated population. Instead, blood clots following AstraZeneca have much more frequently been in the form of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), a blockage of the veins draining deoxygenated blood from the brain, or disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), in which numerous blood clots form throughout the body’s vessels. These patients were also often seen to have a paradoxical severe depletion of platelets, which produce blood clotting, similar to that seen in a rare reaction to the blood thinner heparin.

A key signal involves the rarity of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) under normal conditions: CVST is estimated to occur in only 2 to 5 out of every million people every year (Devasagayam et al., 2016). Within the German population given AstraZeneca, over the time period following vaccination, only one CVST would be expected to occur; instead, there were seven, resulting in three deaths. Frustratingly, even if a one-in-a-million condition becomes ten times more common, it may still not be common enough to appear at all in trials of merely tens of thousands of participants – so it might not be possible to detect these rare side effects before one has already administered a treatment to tens of millions. Continue reading →

Posted in COVID-19, Personal, Statistics and demographics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Additional details on the connection between transgender HRT and migraine headache patterns

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Zinnia Jones

Previously:

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and this is not medical advice.

Zinnia JonesA migraine headache is an astonishingly miserable experience, ever surprising in not only its intensity but its diversity. This is not the milder tension headache or such a common headache but stronger and longer, this is a complex neurological syndrome that can affect us in many disabling or sheerly unpleasant ways. An affliction passed from my maternal grandfather to my mother down to me, since age 3 I’ve had some of the most memorable experiences of my life thanks to frequent migraines. Vomiting so profusely I’d need to be taken home or miss school at least once a week, laying for countless hours in the dark able to do nothing but wait for it to pass, I became intimately familiar with lengthy periods of unbearable, intractable, inescapable pain from a young age.

As I’ve grown, I’ve racked up more and more of the comprehensively bizarre symptoms of migraines: the occasional visual aura of apparent static in the center of my field of vision, the far more subtle feelings of abnormally higher or lower energy or inability to focus in the days preceding it, the near-hallucinatory racing thoughts that I can’t shake as I writhe around the bed fruitlessly trying to get any respite, the euphoria or simple exhaustion that comes when it finally remits. I’ve experienced a range of treatments over time as well, from Motrin that barely touched it, to Excedrin truly making a dent in it for the first time, to triptans that could free you from this in an hour but must come from a pharmacy whose schedule your body has no regard for, to the rebound headaches that make it seem like there can never be such a thing as a free lunch here. I’ve not yet needed some of the other treatments for migraine sufferers, such as facial botox injection, older antidepressants like amitriptyline, anticonvulsants like Topamax, long-acting preventative CGRP inhibitors or short-acting abortive CGRP inhibitors.

One key experience at the nexus of migraine symptoms and medical treatment over time is the way that sex hormones, including masculinizing puberty at a normal age and later feminizing HRT at 23, have shaped and altered these experiences. The wave of testosterone in my early teens acted within less than a year to bring my frequent migraines down to merely a couple times a year. And when I started taking estrogen and antiandrogens, it was a matter of days before I had one of my worst migraines in years, which have since become a once- or twice-monthly occurrence during the eight years I’ve been on HRT. Continue reading →

Posted in Biology of transition, Endocrinology, Trans youth, Transfeminine, Transgender medicine, Transmasculine | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Gayest Generation: Trans-hostile interpretations of changing LGBT demographics are baseless and backwards

Posted on March 1, 2021 by Zinnia Jones

Previously:

Zinnia JonesIt’s fantastic news by any measure: Gallup’s latest poll reports that 5.6% of U.S. adults now identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, compared to only 4.5% just a few years ago. And Gen Z (defined here as those born from 1997 to 2002) has emerged as the least heterosexual, least cisgender generation ever recorded, with 15.9% identifying as LGBT compared to 9.1% of millennials (1981-1996) and 3.8% of Gen X. Specifically, Gen Z adults are vastly more likely than millennials to be gay, more likely to be lesbian, more likely to be bisexual, and more likely to be transgender – a rising rainbow tide. Continue reading →

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