On August 3, the headline of a CTV News article informed Canadians that “No, ‘social contagion’ isn’t driving transgender teens, study finds.” For anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the gender issue, a declaration such as this may have come as a bit of a surprise. Does this mean we can now stop worrying […]
On August 3, the headline of a CTV News article informed Canadians that “No, ‘social contagion’ isn’t driving transgender teens, study finds.”
For anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the gender issue, a declaration such as this may have come as a bit of a surprise. Does this mean we can now stop worrying about the recent meteoric rise in teenagers identifying as transgender? Can we set aside our concerns about whole friend groups coming out as trans and lining up to get irreversible medical procedures?
Not quite. Because the reported study was conducted by none other than Jack Turban, well-known activist psychiatrist and puberty-blocker enthusiast, and it has been widely criticized by an array of experts, including those who are themselves sympathetic to Turban’s political views, as already reported in The Post Millennial.
It is genuinely baffling that such scientific rubbish could have made it through the peer review process and into a world-class medical journal, but what is equally concerning is that it hit the international news and is being presented to Canadians as if it’s real science.
In recent months there have been several important international developments in the world of gender medicine that CTV, and with the exception of the National Post, all other major Canadian news outlets have failed to report on.
When Sweden and Finland banned pediatric medical transition except in the strictest of clinical trial settings, we heard not a whisper about it. More recently, it was announced that England's controversial Tavistock gender clinic is to be closed down because the service is not safe for children, and yet only the National Post deemed this hugely important development newsworthy.
Instead, Canada’s legacy media remains steadfast in its one-sided reporting of this issue. In March of this year, CTV treated us to a heartwarming story about an eleven-year-old boy who had recently been chemically castrated at the gender clinic in Ottawa, and just last month CBC proudly reported on how the province of Nova Scotia has just reduced the barriers to gender-affirming care, without a single mention of the controversy surrounding this model.
If journalists in Canada actually cared about this vulnerable cohort of young people who believe themselves to be members of the opposite sex, they’d make the effort to investigate the issue and report the facts, rather than latching onto appalling junk science because it fits the approved trans-positive narrative.
The tiniest bit of research would have revealed that Turban’s claim there has been no dramatic increase in teenage girls identifying as transgender is frankly ludicrous. It is completely inconsistent with all data coming out of gender clinics all over the world, including Canada.
That teenage girls are the demographic most affected by social contagions is a well-known fact, and a quick look at the trends in gender clinic referrals over the past decade would certainly suggest we are witnessing such an event. Another hallmark of the social contagion phenomenon is a period of exponential growth, which again is clearly visible here:
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SEGM promotes safe, compassionate, ethical and evidence-informed Healthcare for children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria. Home, from https://segm.org/[/caption]
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Vancouver/BCCH Clinic-Community Webinar. Trans Youth CAN! (n.d.), from https://transyouthcan.ca/results/vancouver-self-care-and-coping-webinar/[/caption]
It is also important to pay attention to the years that the epidemic began because this is another factor in the social contagion theory. We have long known that the media plays a crucial role in the spread of social contagions, and it just so happens that this epidemic started right at the precise moment that the modern trans rights movement kicked into high gear. I Am Jazz first aired in 2015, as did Louis Theroux’s documentary Transgender Kids, and it is surely no coincidence that there was a surge in young people identifying as transgender in the years that followed.
Also around the mid-2010s, school boards added materials such as the Genderbread Person and the Gender Unicorn to the curriculum, and with the best of intentions, teachers began teaching children dangerous lies that detach them from the material reality of their bodies. It would appear that no one stopped to consider what the consequences would be of teaching children an absurd political ideology as if it is scientific fact.
We’ve seen plenty of social contagions play out in recent history, but there's never been one quite like this one. The important difference is, when the contagions of anorexia, bulimia, or cutting swept through teenage girls populations, we were allowed to talk about them. We were allowed to be concerned, and most importantly, we were allowed to try to stop them in their tracks.
But because this contagion is political, we are forbidden from even naming it. To suggest that it’s a social contagion is considered a terrible act of transphobia. So instead of helping these young people, we have to celebrate their suffering. Instead of trying to slow the spread, teachers, the media, politicians, and activists are actively encouraging it. Chemically castrating children is beautiful, we are told. Sixteen-year-old lesbians having bilateral mastectomies is a cause for celebration - only a transphobic bigot would disagree.
The truth about this devastating medical scandal will come out eventually because the damage is too enormous to stay hidden forever, but every article that distorts the truth and misleads the Canadian public delays that moment further, meaning more and more young people will come to harm. In the not-too-distant future, when we’re sifting through the wreckage of this contagion, every journalist who was too cowardly to report on it truthfully will have to accept their role in the devastation it caused.
