A long piece in the New York Times Magazine looks into the “battle over gender therapy.”
The writer explains that clinicians and researchers working for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), in formulating its new “standards of care” guidelines, have acknowledged that
part of the rise in trans identification among teenagers could be a result of what they called “social influence,” absorbed online or peer to peer. The draft mentioned the very small group of people who detransition (stop identifying as transgender), saying that some of them “have described how social influence was relevant in their experience of their gender during adolescence.” In adolescence, peers and culture often affect how kids see themselves and who they want to be. Their sense of self can consolidate, or they can try on a way of being that doesn’t prove right in the long run as the brain further develops the capacity for thinking long-term.
This comes as a major concession since Lisa Littman first sounded the alarm in 2018.
Evidently, the warnings about social contagion are now too frequent and persuasive to ignore.