Florence Ashley and Alexandre Baril look at a new term that has appeared in the transgender debate: “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”. There is no such thing. The term is made up by people who feel a need to invalidate transgender people, and not by scientists who know anything about the issue.
Gender-affirmative therapy’s motto is: “Follow the child.” If that means following them to social transition and, in due time, medical transition, then so be it. But only if that’s what they truly want.
Transgender children are in good hands. Therapists aren’t acting hastily in ignorance of scientific evidence. On the contrary, their approach is one that’s been built over decades of research and of following trans children.
The unfounded idea of rapid-onset gender dysphoria is a poor attempt at manufacturing a new moral panic — based on the same old idea of “contagion” — over children who couldn’t be in safer hands.