The myth of the “transgender desistance myth”

Aug 10, 2018 by

by Julian Vigo, MercatorNet:

Most gender dysphoric children no longer identify as transgender as adults, and accept their bodies as they are.

Last month a new chapter was opened in the debate on childhood desistance with the publication of a new article in the International Journal of Transgenderism by a group of transgender-affirming activists and clinicians headed by Julia Temple Newhook. Desistance is when children who are diagnosed as gender dysphoric by medical practitioners go on to accept their bodies and do not end up identifying as transgender once they have passed through puberty. The article questions the exceedingly high rates of desistance reported by previous studies.

Kenneth Zucker’s rebuttal, “The myth of persistence,” is a brilliant riposte. Zucker, a psychologist and clinical lead from 1981 to 2015 at the Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic (GIC), Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), is an internationally renowned specialist in the field of gender dysphoria and gender-identity development as well as the editor of the journal  Archives of Sexual Behavior.

The American Psychiatric Association named Zucker to be the head of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders group in 2008 for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as the  DSM-5, and he is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health  (WPATH). In short, Zucker is a professionally trained psychologist with a profound expertise in gender dysphoria and the intricacies involved with childhood gender identity disorder (GID) diagnosis (which was reclassified as Gender Dysphoria under the DSM-5).

One of Zucker’s specialties is childhood desistance. His moderate approach to treating gender dysphoric children—which I will describe in more detail below—eventually ended his time at CAMH in December 2015. Trans activists spearheaded a successful campaign to have Zucker terminated following what Jesse Singal refers to as a “show trial.”

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