Fact Check: No, A New Study Does Not Show "Being Trans Is Just A Phase"

Fact Check: No, A New Study Does Not Show "Being Trans Is Just A Phase"

ERIN REED
APR 05, 2024



On Thursday, the Daily Mail reported that a new "landmark study" from the Netherlands concluded that being transgender was "just a phase" and that most children "grow out of it." News of the study was widely reported on Twitter by conservative accounts, with tweets about the Daily Mail’s reporting of the study garnering tens of millions of views. Unfortunately, the headline fails a fact check: the study was not about transgender individuals, but rather on people who sometimes express dissatisfaction with their sex for a variety of reasons entirely unrelated to being transgender.

The Claims:

The study to which the Daily Mail refers was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. This journal, under the leadership of Kenneth Zucker, a noted anti-trans figure known for his involvement in reparative/conversion therapy, has become a parking journal for anti-transgender research. The study aims to examine a single question from 15 years of surveys administered to 2,772 children in the Netherlands who transitioned into adulthood: "I wish I were the opposite sex." Respondents were asked to indicate their feelings by circling 0 for "never," 1 for "sometimes," and 2 for "often." A copy of the question can be viewed here:

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The Problems:

There are immediate issues with both the study and the Daily Mail’s interpretation of it. The most evident issue with the study is that it is not a study of transgender individuals; this should be apparent considering that a full 19% of participants indicated "sometimes" or "often" in response to wanting to be the opposite sex at some point in their lives, with the majority selecting "sometimes." Even the most generous estimates suggest that approximately 0.5% of Americans identify as transgender. It is clear that the authors are measuring an entirely different population by analyzing responses to this single question.

It is easy to see how various individuals might respond "sometimes" (which includes rarely) or "often" to this question. Tomboys, feminine gay teen boys, gender nonconforming individuals, people who experience sexism, and even those with curious minds might answer affirmatively without ever identifying as transgender. If someone has ever momentarily wished to be the opposite sex, for any reason, even in passing, they would be categorized as "gender noncontent." Should that individual later state when older that they no longer ever experience this desire, they would then be classified as experiencing "decreasing" gender noncontentedness.

Of course, transgender identification is not accurately gauged by answering a single question. Instead, gender dysphoria diagnoses require a persistent, consistent, and insistent desire to be the other sex lasting 6 months, as well as 5 of 7 other criteria, such as a dislike of one’s own sexual anatomy, a desire for sex characteristics to match their experienced gender, preference for cross sex roles in make-believe play, and more. The study, on the other hand, looks at an isolated question at individual moments in young people’s lives and clearly cannot be used as a proxy for transgender people.

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