Reasons Kids Say They Are Trans or Queer

Is “affirmation-only” appropriate?

Many people have no idea what gender ideology means. They have difficulty grasping the medicalization of gender identities, which can involve prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children and facilitating surgeries to remove healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs, usually resulting in sterilization. This alteration of a child’s natural body and physiology is overwhelming to think about or visualize, so many people look away and hope it works out okay.

Then there are trans allies, who usually have intentions originating from positive places of inclusion and love. Yet the trans doctrine encourages them to exclude anyone who disagrees with them and label anyone as “hateful” if they question gender ideology. An ally might have blind spots to the complexity of reasons that a young person may self-identify as a gender different from their birth sex and proceed to medicalize and modify their bodies to present themselves as the opposite sex. They also ignore The Cass Review, which says there is insufficient evidence to justify the use of medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

Because there are so many reasons a kid might say they are trans or queer, one cannot possibly highlight them all. For simplicity, here is a short list to give a reader who is new to the trans, queer, and gender-identity world (TQ+) an idea of how wide and deep declarations of trans or queer or other gender identities can reach. And along with that complexity, I raise the question of whether affirmation-only is an acceptable response to a child’s self-identification of a “new gender.”

Confusion after exposure to trans or queer persons, reading material, or internet/social media content

Drag queens are reading books to children in libraries and kindergarten classes. Some elementary schools teach about gender identities in classrooms and then encourage students to choose their identities and pronouns during the class. Books and charts such as Genderbread Person are becoming part of the teaching curriculum. Parents report that children are confused and sometimes distressed after returning home from “educational” school sessions that focused on gender identities and expressions, as well as sexual orientation. Children may be too young to understand exposure to a variety of gender/sexual choices, and they may experience discomfort or trauma from the presentation.

Some older children and teens spend prolific amounts of time online, browsing the web and social media. Access is usually not monitored or restricted. Kids have reported confusion and distress with these exposures and sometimes feel pressure to choose an identity not in alignment with their biological sex of girl or boy. They may also be experimenting initially and then find themselves caught in a web that is difficult to extract themselves from.

Internalized homophobia/gay shame

Kids may feel uncomfortable with same-sex attraction due to religious or other belief systems. Kids may “transition” so they can present as heterosexual instead of gay/lesbian. In some cases, the parent pushes the child to medically transition so they feel better about not having a gay kid, and in other cases, the child initiates the change, or the parents and the child initiate it together.

Social contagion

It has been reported in gender clinics that groups of girls who are friends or classmates all declare a “new identity” or express the wish to “transition” at the same time. Sometimes, the girls are socially awkward or on the autism spectrum, and the online groups they find make them feel special and that they belong. Love bombing in the group also helps welcome and bring in a new girl to a cluster of girls identifying as nonbinary or trans.

A cry for help

The child is anxious, depressed, or confused and may have difficulty with puberty or bodily changes. Home life or peer life may be stressful. COVID-19 lockdowns sent kids home from school, and they spent large amounts of time online, looking for ways to cope with the pandemic and the loss of in-person schooling and social interactions/activities. Sometimes, kids go to the internet to escape or seek answers to the distress they are experiencing. Online influencers are looking for distressed kids, and they guide the kids to funnel all their angst into a reason (they were born in the wrong body) and magic solution (medicalizing to present as the opposite sex). Kids get the message that coming out as “trans” and medicalizing their bodies will fix their issues and alleviate their distress.

Desire for attention or to feel special

A youth’s announcement that they are trans gets a lot of attention, so if a kid wants to focus attention on themselves, a trans identity will provide that centering from parents or those at school. Kids who declare they are trans are sometimes celebrated, and many kids want that attention, particularly if their life was boring, average, or “normal” before their announcement. In some cases, a desire to be a rebel might also be at play, with the goal to dismantle the “normative” life of their family and the pathway they believed was expected of them.

Enabled body discomfort or loathing

Many teen girls are uncomfortable with their bodies and may find the changes of puberty difficult. Many girls don’t like their breasts or the attention, comments, and looks they receive. They may have experienced unwanted groping, sexual trauma, or abuse. One way to stop the attention or touching is to hide, bind, or remove their breasts. Due to affirmation-only policies, very few practitioners are allowed to help a girl feel comfortable or accept her natural body. Others may enable a dislike of the body by encouraging measures to alter it. Social media filters and other public images of “ideal body types,” which, in real life, are unobtainable to achieve, also promote issues with body dissatisfaction. Boys can also fit into this category.

Trauma response

Some kids and young adults declare they are trans because of trauma, which might be sexual trauma, a significant relationship loss, or other events in which dysregulation occurs and adaptive coping mechanisms are compromised. For a girl who has been abused or assaulted, she may believe she will have more power if she “transitions” to present as a boy. Or she may just wish to erase her prior life, name, and body presentation to escape or disassociate from the identity and body of the person who had been heartbroken, hurt, abused, or traumatized.

Elevated status for parents

In pockets of the country that are particularly focused on social justice issues, having a trans kid might be considered “progressive” by the parent, who showcases their trans kid to gain an elevated status at work or in the community. Once the parent gets rewards or esteem for saying they have a trans kid, it is hard not to push the kid further down the medicalized pathway. The sunk cost fallacy may also come into play, as it is hard to divest a direction where time, energy, and money have been spent or to acknowledge that self-serving motives were a factor in encouraging their kid to transition.

Disturbing images or porn

Kids are being exposed to drag queens and scantily clad people in pride events and parades, which are often disrespectful to women and disturbing to a child’s mind. There is a trend to normalize mastectomies for girls, and it is easy to find mastectomy scars featured on social media platforms. Online porn is readily available to kids as well, and porn is a big industry. Kids are exposed to fetish porn, too, which has led to paraphilias such as autogynephilia for boys who become sexually aroused by dressing or presenting as a girl or woman. Sadly, online groomers also encourage kids, often boys, to behave or do things online in a sexual way, creating an abuse cycle. Some kids are so traumatized by groomers that they desire to escape from their bodies due to humiliation and shame.

Desire for individuation or autonomy from parents

Some children or young adults who have parents who are overwhelming in their involvement or attachment to the child will move into a trans identity to separate from or achieve autonomy from a parent. The kid’s desire to become independent of the parent takes an extreme form of medicalizing against the parent’s wishes. The desire of a girl to individuate from her mother or a boy to individuate from his father can become strong enough that cross-sex hormones and surgeries seem to be the only solution for the young person. This may be a conscious or unconscious motive.

Black-and-white thinking or autism spectrum disorder consequences

Increasingly, more and more kids who identify as trans are on the autism spectrum. They may not have had an official diagnosis, but they express autistic traits. One of those traits is black-and-white thinking. The kids might not feel comfortable in their bodies or might not fit typical sex-based stereotypes. This body unease is funneled into the concept that they must have been born in the wrong body, and they believe medical procedures to help them present as the opposite sex will fix their discomfort.

Belief in queer theory

Queer theory is the extreme belief that all norms, traditions, categories, and structures must be blurred, dismantled, dissolved, and destroyed, including the sex categories of female and male. Once biology, the family, schools, organizations, and society are broken of all previously held values and ways of living and behaving, a new society and structure can be created. The current model of this theory seems to consider it progressive to upend and destabilize all previously held beliefs and norms. A particular target to dismantle is cisheterosexuality or cisheteronormative people or structures. What does that mean? People who still identify in adulthood as the sex in which they were born (female or male) and people who are heterosexual or “normal” must be blamed for the ills of society and for keeping people oppressed. Being a victim or identifying as a marginalized category is preferred because being an oppressor is demonized. And if you are not yet marginalized, you can move in that direction by identifying as trans.

Internalized white shame or male shame

Some kids have ingested and internalized that being white and privileged is a bad thing to be (particularly white males) because queer theory teaches the concepts of “oppressor and victim.” The “Wheel of Privilege and Power” diagram is a tool used to teach kids about marginalization. Being a “cisgendered man” and a heterosexual are linked to power and privilege (along with other categories, such as being white, having wealth, being a property owner, and more). By “transitioning,” the kid believes they can move out of or escape from being viewed as a powerful, privileged oppressor, thereby reducing the shame they have internalized by accepting the theory. Boys seem particularly vulnerable to feeling shame, and they sometimes choose to present as girls to lessen what they perceive as hatred toward males, who often are labeled as having toxic masculinity. Furthermore, they have a hard time living up to male ideals and think their life will be easier as a woman. Both boys and girls can also desire an escape from the responsibility of being a man or a woman.

Trapped soul

Some kids believe they have a gendered soul. If their soul is the opposite of their biological sex, they must free the soul from the prison of the wrong body and change their body with cross-sex hormones and surgeries to match their soul. These kids want full and unrestricted access to all procedures of their choice to correct the mismatch of soul and body.

Combinations

Not only are there more reasons kids say they are trans, but many of these reasons are combined to form the trans or gender-identity complex. Due to gender affirmation care, these reasons are not allowed to be explored, which makes medical transitions ripe for scandal, inadequate care, and malpractice. Furthermore, a growing, multibillion-dollar industry enjoys profiting from the unchecked and unchallenged gender medicalization of our youth. While the public grapples with what is happening and the root cause of it all, the gender industry makes money by creating medical patients for life. Quick, promised fixes for distress by offering medicalized procedures can lock in an identity before full maturity or investigation and treatment of underlying comorbidities can occur.

Parents who want their kids’ bodies left alone, and others who do not endorse this medical model of care, are often demonized and labeled as transphobic. With this range of possibilities and reasons for trans identification, is it still appropriate to ask no questions when children or young adults step into new gender identities and wish to medicalize those identities? Many people, books, and films discuss these reasons, and detransitioners also share this information.

How many kids must be harmed by inadequate care from affirmation-only policies followed by adverse reactions to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries before further investigation is pursued? How many kids have to vocalize regrets, whether or not they detransition, before their voices are heard? Some may feel happy with their body modifications, but with no protective safeguards in the US (as of 2024) before medicalization occurs, how will we sort it all out and ensure the medical oath of “Do No Harm” is considered first? It is time to question the merits of affirmation-only for declared gender identities. Our kids deserve better care than an activist-driven medical model, which encourages a medicalization pathway for children instead of looking at, investigating, and treating the root cause of their distress or addressing the reasons they self-identify as trans or queer.

It behooves the uninformed and the ally alike to pause before encouraging, enabling, and cheering on the transitioning of healthy children and young adults with irreversible, drastic medical interventions without first exploring a differential diagnosis and the underlying cause of the individual’s distress or motives for medicalizing their bodies. Giving blanket endorsement for an inadequate care model without investigating the complexity beneath it must stop. And if you inadvertently colluded with stances and policies without fully investigating or understanding them, please cease immediately. We must unite to provide better care to children, the future of our society.

Lisa Shultz advocates for parents and women’s rights. She is deeply concerned about the influence of gender ideology and the lack of comprehensive, ethical care for children and vulnerable adults.