https://unherd.com/2023/05/why-is-my-gen...cancelled/
Science in general is going to pot. But when it comes to hot button topics like gender and climate, no dissenting voices are allowed.
"...Across the industrialised West, there has been an explosion of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls in recent years. In England, for example, annual referrals for child and adolescent gender dysphoria treatment grew in the 10 years between 2011-12 to 2021-22 from 250 (mostly boys) to 5,000 (mostly girls). In the United States, no one is keeping track, but the signs are the same. Two explanations have been given for this trend, and they have provoked a bitter controversy. The first holds that increased tolerance of transgender people has allowed transgender youth to come out earlier and in greater numbers. People who believe this also tend to assume we should not question children and adolescents who declare that they are transgender but should help them if they want to start their transition.
The second explanation, called “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD), suggests that, for poorly understood reasons, adolescent and young adult females are susceptible to a socially contagious false belief that they are transgender. Especially susceptible are girls with pre-existing emotional problems who have been exposed to the ideas that transgender people are common, and that an underlying and unrecognised transgender identity can cause emotional problems only curable by gender transition.
The idea of ROGD, like the phenomenon that inspired the hypothesis, is quite recent....
In 2019, I wrote an essay for Archives of Sexual Behavior about the disintegration of another sex research organisation (Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality) due to ideological reasons, and worried the IASR was heading the same way. This article was entitled “How to Ruin Sex Research” and offered suggestions that included:
Advocate for marginalised groups.
Don’t question people’s identities and narratives.
Focus on linguistic sensitivity rather than efficient communication.
Follow the example of gender studies.
Focus on moral and political implications and “sensitivity” of scientific presentations and publications rather than on the accuracy of their scientific content.
Discourage discussion of controversial ideas.
The current controversy exemplifies most of these. The marginalised group is adolescents and young adults who believe they have genuine gender dysphoria rather than ROGD. This may not be questioned. The only communication I have received from the IASR officers included an unspecified concern about “inflammatory language”. And discouragement of a controversial idea — ROGD — is the real motivation of the IASR leadership in this episode...."
