Fact Check: No, A New Study Does Not Show "Being Trans Is Just A Phase"
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:
The study ultimately reveals that approximately 12% of 11-year-old children, with some variance between those assigned male at birth and those assigned female at birth, indicate a desire to be the opposite sex either "sometimes" or "often," with the vast majority selecting "sometimes." By adulthood, this percentage decreases to 2-3%. In addition, 19% of the sample circle sometimes or often at some point in their lives. From these findings, the Daily Mail infers that "The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults," although the term "gender confused" is not used in the original study. The headline, which claims "Critics Say It Shows Being Trans Is Just a Phase," suggests that the study supports this notion.
The Daily Mail also provides charts that claim to illustrate this finding, though these charts contain egregious inaccuracies. For example, the Daily Mail's chart mistakenly swaps the labels for "M" and "F" compared to the original study. More significantly, the Daily Mail's chart reverses the categories for "sometimes" and "often," creating the impression that the majority of youth who respond positively to the question do so "often," when, in fact, the original study's chart indicates that most children who answer affirmatively only "sometimes" wish they were the opposite sex. It's also important to note that "sometimes" encompasses even those who "rarely" experience this wish.
See the Daily Mail’s chart vs the actual study’s chart:
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.
Although the study encompassed a wide range of participants beyond just those who are transgender, it provides intriguing insights into a subset of the sample that might actually identify as transgender. Epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, in his analysis published early Friday morning, delved into the data. Meyerowitz-Katz found, "Overall, the proportion of children aged 10-12 who said they 'often' wanted to be the opposite sex decreased from 2% to 1% by the age of 12-14, and then remained constant. Therefore, we could reasonably argue that, based on this study, transgender identification tends to stabilize by the age of 12." Meyerowitz-Katz adds that even though this is evidence of a stable gender identity for transgender people, even answering “often” on the survey is not a good proxy for transgender identification; the response is provided only as a snapshot, and reasons for answering “often” on that single question are numerous.
“Ultimately, despite the media furore, these results tell us very little about transgender children. At best, it seems likely that children who have a strong trans identity at ages 10-14 probably don’t change that much, while those who only sometimes think about being another gender may change their minds a bit more - how this relates to the proportion of kids who no longer identify as another gender when they grow up is anyone’s guess.”
For these reasons, it is clear that a fact check renders the claims made about the study completely unsupported.
However, there is more to said on the study: it represents a perfect illustration of the problem in many old studies that claim to demonstrate transgender "desistance," or the notion that transgender individuals cease to identify as trans as they age. The Daily Mail interviews Jay Richards, introduced as the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation (though it leaves the Heritage Foundation portion out of the introduction). Richards asserts, “Indeed, we can infer from the DSM 5 [2013] and other sources that as many as 88 percent of gender-dysphoric girls and as many as 98 percent of gender-dysphoric boys in previous generations desisted if allowed to go through natural puberty.”
This "80% desistance myth" has been fact checked as false in a separate article, yet this study presents the most direct evidence of the origin of the "80%" statistic that Richards pushes in the Daily Mail article. Ironically, this article and the associated study makes it easier to critique of the reliability of many older studies on the persistence of gender identity among youth from the 1990s to 2000s. In the 1990s and 2000s, gender dysphoria was not a diagnosis; instead, the diagnosis was gender identity disorder. The only singular required criterion was a “discomfort with the gender role of the assigned sex” - there was no requirement for a child to desire or insist that they were another sex. The diagnosis was also pathological and often resulted in parents of “sissy boys” or masculine girls taking their children in for psychological treatment.
You can see the old requirements vs the new requirements here:
The belief that individuals desist from transgender identities at high rates traces back to Kenneth Zucker, the editor of the journal in which this current study was published. In the 1990s, Zucker led a clinic and conducted research on "desistance" from being transgender, giving rise to the "80% of transgender youth desist" narrative.
A later review revealed that approximately half of the patients at his clinic did not meet the criteria for gender identity disorder then in place. Moreover, even those who did meet these criteria were often subjected to practices now widely considered unethical, akin to conversion or reparative therapy. Such practices included withholding toys and clothing associated with the gender the child identified with, forcing children to play in ways that aligned with their sex assigned at birth, among others. Treatment approaches were reportedly influenced by parental wishes regarding their child's gender identity.
Both Zucker and another researcher, Thomas Steensma, have published studies on the "desistance" of individuals purported to represent transgender youth in earlier decades. It's important to note, however, that the criteria for diagnosing gender dysphoria have undergone significant changes since the 1990s and early 2000s. Studies claiming to demonstrate "high desistance" rates uniformly suffer from a critical flaw that was prevalent during those decades: gender nonconformity was pathologized, leading these studies to encompass a much broader group of individuals than just those who are transgender. This recent study replicates the same error in a perhaps easier to see fashion, making it a perfect example of the problems inherent in utilizing older datasets for current research on gender identity.
Despite the study clearly not showing what the headline from The Daily Mail claims it shows, major conservative influencers spread misinformation on the study, leading to widespread distribution of factually incorrect information about transgender people. Ian Miles Cheong shared the study, stating, “being transgender is a trend — it’s a phase some kids go through and eventually grow out.” That post was then shared by Elon Musk, who said, “kids need to be protected at all costs.” Those posts sharing the article were viewed over 35,000,000 times on Twitter alone.
Journalists should be cautious interpreting old studies regarding transgender people, and should check in with researchers on transgender care before publishing incorrect and inflammatory headlines on transgender care.
Further reading on the Daily Mail article and the study itself can be found here:
Even though transphobes are trying to frame this supposed phase as a childhood thing, they will readily accuse trans adults of going through a phase when they come out too. Not wanting minors to transition is a flimsy goalpost that will move the second they believe they have a chance to ban transition for everyone.
Thank you for debunking this Erin