The project is called AYAGDOS—brought to you by the same names behind “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” pseudoscience.
S. Baum at Erin In The Morning:
Dr. Lisa Littman self-identified as “pro-LGBT” during her speech at a conference for Genspect—an anti-LGBT hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was the very first presenter on the two-day itinerary for the event held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in September of last year. Genspect’s founder called Littman “the greatest hero of the movement”—the movement, it seems, against transgender youth. The topic of Littman’s presentation was AYAGDOS—the Adolescent and Young Adult Gender Dysphoria Outcomes Study. You or your trans child may have stumbled upon ads for the initiative on Reddit, Facebook, Google, X, or Instagram. They’re recruiting people with gender dysphoria between the ages of 13 and 25 who “think” they “might be trans” to participate in a study from Northwestern University, as the ads plastered with the university logo prominently announce. At first, they targeted demographics more sympathetic to the cause, like users of r/detrans on Reddit. Now they’re expanding to more politically diverse audiences, Littman told the Genspect convention.
But trans community leaders have issued a strong warning against participating. Critics cite the researchers’ long and tumultuous histories with trans research subjects, which are rife with retractions and reported misconduct, as well as ties to organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Genspect is just one of those groups, although they ardently reject the hate group label. “The people drawn to Genspect aren’t extremists,” founder Stella O’Malley said of the nearly 300 Albuquerque conference attendees, 40% of whom self-identified as TERFs (anti-trans radical feminists). “We come from all sides, all backgrounds, all belief systems.”
Meanwhile, researchers leading AYAGDOS—Littman, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, and Dr. J. Michael Bailey—have promoted pseudoscientific and pejorative ideas about trans people (such as that trans women are the product of a sexual fetish); relied on controversial methodologies that skew study outcomes; and reportedly used unwitting trans women as “original research” subjects, to name just a few scandals that have plagued one or more of the trio.
[...] Although the AYAGDOS ads are newly making the rounds, the beginnings of the study emerged in 2018, when Littman published a now-notorious paper on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” also known as ROGD. The paper plucked the term from the backwaters of anti-trans internet forums, launching it into the mainstream. The new name gave credence to classic moral panics about the “social contagion” of queerness with a modern, scientific-sounding spin.
Mere weeks after the ROGD paper went live, the journal had to republish it with corrections to the title, abstract, introduction, discussion, and conclusion sections. But the damage was already done. ROGD is “a pseudoscientific phrase made popular by Dr. Lisa Littman and others that is used to legitimize the claims of anti-LGBTQ+ activists and parents who rejected their trans kids,” as per the Southern Poverty Law Center. Over 60 psychological organizations condemned the concept, saying in a joint statement that “the proliferation of misinformation regarding ROGD is also infiltrating policy decisions.”
Anti-trans scientists behind the “social contagion” myth are recruiting trans youths for a study seeking validation for the myth.
