How psychiatry and activism created the dangerous concept of 'transgender children'

The "transgender children" concept emerged from psychiatry, transforming gender nonconformity into a medical condition despite evidence most would naturally grow up gay or lesbian

Mia Hughes is a senior researcher at Genspect, an international organization committed to promoting an evidence-based, non-medical approach to gender distress.  She is the author of The WPATH Files, an exposé of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health published by Michael Shellenberger’s nonprofit Civilization Works

The episode marks the moment the Western world lost its grip on reality. A brand-new type of human being had been conjured into existence through the collision of psychiatry, endocrinology, and political activism. Yet while the concept defied everything known about childhood development and identity formation, large swathes of society—almost overnight—began believing the unbelievable: that a child could be born in the wrong body.

To understand how such a belief materialized, we must go back to an obscure corner of psychiatry in the 1960s, where a fringe group of doctors were studying what motivated men who believed they were women to seek hormones and surgeries. These researchers turned their attention to feminine boys, hoping to identify future transsexuals, and in the process they pathologized childhood gender nonconformity.