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I said two months ago I would reply to a comment about this study on the mental health effects of gender transition. I have only now managed to find the time, so I'm going to post my reply as a top-level comment lest it get buried. You can find the previous discussion here.
To be honest, some of the statistical manipulation seems dubious, but that's above my pay grade, so I'm going to assume the study was conducted in good faith with no shenanigans.
In short, the study finds that, contrary to assumptions that transitioning should improve mental health, the share of people needing mental health treatment rises drastically after transition. Anti-trans people conclude that this means transition actually worsens mental health, and, hence, people should not be allowed to transition.
There's some nitpicking to be done here, for example, maybe the patients already needed mental health treatment and just found out they needed it at the same time as they found out they're transgender, or that just seeing a mental health professional regularly doesn't necessarily mean that your mental health is worse than it used to be.
But my fundamental objection is to the conclusion that no one should be allowed to transition. Suppose the anti-trans side is completely correct on the facts, that transitioning did, in fact, directly worsen the mental health of many or even most patients. There are still some patients who are better off. There are countless anecdotal reports online of people who are happier after transitioning. The most you can conclude is that the criteria for who should transition need to be changed. (If I'm interpreting the data right, the likelihood of needing mental health treatment after transitioning was higher in those born later, consistent with the rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)/social contagion hypothesis.) But if you care about people's happiness, some people should still be supported in transitioning.
Obviously if you believe all trans people are delusional and object to transition and treating people as their stated gender regardless of the effect on their mental health, this does not apply to you. But in that case the study isn't an argument you can use.
Speaking of ROGD, its rhetorical use by anti-trans people is a peculiar example of a self-contradictory motte-and-bailey: usually the bailey is a stronger version of the motte, and thus necessarily consistent with it, but here the bailey ("all trans people are delusional and none of them are their stated gender") contradicts the motte ("some trans people with a specific presentation – primarily adolescent girls – are not actually their stated gender") because the latter presupposes that some trans people are, in fact, their stated gender. If you believe all trans people are delusional, why do you care about the specific etiology of the transness of a specific subgroup of trans people? The treatment, whichever you prefer, should be the same.
I consider myself pro-trans, but I believe ROGD/social contagion may well be a real thing. If you agree about the possibility of social contagion, you should try to minimize the attention trans people receive, yet anti-trans activists have been the main publicists of transness for about a decade now – trans people really entered the mainstream with the North Carolina "bathroom bill". It used to be that you would only find information about transness if you went looking for it because you were questioning your gender, but now that trans people are everywhere (thanks to anti-trans activists), you get impressionable young people who were not predisposed to questioning their gender hearing about it and joining in for the standard reasons impressionable young people join trends. (Cf. media coverage of school shootings encouraging more school shootings – a common argument among anti-gun-control people.)
Not according to Google Trends. The bathroom bill passed in March 2016. In the US, searches for "Transsexual" peaked in January 2006, searches for "Transgender" peaked in February and September 2025, and searches for "transgender" peaked in July 2015 and May 2016. Searches for "Caitlyn Jenner" and "Laverne Cox" both peaked in June 2015 (Jenner publicly came out in April 2015). Searches for "I am Jazz" and "Jazz Jennings" peaked in July 2015. The idea that people only started talking about transgender issues because of anti-trans activism is baseless.
I also feel compelled to quote from the most popular thing I've ever written:
This is a silly complaint in many ways.
1: It's easy to make up as many unofficial days as you want.
For example I just asked AI real quick about June and got
Men's Health Month, Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month, PTSD Awareness Month, Migraine and Headache Awareness Month, Scleroderma Awareness Month, National Safety Month, Immigrant Heritage Month, Caribbean American Heritage Month, Black Music Month, Great Outdoors Month, Food-Related Months, National Dairy Month, National Candy Month, National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month, Turkey Lovers Month, Iced Tea Month, National Camping Month, National Rivers Month, Rose Month, National Homeownership Month, National Employee Wellness Month, Effective Communications Month, Fight the Filthy Fly Month, Accordion Awareness Month, Candy Month, Zoo and Aquarium Month
And that's just a small portion. Most of those things are not actually observed in any meaningful way. November is not seen as "trans awareness month", I've never seen any LGBT community talking about that ever. In fact I asked what type of month November is considered and it gave me the five of Native American Heritage Month, Veterans and Military Families Month, National Family Caregivers Month, National Adoption Month, and Movember so presumably those, which I've never heard of once, are more prominent.
And it's not even on the national calendar day site. so seemingly something like National Tar Syndrome Awareness Month is still more cared about than "trans awareness month" is.
2: By the same standards, black related days have been drastically undercounted. Such as June also being Black Music Month! Or August as Black Business Month. And speaking of November, it's also National Black Catholic History Month. And don't forget about National Black Family Day or Black Women's Equal Pay Day or whatever else.
Give me a break. That's not true.
You've been posting a constant stream of things that seem to defend libertarianism but which are either extreme, subtly wrong, or both, which is a classic trolling technique that is the equivalent of being a fed: post this material in the hope that you can provoke some of your enemies into agreeing with or defending the claims (if extreme) or into believing them (if wrong).
[Edit: Or to provoke your enemies into giving broader than necessary refutations of the things you say, so as to get them to attack libertarianism.]
Unfortunately the moderators don't seem to understand this, even though it violates the rule "speak plainly".
I'd believe it.
I did a spot check of one of my Facebook friends: 12 posts so far for Pride month (up from nine last year), two for Transgender Day of Visibility (Nov 20), and one for Trans Awareness Week (Nov 17-21), and one last year for International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. None for Trans Awareness Month over the past two years.
Maybe it's because he's Canadian, but I doubt it because LGBT issues are more international than most.
I'd count the week as part of the month. It's clearly the same celebration with the same origin, even if celebrating the week is not literally the same as celebrating the month. The relevant part to the argument is the existence of the celebration at all, not how long it lasts.
I think we have to stick to pedantry here, and set aside the wider view. It's a separate entry in the list in the article, and having a known bad item on the list is weak evidence that the list as a whole is bad.
Remember that the original complaint was "1: It's easy to make up as many unofficial days as you want.". Trans Awareness Month is plausibly made up by a small group and listed by an aggregator, but not actually celebrated by any significant number of people.
You could easily argue that trans issues are overrepresented in general, but I think this is a reasonable objection on that one point.
People haven't "made up" the event in a relevant sense when organizations are using a week instead of a month and the week is clearly related to the month.
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