Like the idea of "social contagion" has conditioned medicine towards trans people
Article by Ketil Slagstad* Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 391, n.16, 24 October 2024, pp. 1546-1551. Freely translated by the volunteers of the Gionata project.
"As the idea of social contagion has shaped trans medicine" (How the idea of social contagion shaped trans medicine) by Ketil Slagstad analyzes how, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of "social contagion" has been used in medicine to describe the trans identity as a sort of fashion that spreads, especially among young people. This idea justified political and health restrictions, presenting the growing visibility of trans people as a social threat.
Slagstad shows that this is not a new phenomenon: already in the 1950s the media were accused of "transmitting" the desire for transition.T "Trans epidemic", in medicine, is therefore a narrative that transforms a need for care and recognition into a public alarm. The author invites to overcome this logic and to seriously consider the experiences of trans people, with listening and responsibility.
The trans epidemic: between politics and medicine
The world is crossed by what some call the "spectrum of a trans epidemic". This expression reflects the fear aroused by the growing visibility of transgender people and not compliant with the genre and their requests for recognition. In response to this phenomenon, politicians, activists, researchers and health professionals have begun to use the language of epidemics and the metaphor of "social contagion" to limit the rights of transgender people and access to medical treatment for the transition.
From both the banks of the Atlantic, access to care for the transition for young people has been gradually limited. In August 2024, in the United States, 26 states - which host two fifth of the young transgender in the country - approved laws or policies that limit access to these treatments for teenagers. In Europe, several countries, including the United Kingdom recently, have reduced access to puberty blockers for teenagers, favoring psychosocial support or limiting the use of pharmacological treatments to clinical experiments.
A victory of science?
Some observers see this change as a victory of science on activism, but interpreting this turning point as a necessary response to unwanted medical practices is an excessive simplification. This change cannot be understood without taking into account the increasingly hostile political climate towards trans people.
In the United States, the fight against Trans Rights is rooted mainly in religious conservatism and right -wing politics. In the United Kingdom, however, anti-traens activism was promoted by radical feminists excluding trans people (called Terf-Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), who have mobilized the scandalty printing, painting the trans rights as a threat to the rights of women and girls.
As the philosopher Judith Butler observed, the concept of "genre" has become a "ghost" that connects and accelerates various moral alarms.
The vulnerable child: a strategic narrative
A recurring theme in these debates is the theory of "social contagion". According to this hypothesis, being a transgender is a fashion that young people acquire through social media. However, as the doctor and anthropologist Sahar Sadjadi explained, the improper use of medicine on this front is rooted in the invocation of the concept of the "vulnerable child".
Religious, liberal and feminist conservatives anti -traens claim to want to "protect" children from "gender ideology" and "trans agenda". According to them, the trans activists and doctors who offer care for the transition would have "seduced" young people to become trans.
A Swedish documentary from 2019, entitled The Trans Train (the trans train), supported this narrative, suggesting that activists and doctors have put young people on a "identity train" which inevitably leads to medical treatments with irreversible consequences.
This strategy has proved to be effective in mobilizing political and public reactions, also because the number of young trans who turn to gender clinics has increased in the last decade - a phenomenon often described as an epidemic.
The theory of "rapid onset gender dysphoria" (Rogd)
A similar logic of "social contagion" is the basis of the concept of "rapid onset genre dysphoria" (Rogd, from the English-free gender Dysphoria rapid-freet), proposed by the researcher Lisa Littman in an article in 2018. The theory suggests that some young people suddenly develop gender dysphoria due to social influences and inadequate coping mechanisms.
However, the research method used by Littman - who interviewed parents recruited by online forums without speaking directly with young people - was strongly criticized. Following the criticisms, the magazine replaced the original version of the article with a magazine version, underlining the limits of the design of the study and specifying that the Rogd is not a formal diagnosis of mental health.
Conclusions
A way to move forward is to recognize past damage and their current impact. Attempts to suppress information to limit transitions are historically bankrupt. A probable reason why they are increasingly young looking for medical transition today is the greatest availability of information on social media.
Medicine and the state have built the narrative of the "trans epidemic" from the beginning, and continue to use the metaphor of the epidemic to avoid dealing with the central question: how to give trans people the help they need to grow and thrive.
*From 2022 Ketil Slagstad has been a associated researcher at Institut Für Geschichte der Medizin und Ethik in der Medizin the Institute of History of Medicine and Ethics of Medicine of the Charité God Berlin (Germany). His study focuses on the emergence and negotiation of medical knowledge between experts, patients and activists in the history of transgender medicine and the epidemic of AIDS. It is particularly interested in the role of the social state in the regulation of medical practices, but also in the way the context of the social state has allowed certain styles and practices of socio-medical thought.
In October 2022, Ketil Slagstad achieved research doctorate with a thesis on the history of transgender medicine in Scandinavia in the 20th century. His first book,Det Ligger i Blodet(2023), on the Norwegian epidemic of AIDS, based on archive materials and interviews, was awarded the Norwegian criticism prize for the best nonsense 2023 and the premium for the non -fiction book 2023.
Original text: How The Idea Of Social Contagion Shaped Trans Medicine
