There has been a significant increase in children – especially girls – identifying as transgender over the past decade. Florida Medicaid reported a significant surge in children seeking therapy for gender dysphoria over the past few years. Others have reported similar trends.
Progressives and others who promote transgenderism among minors contend that this increase is due to a growing acceptance of the notion that one can be born in the wrong body. They attribute the rise to the notion that more children are becoming comfortable with coming out as the opposite gender. But the drastic increase suggests there is more at play.
The Florida Standard reported:
From 2017 to 2021, Florida Medicaid saw only a 63 percent increase in children receiving therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria. At the same time, there was an alarming increase in pharmaceutical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria, including a 270 percent increase in children receiving puberty blockers; a 166 percent increase in children receiving testosterone, and a 110 percent increase in children receiving estrogen. This according to new data released by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA).
These numbers include only those using Medicaid and do not reflect those outside of the state-run system. So they could be even higher than what has been reported so far. But one noteworthy aspect of this development is that “the usage of puberty blockers and hormones greatly exceeds the number of therapy visits,” according to the report.
Even more disturbing is the increase in minors as young as 16 who underwent irreversible surgical procedures among Medicaid users. Between 2017 and 2020, only three kids had the procedure. But in 2021 alone, the number rose to 12.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) submitted a statement to the Florida Standard explaining:
The soaring increase in children receiving pharmaceutical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria was vastly greater than children receiving behavioral health treatments for gender dysphoria. This is a concerning statistic and potentially indicative of a medical community increasingly focused on promoting treatments found to be experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long-term effects, including brain swelling and aneurysm.
While those on the side that wishes to keep transing the kids say there is nothing to see here, others have questioned their claims, suggesting that this increase is more a result of overeager medical professionals pushing these medications and social forces pushing impressionable children to embrace transgenderism. Indeed, there is much evidence supporting this pronouncement.
With the burgeoning popularity of social media, kids are exposed to more information and material than what was available in the past. With new media bombarding them with content through the internet, their smartphones, and computers, there are more opportunities for kids to be influenced by outside forces – in many cases, without their parents’ knowledge. A particular issue is Tumblr, an online blogging platform that became popular in the mid-2010s, and is full of postings by folks promoting a transgender lifestyle to children. These individuals essentially make it look “cool” to identify as a member of the opposite gender.
During an appearance on “60 minutes,” Grace Lidinsky-Smith, a woman who detransitioned from being a transgender male, said she traced her “gender journey” to social media. “It all started when I got on Tumblr as a 13-year-old,” she said.
Other teenagers persuaded her to believe that her anxiety and depression issues were the result of being born in the wrong body.
Author Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” interviewed a girl named Gayatri, who was also influenced by people on social media. She wrote:
But the next year, ninth grade, her parents bought Gayatri a laptop and— after much pleading—a smartphone. She began spending a great deal of time on Tumblr and DeviantArt, the art-sharing website with a large transgender following. She began talking to her mother about gender identity. The conversations had a loose, hypothetical feel, and her parents had no idea her thoughts had anything to do with her time on the internet. Summer came, long days stretched before her like an open hand. Every free moment she had—and she had a lot of them—she seemed to spend online.
In her book, Shrier also refers to a 2018 study in the United Kingdom that found a 4,400 percent increase in teenage girls seeking what is known as “gender-affirming care.”
There is no viable way to argue that these trends are purely organic. There are tons of stories from destransitioners explaining how they were influenced to embrace transgenderism. Moreover, school districts are actively promoting far-leftist ideas on gender identity and have implemented policies requiring teachers to keep parents in the dark if their child indicates they are suffering from gender dysphoria.
The left is lying about this phenomenon regardless of the dangers of using these treatments on minor children. Unfortunately, they have a substantial number of people fooled, which means more children are getting treatments that will have devastating results in the future. The worst part is that many of these treatments have an impact that cannot be reversed.
The only way to combat this trend is by educating as many people as possible about what is happening in schools and in the medical field. Parents must be warned about attempts to emotionally blackmail them into supporting their children’s delusion about their gender. Otherwise, we will only see these numbers continue to rise.
