Parwy's Blog: Gender Identity: The Latest Social Contagion

The author's experience teaching at all-girls schools revealed patterns of competitive starvation (e.g., pupils taking a single lettuce leaf) and self-harm (e.g., cutting one's own skin), where only one form of self-harm seemed to predominate at a time and spread rapidly among small groups.
Historically, social contagions are especially common among teenage girls, with numerous precedents such as the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 (girls seeing demons), medieval dancing plagues (impacting young women), German schoolgirls involuntarily shaking hands (1892), and a medieval Swedish village where girls inexplicably began to limp.

The author identifies the latest social contagion in the Western world as girls identifying out of their femaleness, often through claims of being trans or non-binary.
There has been a dramatic increase in referrals to the NHS's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), rising from 250 referrals (mostly boys) in 2012 to more than 5,000 referrals (mostly female) by 2021.

The proliferation of social media platforms like TikTok is suggested as a major factor, where activists explain to teenagers that feelings of confusion might indicate being "born in the wrong body."
This narrative is particularly appealing to pubescent girls who are uncomfortable with their physiological changes and sudden, unwanted male sexual attention, as the prospect of identifying out of womanhood "makes complete sense."
Unlike historical, localised epidemics (e.g., a limping epidemic in a medieval village), social contagions in the digital age cannot be confined and spread widely.

A common characteristic of social contagions is the elevation of intuition and emotions over material reality.
This is paralleled with the "recovered memory hysteria" of the late 20th century, where therapists encouraged people to trust vague feelings of abuse (e.g., "if you have a feeling that something abusive happened to you it probably did"), leading to false accusations and ruined lives.
Similarly, girls are now urged by online influencers to trust the evidence of their emotions and accept a misalignment between their body and "gendered soul," distinct from a genuine, clinical gender dysphoria.

The author states that while activists demonise the notion of social contagion as a transphobic talking point, the evidence for it is "pretty much indisputable."
Dame Hilary Cass's recent review into pediatric gender treatment has recommended that schools stop the social transitioning of children.
The Cass interim review had already pointed out that enabling pupils to adopt alternative names, pronouns, and dress codes was "not a neutral act" and that there is mounting evidence such an approach consolidates a child's psychological conceptualisation of herself as a member of the opposite sex.
While social transitioning is often seen as compassionate, in reality, it causes long-term harm.
The author notes that while historical contagions like limping, dancing, or trembling can be overcome, the impact of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery is lifelong and not transient.

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