Recently, a new anti-transgender narrative has emerged among the right wing. The narrative states that teens, particularly those assigned female at birth, are going on the internet and convincing themselves that they are transgender because being transgender is “trendy.” It treats transgender identities as a form of social contagion. This theory has been picked up on by numerous hate groups and conservative news outlets, including LifeSite, Barbara Kay, the Catholic Institute for Marital Healing, the Minnesota Family Council, MercatorNet, the Illinois Family Institute, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and an advocacy group of anti-gay therapists.
The entire theory is based on a single poster abstract in 2017 by Dr. Lisa Littman. Poster abstracts are often published when not only is the material too weak to be a journal article, but of insufficient quality to even be accepted for oral presentation at a conference. As such, the academic bar for a poster abstract getting accepted is very low. It was, however, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Littman’s abstract suffers from so many methodological flaws, logical errors, and unacknowledged biases that it fits firmly in the category of junk science. Given how glaring these issues were, it is surprising that the Journal of Adolescent Health published it regardless of how low the bar was set.