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Sasha and Stella welcome mother and advocate, Lydia, to the show for an insightful discussion about the emotional and relational dynamics impacting boys experiencing gender dysphoria.
(Note: ROGD stands for Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria and is a term first coined by Lisa Littman. You can learn more about it in our Episode #2.)
Many families with boys experiencing gender dysphoria encounter a distinct set of challenges rooted in the intersection of social expectations, emotional needs, and emerging gender identity beliefs. Unlike their female counterparts, boys often find themselves navigating a world where expressions of vulnerability or gentleness are less socially accepted, leading some to seek alternative ways to connect and express their identity. For some boys, gender identity beliefs may offer a pathway to intimacy and belonging, particularly through access to female friend groups, where they feel embraced with tenderness and acceptance—elements often missing in traditional male peer dynamics.
This dynamic highlights a critical need to understand the emotional and relational factors influencing boys with gender dysphoria, especially as parents work to support their children while addressing the broader social forces at play.
Lydia is a passionate advocate and representative of a coalition comprised of parents, health experts, professional educators, and concerned citizens focused on the medicalization of young men and boys grappling with gender identity confusion. With a PhD in biochemistry and over 20 years of experience in both K-12 and higher education, Lydia brings a unique perspective to this critical issue.
She is married to another PhD scientist and is the mother of several children, one of whom began identifying as “gender fluid” at the age of 14 during the pandemic. Due to significant physical disabilities that complicate medication use, Lydia and her family embarked on a thorough investigation of the pressures to medicalize their child. Their findings sparked alarm and led to the creation of the website ROGDBoys.org, which aims to raise awareness and provide vital information about the impact of medical interventions on boys and men with gender identity confusion. She has also contributed to PITT (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans) articulating her concerns about the politicization of medical best practices and the lack of scientific rigor in current literature.
In this episode, Lydia shares her reflections about:
Her son’s experience with gender dysphoria, sparked by an online quiz claiming he was "80% girl"
The profile of boys often drawn into gender identity beliefs, including their intelligence, black-and-white thinking, and affinity for structured systems
How Lydia's upbringing in a high-control religious environment informed her understanding of the control tactics influencing her son
The dissonance between scientific thinking and simplistic notions of gender transformation, and how cultural narratives exacerbate this confusion
The importance of understanding how sexuality and identity are intricately tangled and the social dynamics that make gender identity beliefs appealing to some boys, particularly the allure of gentleness and access to 'safe' intimacy within female friend groups
Her caution against reducing AGP to a plain-and-simple, black-and-white conclusion, framing it instead as a complex challenge of integration and shame driving the sense of dysphoria
The conversation also emphasizes the importance of recognizing the diversity of families affected by gender dysphoria, dismantling the notion that parenting style determines outcomes. And sheds light on the critical work of ROGDBoys.org and their mission to ensure boys and their families are supported, understood, and less commonly overlooked.
Resources & Links
ROGD Boys Website
@rogd_boys_exist on X
Testifying, PITT article
Thank you so much for this episode, and thanks to Lydia for all her hard work. When new parents share their stories, they are always so surprised to hear that we all have the exact same son - brilliant, quirky, and previously the sweetest son anyone could hope for.
When I was at boarding school in the early 70s, I would walk past the girls' dorm on my way to dinner every evening. The warm glow of the lights in the windows was so alluring. So were memories of the girls' perfume. Above all, I longed for the gentleness of female company in contrast to the noisy physicality of the boys who surrounded me in my dorm. They were crude and loud; the girls were more mature and soft spoken.
At no time did I ever mistake myself for a girl, however. How could I? Yes, I was a prodigious sissy as a little boy, but that was decades before trickster philosophers such as Judith Butler let gender identity ideology out of Pandora's Box. By the time I reached high school the sissy had disappeared. Also, the boy's dorm was not a hostile environment. I had a number of good friends there.
I now am well aware that what appealed to me about girls and their ways of living was a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. My perceptions were shaped by what I disliked about my teen male peers and their ways and not by the reality of teen girls' interpersonal lives. Specifically, I realize that my notions of female gentleness were a projection. In realty, as is widely known, teen girls can be just as unkind to one another as teen boys. It's just that their methods are different, social exclusion substituting for the regimen of insults and pranks that boys inflict on one another.
I will say that boarding school was the last time I counted girls among my friends. When I got to college I made the terrible mistake of joining a fraternity. Not only did I not share the group's values, I was gay and in the closet. I was completely unable to relate to the sorority women I met because it seemed to me that apart from academics (it was a highly selective university) they were focused on meeting and dating high-status men. I was not an obvious catch from their perspective. Being gay, I lacked my straight frat brothers' heterosexual drive to, well, go after women, to put not to fine a point on it.
So I look back on those glowing windows in the girls' dorm and the girls who were my friends at boarding school with saudades, bittersweet fondness.
With respect to recent phenomenon of ROGD boys, I fear that youth who would have grown into their gay sexual orientation before the advent of gender identity are having their natural sexuality erased or deeply suppressed. I hope that if they have gay male family members, they will help them see past the falsehoods of trans programming.
Thank you a million times over for this episode. Yes. All of it. I have this son. It’s so powerful to know I’m not alone.
A cult that elementalizes the self: "I want to be 80 percent female" is Hermeticism. The Rebis is a divine hermaphrodite. The ideas are ancient, what's changed is that doctors can pretend to deliver these results with scientific medicine.
The part about girls as "cheerleaders" for boys indentifying as girls was chilling. It is enabling, whether they realize it or not. Perhaps these "cheerleaders" are from "woke" households and so they think they are social justice warriors, but they are harming these boys tremendously. And all those who "cheerlead" or enable our sons and daughters must stop. Their enabling behaviors harm the individual, the family, and society.
I'm so curious about the girl cheerleaders. I imagine myself at thirteen and for a boy to seem "so nice" might have been irresistible - because when I was twelve and thirteen most boys at my school seemed downright hostile, even towards girls they liked. And I wonder on another topic, how do these girl cheerleaders overlap with (or not) girl athletes who don't want boys on their teams. Different girls, I guess, but some of them know each other, so how do girls talk about this among themselves? It would be interesting to know more in depth about how kids not caught up in trans think about trans kids.
Holy blank!! 30 some kids out of a class of 150!!!! And they say there is no social contagion component. I am horrified to realize that my daughter was probably an unknowing groomer. And she too was groomed by a girl I think.
I really appreciate Lydia speaking out on this to advocate for our boys. We really need more exploration of the vulnerabilities our boys have, traits, history (including from the parents) and how they came to the ideology to make any conclusions.
I agree that it seems AGP is being sold as something that explains what they are if they want to detransition or even if boys don't transition but still seem they are "woman" and want to continue to "appear" as a woman. It's becoming a cult within a cult. I could name several who are leading the crusade. I think there needs to be a lot more research into AGP, even with the middle aged men who have this fetish or paraphilia or whatever category we put around it.
I'm not sure the tone of its "sexual" for these boys is accurate. Many of them are asexual or take on that identity which to me says they are not comfortable with the act of sex or what they are feeling; they are running from it. Or perhaps they have disassociated their body and mind in regards to that aspect. Again, we need more nuance and exploration.