Daily Archive

This is a common activist argument. It often arrives pre-loaded with moral certainty, as if the analogy itself settles the question. That should set off your spider-senses immediately: when moral certitude and ideological correctness are doing the work, argumentative rigour usually is not.

The claim is familiar. Left-handedness once looked rare because it was stigmatized and suppressed; stigma eased, reported rates rose. Therefore, the rise in transgender identification among youth should be read the same way.

The analogy is rhetorically useful. It is also weak.

It forces two different kinds of phenomena into one moral script. Left-handedness is a motor preference: early-emerging, directly observable, and generally stable across the life course. Childhood transgender identification is not that. It involves self-interpretation, language, social meaning, and developmental concepts that mature unevenly. Whatever one’s broader politics, these are not the same kind of thing. Treating them as equivalent does not clarify the issue. It pre-loads the conclusion.

The first failure is developmental. Handedness does not require a child to grasp an abstract social category. A child reaches for a spoon, a crayon, a ball. The preference is visible in action. Gender identity claims are different. They depend on how a child understands sex categories, role expectations, persistence over time, and what it means to “be” a boy or girl beyond clothing, imitation, or preference. That is a heavier cognitive task. Piaget and Kohlberg do not settle today’s policy disputes, but they do establish a relevant caution: young children often reason concretely, and stable identity concepts develop in stages. A child can show a hand preference before the child can fully articulate an abstract identity claim in a mature sense.

That difference changes what counts as evidence. Handedness does not need interpretive reinforcement to remain legible. It persists without adults affirming a narrative about the child’s inner state. Childhood gender self-description does not operate that way. It unfolds inside a social field: family language, peer dynamics, institutional scripts, online models, and adult interpretation. Saying that does not make every case shallow or insincere. It does mean the left-handedness analogy smuggles in false simplicity by equating a physical preference with a socially mediated self-concept.

The second failure is pattern. The rise in reported left-handedness is commonly explained, in large part, by declining suppression and changing norms around forcing children to write with the right hand. The increase was broad and gradual. It was not driven by intense peer clustering in narrow demographic bands. Recent increases in transgender identification among youth have shown a different profile, including marked concentration in particular age and sex cohorts in some settings. That pattern is harder to explain by destigmatization alone. At minimum, it supports a mixed account in which social influence, peer effects, and online environments may contribute in some cases. That is not proof of a single-cause “contagion” model for every child. It is enough to show that the left-handedness analogy is doing more moral work than explanatory work.

The third failure is stability. Handedness, once established, is typically stable and does not initiate a pathway of medical intervention. Childhood gender distress is more variable. Longitudinal studies from earlier clinic-referred cohorts often found that many children presenting with gender dysphoria did not continue to identify as transgender in adulthood, especially after puberty. Those findings need careful handling. They come from older cohorts, older diagnostic frameworks, and a literature now heavily contested on definitions and generalizability. Even with those caveats, the central point remains: childhood gender distress has historically shown developmental fluidity in a way handedness does not. That alone should make the analogy suspect.

The practical asymmetry is harder to ignore. If society was wrong to suppress left-handedness, the correction was simple: stop forcing children to switch hands. No endocrine pathway. No fertility implications. No irreversible surgeries. No high-stakes clinical decisions under uncertainty. Pediatric gender care is not identical in stakes or consequences. That does not answer every clinical question. It does mean “this is just like left-handedness” is not an argument. It is a reassurance strategy.

A more honest framing is available. Stigma can affect disclosure and prevalence reporting without making every rise in identification analogous to left-handedness. Some young people experience deep and persistent gender distress. Childhood identity development is also shaped by cognition, peers, institutions, and timing. Those claims can coexist. Compassion does not require category collapse.

The left-handedness comparison survives because it is emotionally efficient. It offers a ready-made progress narrative and casts skeptics as yesterday’s moral failures. Efficient is not the same thing as accurate. If the aim is responsible care for vulnerable young people, the first obligation is conceptual hygiene: use comparisons that illuminate developmental reality, not analogies that flatten it.

References

1. Kohlberg, L. (1966). A cognitive-developmental analysis of children’s sex-role concepts and attitudes. In E. E. Maccoby (Ed.), The Development of Sex Differences. Stanford University Press.
2. Gilbert, A. N., & Wysocki, C. J. (1992). Hand preference and age in the United States. Neuropsychologia, 30(7), 601–608.
3. Steensma, T. D., Biemond, R., de Boer, F., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2011). Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 16(4), 499–516.
4. Singh, D., Bradley, S. J., & Zucker, K. J. (2021). A follow-up study of boys with gender identity disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 632784.
5. Cass, H. (2024). Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Final Report).