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Thomas Steensma and transgender people

thomas steensma

Thomas Steensma is a Dutch clinician who works with gender diverse youth. Steensma’s research and clinical guidelines are frequently cited by anti-transgender extremists who reject affirmative models of care for young people seeking trans health services.

Anti-0trans activists who cite Steensma include:

Background

Thomas D Steensma, PhD works at the Department of Medical Psychology / Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Steensma’s research is focused on people of all ages with gender incongruence. Steensma’s primary projects focus on treatment evaluation, psychosexual development and (gender) identity development (including non-binary gender identities). Steensma studied social and clinical psychology, and is trained as a child and adolescent health psychologist.

In 2018 KQED reported:

In Amsterdam, clinicians at the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria are much more cautious about recommending social transitions because of the statistics on desistance. Thomas Steensma, a researcher and clinician at the center, acknowledges  these studies probably included some kids who would not be diagnosed with gender dysphoria today. Nevertheless, despite the problems with the way they classified children, “the only evidence I have from studies and reports in the literature  … is that not all transgender children will persist in their transgender identity,” Steensma said.’Why are we asking a child to conform to something that is not them because society hasn’t done its learning yet?’

In 2013, Steensma co-authored an oft-cited study that examined 127 adolescents, all of whom had displayed various levels of gender dysphoria as children. The researchers found that 80 of the children had desisted by the ages of 15 and 16. That works out to 63 percent of kids who basically stopped being transgender — a lower rate than in previous studies, but still a majority.

Some clinicians criticize this study, however, on methodological grounds, because the researchers defined anyone who did not return to their clinic as desisting. Fifty-two of the children classified as desistors or their parents did send back questionnaires showing the subjects’ present lack of gender dysphoria. But 28 neither responded nor could be tracked down.

Brooks (2018)

References

Brooks, Jon (May 23, 2018). The Controversial Research on ‘Desistance’ in Transgender Youth. KQED https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-research-on-desistance-in-transgender-youth

Lane, Bernard (March 17, 2021 ). Dutch expert warns on ‘blind adoption’ of puberty blockers. The Australian https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/dutch-expert-warns-on-blind-adoption-of-puberty-blockers/news-story/d235ce6ebe409e8efde979f1ae0739cc

Henriette A Delemarre-van de Waal, Peggy T Cohen-Kettenis (2006). Clinical management of gender identity disorder in adolescents: a protocol on psychological and paediatric endocrinology aspects. European Journal of Endocrinology, Volume 155, Issue Supplement_1, Nov 2006, Pages S131–S137, https://doi.org/10.1530/eje.1.02231 [archive]

Research

Steensma, T. D., McGuire, J. K., Kreukels, B. P. C., Beekman, A. J., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2013). Factors Associated With Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria: A Quantitative Follow-Up Study. In Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Vol. 52, Issue 6, pp. 582–590). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2013.03.016

Resources

ResearchGate (researchgate.net)

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

Amsterdam VUMC (research.vumc.nl/en)

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