The Washington Post published misleading poll results indicating that adults who attempt to transition experience greater life satisfaction.
The story from The Washington Post, titled “Most trans adults say transitioning made them more satisfied with their lives,” provides a skewed view of life satisfaction among adults who identify as transgender.
President of the American Principles Project (APP) Terry Schilling blasted the poll as “propaganda,” telling Breitbart News, “So much of the so-called ‘research’ around transgender issues turns out to be little more than propaganda, and that certainly holds for this Washington Post survey.”
The poll, which includes responses of 515 trans-identifying adults, mixes the responses of a wide array of different individuals who identify as transgender, including those who have undergone medical interventions in an attempt to change their sex and those who have only “socially transitioned.”
The article explains:
While most trans people have socially transitioned, meaning they’ve changed their clothing, names or pronouns, far fewer have medically transitioned. Less than a third have used hormone treatments or puberty blockers, and about 1 in 6 have undergone gender-affirming surgery or other surgical treatment to change their physical appearance.
Though the poll includes responses from trans-identifying adults who have wildly different experiences, the report does not disaggregate the data. The poll also includes data from those who identify as transgender men, as transgender women, and as non-binary.
After asking whether or not they would release disaggregated data for different types of trans-identifying adults, a spokesperson for The Washington Post told Breitbart News “All our Post-KFF surveys data are archived at the Roper Center for secondary analysis after an embargo period.”
Meanwhile, the report also says:
The survey was designed to reach a representative sample of adults in the U.S. who identify as transgender or as trans adults.” The statement implies that the study did not include responses from adults who at one time identified as transgender but who do not anymore — a population referred to as detransitioners.
Breitbart News also asked whether or not the exclusion of those who formerly identified as transgender or non-binary skews the data, to which a spokesperson for The Washington Post replied, “The poll was conducted to be representative of trans adults. We can’t speculate about other populations.”
Schilling also remarked:
Although the Post headline touts the statistic that 78 percent of trans-identifying individuals are ‘satisfied’ with their transition, the author paradoxically notes later that only 57 percent say they are ‘satisfied with their lives as a whole,’ far less than the average adult.
“Of course, the article quickly places the blame for the latter number on “discrimination,” without any deeper exploration of the discrepancy,” Schilling also remarked before telling Breitbart News, “The survey also completely ignores the experiences of detransitioners, who do not appear to have been consulted at all.”
“None of this should be surprising, given the Post’s long standing record of pro-transgender advocacy in its ‘reporting,’” Schilling said before also noting:
Most legacy news outlets have taken an unquestioning stance towards trans activism in their journalism, thanks to changes like those made to the AP Stylebook which all but enshrine gender ideology as fact. It’s no wonder Americans’ trust in the media continues to drop to all-time lows.
What is apparent from the poll, however, is that those who identify as transgender are much more likely to have suffered from mental health problems and to have had an unhappy childhood.
“Compared with Americans as a whole, trans adults are more than twice as likely to say they experienced serious mental health problems such as depression or anxiety growing up (78 percent versus 32 percent for the U.S. overall)” the report found.
The report also reads, “Just over half of trans adults say they had a happy childhood (53 percent), but that rate is far lower than the 81 percent of Americans overall who say their childhood was happy.”
It also found that those who identify as trans are significantly less likely to say they are satisfied with their life than the general U.S. adult population. “Though 57 percent of trans adults say they are satisfied with their lives as a whole, that rate is lower than the U.S. adult population at large, of whom 73 percent say they are satisfied,” the report reads.
It goes on to read:
More than half (56 percent) of trans adults say they have felt anxious at least “often” in the past year, compared with 31 percent of cisgender adults. And they are more than twice as likely as cis people to say they felt depressed (48 percent, compared with 21 percent) or lonely (45 percent, compared with 21 percent) in the past year.
Furthermore, other polling data found that trans-identifying individuals are unattractive as romantic partners, and are rejected by a whopping 97 percent of heterosexuals.
There’s also a suicide epidemic among those who identify as transgender. One survey found that over 50 percent of youth who identify as trans have considered suicide. Kayleigh Scott, a man who identified as a woman and was featured in an advertisement from United Airlines, was recently found dead in his Colorado home, leaving behind a heartbreaking suicide note.
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com
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