PolitiFact – Yes, trans kids do exist. The claim that they don’t is Pants on Fire!

There is rabid political debate about whether transgender youth should have access to gender-affirming care. But now some social media users are just denying transgender youth’s existence altogether. 

“There is no such thing as a trans kid,” Gay Against Groomers said in a July 20 text-only Instagram post. The activist group runs X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram accounts with more than 300,000 followers each that comment against LGBTQ+ topics, including transgender policies and drag shows. The Anti-Defamation League identified the group as an online amplifier of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism.

The post’s caption goes on to say “the trans child is a pharmaceutically-constructed demographic of children who were told that they are living in the ‘wrong body.’” 

Medical experts disagree. Being transgender does not have to involve medical treatment, and for kids who haven’t reached puberty, no medical interventions are recommended. 

Although some experts debate the exact number of transgender Americans, and how to formulate the best standards of care, the existence of trans children is not up for debate.

Gays Against Groomers did not respond to a request for comment. 

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screenshot of Instagram Post)

If people are transgender, that means their gender identity, or internal sense of what gender they are, is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.

The World Health Organization’s diagnostic manual, or “ICD,” has included some description of people whose sense of gender did not match their assigned sex since 1975. It previously fell under the now dated term “transexualism.”

The organization added a separate diagnosis for children in 1990.

The most recent edition of the WHO’s diagnostic manual, released in 2019, uses the term “gender incongruence” and includes two sets of diagnostic guidance, one for gender incongruence in childhood and another for adults and adolescents.

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association, also includes the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which includes the distress that can result from having your gender identity not match your sex assigned at birth. A related diagnosis, including a distinct diagnosis for children, first appeared in the manual’s third edition in 1980. 

The following professional medical associations acknowledge the existence of transgender youth: American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Psychological Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Psychiatric Association, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. 

All of those organizations also support continued access to gender-affirming care for youth. Before puberty, gender-affirming care can include things such as using the name and pronouns that align with a child’s gender identity. After puberty begins, it can include evidence-based medical treatments such as puberty blockers or hormone therapies. Gender-affirming surgical procedures are not commonly recommended or provided to minors. 

An American Academy of Pediatrics-run website for parents explains that gender identity development in children happens at a young age. By age 2, children typically understand the physical differences between boys and girls; by age 4, “most children have a stable sense of their gender identity.” 

“It is common for children to declare their gender identity by three years of age,” said Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program. “Trans children will often express their gender identity even within unsupportive family environments and communities,” and when affirmation from parents is unlikely. 

This developmental trajectory and existing research suggest that many transgender people come to understand their identities in childhood or adolescence. 

Transgender youth make up only a small portion of the population. Data from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that 300,000 Americans ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender, around 1.4%. 

But they do exist, and they aren’t new, experts said. “There is naturally occurring gender diversity among human beings that has always existed throughout history and across cultures,” said Keuroghlian.

Our ruling

Gays Against Groomers said, “There is no such thing as a trans kid.”

The claim stretches beyond opinion or an opposition to gender-affirming care to deny the existence of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Gender incongruence in children and adolescents is a well-documented experience that has been widely accepted by the medical community. 

Social and medical interventions that are provided are given in response to a person’s feelings of gender incongruence, which can emerge within a child’s earliest years. Treatments for young transgender people do not always result in prescription drugs or surgeries, as the caption implied. 

There is such a thing as a trans kid. 

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!