The Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study (GUiNZ) is New Zealand’s largest ongoing cohort study. It is research which is so important and could have significant value – but, it’s been captured by gender ideologues and activists. It’s now even possible that families are dropping out of the study at an increasing rate because of confusing and harmful questioning of young children. In fact, we think parents may want to withdraw their involvement after watching this analysis.
The Stuff media article screamed “When asked about gender identity, 15% of the cohort (the kids in the survey who are 12 year olds) selected an answer that wasn’t either ‘boy’ or ‘girl’.” 15%! “A strong sense of gender identity.”
That’s incredibly high. But is it correct? Does it reflect reality? You may not be surprised to hear it doesn’t – but you’ll also possibly be more concerned about how this longitudinal study is setting out to confuse children from the age of 8. Let’s check it out.
The Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study (GUiNZ) is New Zealand’s largest ongoing cohort study. It recruited 6,846 New Zealand children born between 2009 and 2010 in Auckland and the Waikato. Although, interestingly, that number has dropped to just 4,500 now. Losing people in such a massive and lengthy study is understandable, but it’s appears to be a much larger attrition rate than the Christchurch longitudinal study and the Dunedin Study based on a comparable time. (72% GUiNZ retention, 90% Chch & Dunedin retention rates)
I would dare to suggest that what we’re talking about today might be part of the reason. Parents aren’t happy about being involved – and we agree with them. In fact, we think parents may want to withdraw their involvement after watching this.
So the Stuff media article from April 5 2023 says:
Kiwi kids have strong sense of ethnic, gender identity, study shows
The research, published on Wednesday, is part of ‘Now We Are Twelve’ . It surveyed 4,500 12-year-olds and their whānau….
When asked about gender identity, 15% of the cohort selected an answer that wasn’t either ‘boy’ or ‘girl’…
Well, let’s dig a little deeper into that sweeping statement.
….The survey asked young people about their gender. Most 12-year-olds selected ‘boy’ (46.2%), followed by ‘girl’ (37.8%). Fifteen per cent selected another answer: This included ‘mostly a boy’ (4.1%); ‘mostly a girl’ (7%) or ‘somewhere in the middle’ (3.9%). Just over 1% (48 young people) selected ‘I don’t know’.
It’s the 1% that you should be concerned about. They don’t know whether they’re a boy or a girl. What are they being told in their home? It continues:
The majority of young people assigned male at birth reported their gender was ‘boy’ or ‘mostly a boy’ (97.9%). Ninety per cent of those assigned female at birth selected ‘girl’ or ‘mostly a girl’.
University of Auckland senior lecturer Dr John Fenaughty said by age 3 or 4, children usually started to have a strong sense of their gender, and by age 6-7 their sense of gender was relatively consistent.
Really? That’s not what the worldwide research on gender dysphoria says. Most children grow out of their incongruent or misaligned gender identity when they go through puberty which reaffirms their biological sex eh. And note the emphasis on “gender” – don’t mention biological sex eh
But the name John Fenaughty should immediately raise red flags. He has partnered in research with the University of Waikato’s Trans Health Research Lab which is driven by activists and an agenda, rather than science and independent research. They push chemicals, castration and preferred pronouns through their association with radical international group WPATH at the expense of care and counselling for the deeper comorbid mental health issues.
And he is part of the team that oversee the weak and flawed Counting Ourselves study. The unit is also at odds with medical professionals and groups around the world who are sounding growing concern around the use of puberty blockers to treat young people with gender dysphoria because of the low certainty of benefits, but the significant potential for medical harm.
But, ‘nek minnit’, the media report admits:
One of the study’s limitations was it didn’t explicitly ask young people if they identified as trans or non-binary – the study classified participants based on their responses, he said.
Oh! But they still manage to say “When asked about gender identity, 15% of the cohort selected an answer that wasn’t either ‘boy’ or ‘girl’” and admitting that they coded some of them as trans or binary. I’ll come back to that.
The Stuff article then continues the marketing for gender ideology, and has a video embedded in the article featuring the reason that gender ideology has to be included in the Census – you know, the Census that we’ve all just struggled to compete because of the fictional questions on gender identity.
At the bottom of the article on ethnicity and gender, are there resources and websites offered for those questioning their ethnicity? Of course not, dummy. Just resources for indoctrinating gender ideology.
Resources for parents and caregivers include Be There, Transgender Children, and Gender Minorities Aotearoa, and Rainbow Youth, Inside Out and OutLine for young people.
As we said, a major weak spot in the data analysis for this report is that the children were not asked if they see themselves as being trans, only if they see themselves as being fully or partly a boy or a girl. Yet groups labelled trans boys and trans girls were created – this is not what the children were addressing, so these classifications are not justified.
Remember, these are 12 year olds (!) who are likely just thinking about masculinity and femininity. It has NOTHING to do with gender identity or wanting to transition to be the opposite sex, or being non-binary.
There are huge assumptions being made. But they try to justify it with this: And this is a doosy.
In this report, ‘sex’ refers to a set of biological attributes that are associated with physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone function and reproductive/sexual anatomy (9). ‘Gender’ refers to the identities, norms, and expression of behaviours and roles that are associated with people who identify as girls/women, boys/men, non-binary or who have a different gender identity. Gender includes how a person identifies their gender, as well as how they express their gender. A person’s gender expression may or may not match their gender identity, and a person’s gender identity may differ from the gender designated to them by their sex assigned at birth. ‘Trans’ is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the one they were designated at birth; however, some non-binary people may not identify as trans themselves. Non-binary refers to people who do not identify with binary gender identities. Some non-binary people may have a gender fluid, bigender, agender, or otherwise expansive identity outside of the (trans)man/woman binary. Cisgender refers to people who identify with the gender they were designated at birth.
Does your head hurt at this point?
And you thought it’s a boy, it’s a girl, in the birthing unit was pretty much a slam dunk. Not so fast!
But here’s the actual question they asked 12 year olds:
‘Thinking about who you are, do you see yourself as a boy, a girl, or somewhere in between?’.
The response options: Boy; Mostly boy; Somewhere in the middle; Mostly a girl; Girl; I don’t know.
When you were 12, how would you have answered that? Especially if you were a boy who liked ballet or a girl who liked rugby. What about a girl who prefers to watch men’s rugby instead of women’s rugby – shock horror!! A boy who hung around with a group of girls, or a girl who preferred to do activities that the boys tended to do? Did it mean you were transgender or non-binary? Of course not!
And “do you see yourself as a boy, as a girl…” What does that even mean? Does it mean on Sundays? Every week? Once in a blue moon? Is it 50% of the time? 90%? 25%? Who knows? It’s deliberately vague.
So what did the study say they found? 90% of boys said they were boys. 7.5% said they were mostly boy. 0.8% somewhere in the middle. So that leaves less than 20 boys out of more than 2,200 boys who were leaning more to thinking they saw themselves more as a girl. A further 14 boys didn’t know whether they thought they were boy or mostly boy or other. Maybe they were the smart ones. Maybe they were like you and me – they thought, what a dumb question. “I don’t understand the question!”
For the girls, 76% of girls said they were girls, and a further 14% said mostly a girl. So that’s 90%. And then 7% said ‘somewhere in the middle’. They see themselves somewhere in the middle of being a boy and a girl. Does that mean they’re changing sex. That they’re non-binary? No of course not. 34 girls (1.5%) weren’t sure what they’d say, and 26 girls said they saw themselves as a boy or mostly a boy. These are 12 year olds, remember.
So how were these responses treated – and this is the telling bit:
Young people who select ‘Somewhere in the middle’ or ‘I don’t know’ in response to this question are coded as non-binary or unsure of their gender. It is important to note that this categorisation includes trans boys and girls, as well as some young people who may be non-binary (e.g. ‘Mostly a girl/boy’), alongside cisgender boys and girls in the binary gender categories.
Cisgender of course is a made up word by activists which means boys are boys and girls are girls. Let’s call it what it is. Male. Female.
Trans-Non-binary/Cisgender is determined by responses to the unipolar gender identity question and the sex assigned at birth categorisation. ‘Mostly a boy’, ‘Somewhere in the middle’, ‘Mostly a girl’, as well as ‘I don’t know’ are emphasising the non-binary middle of the spectrum and are included in this categorisation as non-binary, while ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ are coded as cisgender. However, participants who report a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth (e.g. a participant who is assigned female at birth but selects ‘Boy’ or ‘Mostly a boy’ as gender) are included in the trans category.
Or maybe they just don’t fit neatly and squarely within a rigid masculine or feminine expectation. But that’s got nothing to do with biological sex, has it.
It simply confirms what we’ve always said. We should create a climate that welcomes every child by making room for a greater diversity of personalities without negating the importance of biological sex. Created as male and female – but created uniquely
Just to really indoctrinate gender ideology into these 12 year olds – who must be getting really really bored by now, the report says the asked a further 6 questions “which enables participants to report nuances in their gender identity and expression beyond simply masculine, feminine or non-binary, to include androgenous (high in both masculine and feminine scores) and agender (low in both masculine and feminine scores) identities and expressions.
• ‘How similar do you feel like boys’;
• ‘How similar do you feel like girls’;
• ‘How much do you like to do the same things as boys’;
• ‘How much do you like the same things as girls?’, and;
• ‘How much do you act like boys; How much do you act like girls?’.
The response options ranged from: Not at all; A little bit; A medium amount; Pretty much; A lot.
By now, a 12 year old is probably just saying – can I please go and watch some TikTok?
But what really disturbed us even more when we investigated this further – is that the GUiNZ study started asking these questions not at 12, but at the age of 8!!!
Not only the “do you see yourself as a boy, girl, or somewhere in between?” – which can’t be defined objectively – but another equally vague distorted question – “Thinking about other people, do you think THEY see you as a boy, a girl, or somewhere in between?”
This is being asked of 8 year olds. Is an 8 year old going around asking people that?! Of course not. “Yeah I like some girly things, I like some guy things. Wow – I must be non-binary. My friends are all guys. My friends are mostly girls. Some of my mates called me a sissy on the soccer field last week. I must be transgender.”
But that didn’t deter our friends at GUiNZ.
The 8 year old report concluded:
Most children (98%) identified with the gender they were ASSIGNED at birth, and 2% did not”
Actually it was only 1.6%. Just 77 children out of over 4,500 children.
One in seven (14%) of the cohort identified themselves as being somewhere in between male and female, and 3% said they were unsure about their gender identity at this age.
Maybe they didn’t understand the question – they thought it was a trick question, just like you and I did in the Census.
I am certain some parents would be unhappy with the track some of the questions are going down, and the conclusions made as well, e.g., labelling children as trans male or trans female. I wonder if the introduction of gender identity at 8 years has contributed to the drop off in participation in the 12-year DCW.
We checked the questioning for the mothers of 8 year olds. No mention of gender identity. Do you think they should be part of this question-line? We do! Parents should be well aware that their children are being subjected to this type of questioning.
Ironically, when the parents are asked the gender of their children in the study, and all the people who may live in the house as well, guess how many options are available – male and female? That’s it. Shocking. How binary.
Regarding asking children whether they think they’re a boy or a girl, Australian expert and pediatrician Dr John Whitehall who spoke at our conference recently and has written many articles on this issue says
“Results of such tick-in-the-box questionnaires are unreliable. A tick in a box to the question of “do you think you are transgender” cannot be compared in accuracy with the standard definition published in DSM-5 according to which childhood gender dysphoria is based on “a marked incongruence” between natal and perceived gender lasting “at least six months”; “manifested by at least six” features, including “a strong desire … and insistence” on, together with a “strong preference” for, the company, clothing and toys of the opposite sex and its role in fantasy play; and associated with rejection of the stereotypes of its natal sex, including anatomy. Also, to comply with “dysphoria”, there should be “significant distress or impairment … in functioning”.
But apparently 12 year olds, and even 8 year olds don’t need to meet this criteria. They can self diagnose.
The DSM-5 is the objective biological basis for truly assessing a disorder. But of course activists are doing all they can to change that yardstick. In NZ, you can now change the sex on your birth certificate including for children without any medical or verifiable assessment.
Here’s the controversial statement I’ll make. I can understand why the drop out rate in this study seems relatively high and may even increase further. In fact, I would encourage parents who are still involved to think twice about their continuing involvement given the nature of these questions. There is an agenda at play here, sadly.
It’s a longitudinal study which is so important and could have significant value – but it’s been captured by gender ideologues and activists – and now it’s even possible that families are dropping out of the study at an increasing rate because of this confusing and harmful questioning of young children. It’s very sad and very disturbing to watch.
Just before I go, Here’s some questions we’d like to see added to GUiNZ to ask 12 year olds:
1. Are you aware your gender was not “assigned” at birth?
2. Are you aware there is nothing you can medically do to manipulate a biological change of your gender/sex?
3. Are you aware that boys often like doing things that are sometimes perceived as more favoured by girls (feminine) or that girls often like doing things that are sometimes perceived as more favoured by boys (masculine) but that has nothing to do with whether you’re male or female?
4. Are you aware no one in history has ever changed their biological sex using medical, surgical and hormonal intervention?
But they probably won’t ask those questions eh.
And that tells you everything.
