Youth Trans Critical Professionals
This content was last updated Nov. 9, 2023, 6:20 p.m. UTC
Youth Trans Critical Professionals (YTCP) was a blog website founded by psychotherapist Lisa M. Marchiano on March 14, 2016 to gather the perspective of professionals on the anti-trans movement to change the direction of public discourse. It was marked private around June of 2018, and has been inactive since then.
It is notable for being a source used by Lisa Littman in a study of parents who believed their children were experiencing a social contagion effect and were not really trans. This was in addition to other similar websites, including 4th Wave Now and Transgender Trend.
There is evidence that vulnerable young people are being actively recruited and coached on such sites to believe that they are trans. Social contagion is almost certainly playing a role as well.
Founding
The website for YTCP went public on March 14, 2016. Previously, Lisa Marchiano had posted on the anti-trans website 4th Wave Now under the alias ‘skepticaltherapist’ making both comments and original posts. It was on 4th Wave Now that Marchiano initially proposed the hypothesis that young people were trans due to a social contagion, an idea which would later evolve into rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD).
Finances
There is no record of YTCP being a registered non-profit or a registered business in the United States, and it did not solicit donations. It was most likely an independent, self-funded project.
History of Anti-LGBTQ+ Activism
During its brief stint in the public light, the website functioned as a community center for anti-trans parents and professionals, alongside the larger 4th Wave Now. Many of its posts were guest posts, such as this one from Sasha Ayad. However, it often featured posts from anonymous sources, such as a “US physician” and “a professional.” It featured a variety of views, ranging from claims that being trans is a fetish to comparisons of trans people to ISIS. The founders stated that they did not endorse the views of all people featured on the blog.
One individual featured was Elisa Rae Shupe, who was a prominent political detransitioner at the time. Shupe later transitioned and spoke against that period of her life, and shared emails from that time in her life, including about YTCP. It was Shupe’s emails that definitively revealed Lisa Marchiano to have been the owner of the site.
Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria
The website is now most notable for being one of the sources of non-affirming parents used in Lisa Littman’s study on non-affirming parents’ attitudes which was initially presented as a study of ROGD. On July 5, 2016, a post on YTCP called for parents to enlist in the study if they believed their children had been influenced by a social contagion to become trans. Similar calls went out on the websites for 4th Wave Now and Transgender Trend.