Reddit post about parent forcing hormones on transgender child is fake

As states across the country continue to introduce a flurry of legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community, a Reddit post gives the impression that a parent is forcing their child to continue to transition from male to female.

"Anyone else having trouble convincing your teen kids to continue transitioning," the post said. "My 14-year-old daughter (AMAB) has started refusing her estradiol so I’ve been crushing the pills and putting it in her cereal." AMAB stands for assigned male at birth.

"This is f------ child abuse and I’ll die on this Hill," read one tweet that re-shared the screenshot.

"Good parenting," read another, sarcastically.

The post isn’t legitimate. The "r/transparenttranskid" subreddit it was shared on was created so people could roleplay as transgender parents and promote inflammatory comments and fabricated abusive practices in the transgender community. It has since been removed by Reddit.

An August 2021 conversation in an online forum found by Reuters revealed  that users were planning on creating false posts on the subreddit to escalate outrage.

"Don't make the bait posts too obvious," the author wrote, "but you don't have to try too hard either since redditors will eat up anything that makes them mad." 

A person with the username "Funkyduffy" responded to a call to "snap up" the subreddit and fill it with fake stories. The same username was behind the post about the forced estradiol.

The "r/transparenttranskid" subreddit was eventually shut down by Reddit because it violated the website’s rules and spread hateful stereotypes, a platform moderator said in an August 25, 2021, post about the channel’s shuttering. 

Trolls created the account to "roleplay as transgender parents of transgender children, in order to platform hateful stereotypes of transgender people," the moderator wrote. "That subreddit has now been shuttered by Reddit for generally violating the Reddit Rules; They were engaged in promoting hatred of transgender people, as well as targeted harassment."

Featured Fact-check

Sam Brownback

stated on September 5, 2007 in a debate in Durham, N.H.

In countries that allow gay marriage, the rates of heterosexual marriage "have plummeted to where you have counties now in northern Europe where 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock."

Estradiol typically treats symptoms caused by menopause. While it is used as a hormone to promote feminine characteristics when a person is transitioning, it is not routinely part of gender-affirming care for a 14-year-old. 

Gender-affirming care encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral and medical interventions designed to support and affirm a person's gender identity when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth. For teens, this is most often social transitions — name, personal pronouns, clothes — as well as puberty blockers. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is typically approved to begin at age 16, though it can vary.

A Reddit post appears to show a transgender parent admitting to forcing their child to continue transitioning by sneaking hormone medication.

The post isn’t legitimate. The subreddit thread it was shared on was created so people could roleplay as transgender parents to promote fabricated abusive practices and hatred of transgender people. 

We rate this claim False.