Atypical gender development and psychosocial adjustment.

Wasserman (1977) is a short commentary, not a new experiment.

The author looked at the famous 1974 case where therapists tried to make a five-year-old boy act "less feminine."

A asked a simple question: Who says playing with dolls is a problem worth fixing?

The paper found no proof that the boy’s feminine play hurt him or anyone else.

Without that proof, A argued, the whole treatment was socially invalid and ethically shaky.

Morris et al. (2021) later counted every behavior-analytic paper on LGBTQ+ topics. They found only 12, and most were like the 1974 case—trying to erase gender differences. Their map shows the field stayed silent for decades after A’s warning.

Turban (2018) flips the script. That paper says social troubles in transgender youth often come from stress, not from being transgender. Support, not suppression, is the fix. This extends A’s call for social validity into today’s gender-affirming care.

Clarke (1998) looks at a different Lovaas study and shows that sex balance in samples matters. Together with A, the message is clear: check both your ethics and your methods before you target gendered behaviors.

If you write a goal about dolls, dress-up, or "boyish" play, pause. Ask the child, the family, and future adults they will become if the change truly helps. If the only answer is "it looks weird to us," pick a different goal. Social validity comes first.