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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33121 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Are puberty blockers chemical castration?

A follow-up to the discussion with @netstack

This was originally a deep-chain reply, but after a few spergy, reddit-tier replies on my end, and @netstack's saintly curiosity, the conversation resulted in a decent-quality argument, that I'd like to get more eyes on and see I missed any obvious objections.

I mistakenly thought that when states chemically castrate sex offenders, they use the progestogens, but when oncologists chemically castrate cancer patients, they use the GnRH drugs. Then the fact that gender clinics recommend GnRH would suggest their protocols are more like cancer treatment than criminal justice.

As @Fruck pointed out, this isn’t the case if Lupron was used for judicial castration in Australia. I’ll assume he’s correct, and I share his frustration proving it. This was the best I could find. It says that CPA, another progestogen, is the only currently approved option, but cites studies on Lupron and a couple others. Obviously, they saw some use in criminal justice.

I did some extra digging as well. The wiki for Lupron links to the paper "Reforming (purportedly) Non-Punitive Responses to Sexual Offending", and while it's about triptorelin instead of Lupron, it's another GnRH. In any case a systematic review of the use of GnRH on sexual offenders (sci-hub) should hopefully settle the matter.

As a side note this paper makes me think the difference between GnRH's and DMPA's is that the former have (or promised to have) fewer side effects, not that they work on a fundamentally different principle (and while we're on the subject, let me just say I'm rather bemused at all the handwringing in all these papers about the side effects of these drugs on convicted sex offenders, when I compare them to the dismissal of any such concerns around giving the same drugs to children).

“Political leverage” was just a joke about the stereotypical eunuch. In poor taste, perhaps.

No, it just completely went over my head, lol.

I doubt that I can find credible sources for long-term reversibility, since I assume it’s permanent at some point. Maybe 2-3 years, since that’s what the oncology websites cite when they feel defensive about gender politics. I’m not trying to push a political line.

This is a fun one. From what I understand chemical castration is meant to be reversible. This is what the wiki for chemical castration says right on the top, and I saw, but failed to bookmark, a paper that made that claim about DMPA's specifically, but that seems to be the general consensus on chemical castration:

Medical considerations are also important, and contemporary doctors should be knowledgeable of these issues. First, chemical castration is no longer effective after it is discontinued;

So if irreversibility is a necessary condition for classifying something as chemical castration... than it seems that chemical castration does not meet the standard.

Now, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "non-central" argument, you can argue that something that's reversible doesn't quite have that quality of having one's balls cut off that you'd expect from a term like "castration". It is also true you're going to have a hard time finding sources about the reversibility of puberty blockers, since dr. Cass' team looked, and all they can say is:

No conclusions can be drawn about the effect on gender-related outcomes, psychological and psychosocial health, cognitive development or fertility. Bone health and height may be compromised during treatment.

But when gender care providers themselves tell me that "puberty blockers are reversible (asterisk)", the asterisk being you can't stay on them too long, or that if you start them too early you're never going to have an orgasm, when celebrity cases like Jazz Jennings say they don't regret going on blockers, but the downside was "there wasn't enough tissue to work with when it came to the surgery" (and also don't know what an orgasm is), when the industry comes up with procedures like sigmoid vaginoplasties or zero depth vaginoplasties to either hack around or throw up their hands about the issue, can we say that there are good reasons to suspect some of the changes may be irreversible? What is even supposed to be the mechanism for reversibility? For a fully developed adult it's just a question of restoring testosterone levels and sperm counts, but for a child that never went through puberty we're basically hoping their body will catch up with development as if nothing ever happened.

Yeah, I know that as far as evidence goes, this doesn't rise to the standard of a proper well-designed study, but like I said in the other comment, the gender industry isn't particularly transparent about results they don't like. I understand wanting to remain agnostic on the reversibility question, but if you grant that these concerns are reasonable, it seems like puberty blockers are an at least as, and may possibly turn out to be more of, a central example of chemical castration, than chemical castration itself.

I think more people could understand the depths of this debate better by steelmanning the pro puberty blocker/pro HRT side a little and seeing that allowing people to go though puberty normally is also not reversible. And a lot of transgender adults (and teens off the very basis that they are seeking out hormones) openly express that they wish they didn't have to go through their natural puberty.

So from their perspective what bans can end up doing is that instead of the person getting to decide which irreversible thing they go through based off their own desires, it's the government choosing for them.

There is no simple choice here, someone will be upset by permanent changes. A teenager who makes a mistake and gets on hormones without consideration, or a teenager who is forced to go without care and ends up as a sad trans adult who just wishes they had the autonomy given to make choices about their own body when they were younger.

And blockers came up as the compromise solution and promoting them as the free space where everything can be reversed seems just like wishful thinking from everyone. Because if it's true then it's a very easy solution that won't cause any harm.

allowing people to go though puberty normally is also not reversible

This is paper, not steel. Puberty is not reversible in the same way that birth is not reversible, nor aging. These are normal, natural, and expected processes. This is what humans do, as much as trees grow to the light and fish swim upriver to spawn.

The problem is not just that it's not reversible, it's that it's an intervention to disrupt normal maturation, and also not reversible. The default isn't unfettered biohacking, it's growing as your body is built to grow. It's feeding hunger and sleeping when tired and, yes, going through puberty when mature.

Every other domesticated species gets fixed to make it easier to handle, why not humans?

I’m barely joking. Trans kids make excellent institutional pets. You’ll notice that working dogs are not castrated, and that pets usually are timed to prevent puberty. This is a natural part of hajnali Europeans separating themselves into different landraces.

The thought is horrifying but why wouldn’t domesticating ourselves have the same effects it has on everything else?

pets usually are timed to prevent puberty.

AFAIK this is another good example of medical veterinary misinformation, driven by the convenience and "we know what's best for you"-ness of the purveyors.

There's pretty solid studies that fixing a dog (particularly bitches) before canine puberty leads to lower lifespans and greater risk of various health problems at younger ages -- breeders who care will usually recommend a year +.

People who prioritize other stuff, such as puppy-millers (concerned that their customers will set up shop and compete) or SPCA spay/neuter all the things types (too many puppies, I guess?) will either demphasize this or outright lie about it -- because they know that if they let a puppy out out of their sight there's a good chance it never gets spayed, and might even reproduce. (horrors)

You can google right now and find all sorts of bullshit about how four months is Just Fine(tm) for the animals -- but it's really for the people.

Mhhmm. Institutions which think adolescent fertility is the worst thing in the universe, damn the long term effects, certainly rhyme.

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