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I got into an argument on JK Rowling recently. That was mildly annoying, but then it shifted to transgender stuff in general, and the puberty blocker discussion in particular was very vexing to me. I just genuinely don't know how anyone can be okay with the idea, especially now that we know way more about it than we did 10 years ago. The dismissal of the Cass Review on the part of the pro-trans side has increasingly looked like the stereotypical right winger doing mental somersaults to any science they dislike. But I have some questions on it, there were some things I didn't have great answers to.
What are the actual requirements for getting prescribed puberty blockers? The pro-trans tribe insists that it is a very rigorous process involving thorough checking of gender dysphoria, and it's not commonly done, despite being a readily available tool in the toolbox of clinical practice. I do not believe this after examples I have seen, but I have nothing to cite.
Is there any actual scientific evidence in favor of social contagion playing any part in transgenderism? The pro-trans tribe claims that social contagion plays no role, and to me, it's trivially true that social contagion plays an astounding part, as well as fetishism and abuse, and autism. I have no idea how many kids genuinely become gender dysphoric due to genetics, if there are any at all. And if there are any, I certainly don't think that it's a given that they need puberty blockers. How the hell did that become the default? But anyway, has The Science turned up anything on social contagion?
Are there any actually valid critiques of the Cass Review? Pro-trans tribe will cite the Yale Law retort, then when I point out the responses to it, either holes are poked in them or they just go back to their priors that the Cass Review was methodologically bad, done by a transphobe, misinterpreted studies, and went against the scientific consensus and ruined its own credibility. Actually, they say the same about the recent HHS Report. Please show me if there are any published valid critiques of the Cass Review besides the Yale thing.
What are the probabilities of serious consequences from puberty blockers? I brought up infertility, and the pro-trans tribe claimed that it's actually a very low chance and that it's not anyone's business anyway because not everyone wants to have kids. The latter half of that is completely inane when we're talking about life changing decisions for a demographic that cannot consent, but the former, I don't know. Do puberty blockers cause the infertility, the loss of ability to orgasm, and the complete lack of penis tissue with which to create a neovagina, or is it the ensuing hormones that do this?
Sadly, none of this will do anything to convince anyone on either side anyway. There's really no way out of this hole that has been created. Sometimes, I kind of hate this world. I really thought "don't give minors seriously debilitating life changing pills to solve a solely mental disorder" was an easy hill to stand on, but the fighting was just as vicious as anything else with the gender issue.
Edited to be slightly less angry.
I know two trans women.
One transitioned in her late twenties, and gets stared at wherever she goes. Anyone can instantly tell that she’s trans from her voice and appearance, she’ll need to spend a lot of money on surgery to look remotely female, and she’s at the risk of being hate-crimed just from walking in the wrong area. She doesn’t behave very femininely, perhaps from nearly 30 years of growing up as male.
The other went on puberty blockers as a teenager, she has a normal female voice, and wherever she goes, the average person just sees a normal woman. She didn’t have to spend a single dime on facial feminisation surgery, and also seems to have fairly standard straight female sexuality (no complaints about anorgasmia) as opposed to the weird fetishistic oversexualised behaviour some later transitioners have.
Without going into any studies or the difficulty of distinguishing persistence vs desistance rates, it’s unarguable that early transitioners just fit in better in society and have less chance of being perceived as “freaks” in public based on their appearance. I don’t know if that quality of life upgrade is taken into account in any studies, but that’s enough for me to support them in a broad strokes fashion, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all the details of the modern clinical practices.
That is the genuine problem for which I do have sympathy. However, the extreme cases around transgender issues and the activist rhetoric about "not owing anyone femininity" (which seems to translate to "keeping your feminine penis and testicles and your beard") make it difficult to maintain that sympathy, as well as the push for "so this means that nine year olds should be started on the transition path because of course every child who has concerns and problems around facing into puberty is trans and not at all perhaps suffering from different anxieties and problems that need to be addressed by therapy but don't mean telling them 'it's because you're really a girl or a boy, not a boy or a girl'".
Jesse Singal gets absolutely slaughtered on Bluesky for being a Nazi fascist supporter of trans genocide for being a conventional liberal who is positive on socially liberal issues but has concerns around the whole transitioning of kids and expressed such qualms. It's a genuine question of "when should you start medical - which means puberty blockers and hormones - transitioning versus social transitioning", because going too early does involve other problems later on, but if you are not 100% behind "this never happens and if it does, it's a good thing" then you are a trans genocider.
Anxiety around starting puberty does not need therapy, though. People have had it since time immemorial. It needs talking with the same sex parent. It does not need to be taken as a serious objection.
But the well-meaning (to be as charitable as I can) jump on it as indicating dysphoria which means "this child is trans" and then we get the "if not allowed to transition, they will commit suicide"
and schools doing things like hiding from parents that their child is socially transitioning on the rationale that "parents not supporting their trans child is abuse", though that seems to be changing at least as far as official policy is concerned due to protests and backlash:
Sure, I was taught that if I needed to talk about puberty I could go to my parents or maybe grandparents, but to only ask my doctor straightforward physical health questions and to not bother teachers, coaches, etc with such things at all.
This seems normal politeness and boundaries and not new-style paranoia to me(after all, it would never have occurred to my parents that doctors could turn me trans- it was simply assumed that anxiety about new feelings was impolite to discuss with them). My parents did, in fact, brush off my discomfort with starting puberty and I turned out fine. The need for conversion therapy wasn’t anticipatable-seeming and it did, in any case, work.
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