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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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The possibility for incidents of testicular/ovarian cancer when on HRT should not be so easily discounted.

It's a serious concern and something that needs to be seriously reviewed by any medical professional and the patient, especially given the impact on both fertility and hormone stability in the case of desistance. But it's not some clear threshold behavior or more dangerous for the 16-18 year age range than for 19+: while I recognize that the data is limited, the risk seems primarily tied to duration of treatment rather than age of onset, the proposed link is attenuated, and the base incidence is low to start with. As with the "vain meaningless life" aspect, an argument that generalizes to adults only persuades to the extent it would meaningfully apply to adults.

(And the testicular cancer risk seems genuinely to have not panned out? Though they would say that...)

Also you can't simply undo puberty blockers, it's not a free lunch sort of deal.

I pretty explicitly spelled out that I've been persuaded that the data on puberty blockers is actively against their common-form use, and the extent that 'technical experts' promoted them despite or even because of severe and irrecoverable side effects have reduced my trust in both those experts and a lot of the information coming from the broader medical community on this topic.