How can you say they are proven safe when, to start with, there is a lack of evidence on long term safety? Happy to be shown otherwise if the article posted is incorrect.
Nothing is ever enough for these types. You could have millions of cases spanning hundreds of years of medical practice and have the instructions for the procedure written in the Bible and it still wouldn’t be enough. This one person on Facebook saying their kid did it without their consent and got a tummy ache would still be enough to ban it forever for anyone for them.
The “experimental” label is most regularly levied against puberty blockers, probably because the average person isn’t familiar with them. However, they’ve been used to treat precocious puberty since the 1980s (Comite et al., 1981; Mancuso et al., 1989) and to stave off unwanted endogenous puberties in trans youth since the mid-to-late-1990s (Cohen-Kettenis & van Goozen, 1998; van der Loos et al., 2023). For anyone interested in learning more about them, I’d recommend Giordano & Holm’s 2020 accessibly written scientific review “Is puberty delaying treatment ‘experimental treatment’?” as it answers the most commonly asked questions about the method, its efficacy, potential side effects, and so on.
Giordano & Holm’s review also addresses another common claim levied against gender-affirming care, namely, that there aren’t any “high quality studies.” In actuality, there are many high-quality studies: sound methodologies, significant sample sizes, published in well-respected journals, etcetera. When trans-skeptical people argue this, what they really mean is that there aren’t any randomized controlled studies — where neither the doctor nor patient know whether they’ve received the medicine in question or whether they’ve received a placebo. While this certainly is the “gold standard” for medical trials, it is not logistically possible in cases such as this, as both doctors and patients would quickly surmise which group they were assigned to based upon the changes (or lack thereof) in their bodies. The review also delves into ethical issues regarding withholding this treatment that make controlled studies impossible.
The second paragraph delves into the claim that there are no quality studies on the effects of delayed puberty. We actually have a good number of high quality studies, what we don’t have are double blind, randomized controlled studies because of the practical and ethical difficulties of doing so. This, of course, gets twisted into labeling puberty blockers as having no evidence or for being “experimental”.
Conservatives don’t care. For everyone’s sake they need to go. It’s so saddening to see the UK government copying the ideas of right-wing extremists in the USA.
The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”.
Because nothing says evidence based care based on the best interests of the patient than blanket-banning treatment based on zero evidence whatsoever.
thank god nhs scotland is separate from nhs england but the sad thing is the waitlist was already absurd long and the tory and labour’s pursuit of pseudoscience will just harm trans people even more.
never mind the fact that something used for THREE DECADES for cis children is hardly experimental… and still used today for trans and cis children in other countries.
Why are people so quick to hate what they don't understand? It's infuriating and exhausting. I really hope they will move on from this after the US election, but I worry that it will only continue to get worse.
Unfortunately, the UK has their own anti-trans movement independent of the US. Any official ‘Harry Potter’ products directly fund it (thanks, Rowling).
Rowling overplayed her hand recently, I think. There’s a podcast I listen to every day, whose host I enjoy a lot, and most of his regular guests I like as well. One of them I’m not a fan of because she’s pretty transphobic… until Rowling attacked India Willoughby. That, it seems, was a step too far, because this previously rather transphobic lady was like “hang on a second, India Willoughby is a woman though”, and has settled into a new position of “there’s conversations that need to be had about prisons and sports, but otherwise trans people are not a threat and we need to be more tolerant”. This is someone who has, on occasions, induced such rage in me that I ended up yelling at the podcast, and her change of tack caught me completely by surprise. When Rowling has started frothing at the mouth so much that even other transphobes are rethinking their views, things feel a little less hopeless.
I think it’s because a lot of her fans were like “hang on, she’s just misunderstood, she’s not really transphobic, just doesn’t want those fake transes going into women’s spaces”, and Rowling kept it pretty vague, open for misinterpretation, not really ever able to be pinned down as actually being provably transphobic in the minds of many.
But something happened recently and it tipped her over the edge, from keeping her donations low key and her transphobia aimed at the theoretical “not really a woman ‘trans-identified-male’ boogeyman-woman” (who doesn’t really exist), to outright making open donations to anti-trans groups and attacking real trans women.
All the sudden her supporters are like… Wait, this is not who we thought you meant… Where are these scary men? The ones invading women’s spaces that you were talking about?
Yep. I do reckon there’s a percentage of transphobes who are imagining hordes of men pretending to be women to get into women’s spaces, but genuinely do have no problem with actual trans people (even in women’s spaces. Even as a trans person, I think the belief that, for example, the small number of convicted rapists claiming a trans identity need to be far more closely scrutinised than someone with no history of acting in bad faith, is reasonable.) Now that Rowling is saying the quiet parts out loud, she becomes repulsive to that particular group.
It’s because the extreme-right campaigns are fuelled by hate and discontent. And it helps them by chanelling it towards minority groups (obviously a majority won’t work because they would alienate too much of their own userbase). So the narrative is ‘the brown people’ cause all the problems, the LGBT community etc etc. Hate unites people more easily than love 😢
What worries me the most is that formerly normal sane ‘friends’ actually buy into this BS and have become rabiate trans-haters practically overnight. 😢
The trans minority specifically seems to be the ultimate scapegoat for them, since it's such a tiny minority. I'm really not liking the "First they came for..." vibes. Actually terrifying.
I'm sorry about your 'friends' and hope you're safe from them. Sending you love ❤️
It’s happening in so many places, at the same time as actual fascism is on the rise globally. Those “first they came for…” vibes are not an exaggeration.
Thank you ❤️ But I’m not trans myself (though I am kinda on the LGBT spectrum). I do have several trans friends and I don’t stand for that kind of derisive talk. All this hate has prompted me to join campaigns at work and help organise events because I want to do something against it.
The trans minority specifically seems to be the ultimate scapegoat for them, since it’s such a tiny minority.
Yes exactly. The smaller the minority and the more they stand out the better. Because there is less likelyhood that they offend their own supporters, or that those actually are friends with someone from the minority and know things are not as presented.
I always ask why they are so hung up on trans people, after all they harm no one, and what they do is their business alone. It always results in some contrived reason. The point my “ex-friends” kept bringing up was their children, somehow they are harmed irreparably if they see someone who used to be a man in women’s clothes. Or that it’s not “natural” (so what, your tattoo isn’t either, or many other lifesaving medical procedures). But anyway I got sick of this discussion.
But it’s terrifying how much crap they are presented with on things like TikTok and Instagram, once they view one hate video it serves them more and more because they keep looking at them. Most of them are easily debunked but there are just so many.
Because that wouldn’t hurt vulnerable minorities in particular. It’s the old fascist technique of feeding people scapegoats on whom they can blame their troubles and take out their anger and frustration, so that they never ask whether the government might be responsible for their problems. It works best if you victimize a minority group that most people are unfamiliar with, and make it dangerous for people of that group to show their faces in public. Then the masses will never learn that they are not to be feared and hated.
Unfortunately the British people are staggeringly easy to convince that the government of the last 14 years has nothing to do with their declining quality of life over the last 14 years. It makes this scapegoating propaganda all too easy.
The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”.
It’s truly insulting that they even dare suggest that this is in the best interests of trans kids, or that it’s based on any evidence. Puberty blockers save lives.
It follows a public consultation on the issue
Since when is public opinion relevant for the availability of healthcare? Can we have expert opinions, please?
The review followed a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS)
“More people need this treatment than ever before! Better completely cut off access to it!” is such a malicious position to take. I actually don’t understand how these transphobic fucks can be so callous and insensitive.
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