Did anyone else hear Helen Webberley on R4 this morning?

Link to the Times interview (I find it easier to read a long piece in newspaper format rather than in MN)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-doctor-who-helps-kids-to-change-gender-xsw6dxc7n?shareToken=e4f913c40c9aa7c74e1a53e1485c4edf

It's interesting though, because never actually says she gets or recommends a different type of help. And forgive me for disbelieving an abused teen wanting blockers or hormones would reveal the abuse in a skype session.

So, boy, am I careful. I choose my patients really carefully. And maybe one or two will come back in the future and say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’ Be cautious, but don’t harm 99 just so the cautiousness was OK for the one.”

So right there. Right there she is admitting that there is no actual diagnosis. Only what the child says.

I have absolutely no doubt that it would be horrific to have a child who had gender dysphoria. But I can't be the only one who read that and in my head was shouting why. Why do they have gender dysphoria? What are the causes.

She seems to be saying that where she can instantly recognise a possible cause, like past sexual trauma, she doesn't prescribe.

So she eliminates people on the basis of certain circumstances. And when she can't find any to explain it away, she treats them.

I don't get it. All that says you treat people on the basis of ignorance, not knowledge.

Why aren't we throwing money, time, resources and research at the cause? Rather than relieving the symptoms.

It's this paragraph that annoys me:
"By contrast, some believe that our society hitting “peak trans” is in fact teenage girls reacting against the expectations of modern womanhood in the age of selfies and online porn.

“But we would hear that,” Webberley says. “The amount of listening we do — we have girls who have been abused by their uncle and then reject every single part of their femininity that’s been abused all those years and say, ‘I want to be a boy instead.’ That’s not gender identity. And girls who don’t feel comfortable with all the fluffy stuff, they carry on as girls, but they don’t wear skirts."

I can't even quite put into words why it annoys me.
One reason is that she is bringing abuse into this issue which is distracting from the point that is being made although I'm sure abuse is a reason for many girls but this is kind of separate to the pressure on all girls. And the other is that she seems to be implying that girls can opt out of the pressures put on them by just not wearing a skirt, which is quite stupid. I don't think she understands the point that is being made.

Hmm, that's an interesting article.

I'm not sure if it's my bias but I don't think she comes across well there. The last question is interesting. Such certainty in the reply seems overconfident.

Interview in today's Times, hope that all C&P'd properly.

The doctor who helps kids to change gender

Helen Webberley is under investigation after helping a 12-year-old to transition. Refusing to do so would have been harmful, she tells Helen Rumbelow

When I arrive at Dr Helen Webberley’s door it is hard to believe I am at the home of the woman who says she is Britain’s only private doctor to treat transgender children — and who is being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) for giving sex-change hormones to a child of 12. I mean, I’m in Abergavenny! This isn’t San Francisco or Bangkok. Inside her comfy cottage Webberley, 48, bustles about making us a nice cup of tea and I admire the photos of her three teenage children.

It’s not what I expected when I read the glowing headlines in a gay newspaper: “Hormones for 12-year-olds. Puberty-blockers without the wait. Trans healthcare available in every town — Helen Webberley has torn up the rule book and started a revolution!” or the less glowing ones in tabloids about a lone doctor offering “sex changes for tweens”.

However, it gives me a moment to say a quiet prayer of thanks that my children have not hated the sex they were born with. To see any of the recent documentaries on transgender children is to see a world of pain. Uniquely, this is a pain on which everyone seems to have an opinion. It aggravates feminists and traditionalists alike, escalating into rage about prisons, toilets and school uniform. It is like Brexit, but with genitals. Maybe in these circumstances I too would be bringing my weeping son or daughter to Abergavenny to circumvent the slowness — in the form of waiting lists and caution — of the NHS. Who knows?

“Who knows?” is the battle here. Webberley is unrepentant. In fact she attacks what she regards as the outmoded treatment that transgender kids experience on the NHS. Out of the 850 transgender people she has treated, about fifty have been under 16. For some she prescribes “puberty-blockers”. However, for a “handful” she has prescribed the sex-change hormones that can compromise future fertility. Her critics are just as sure that they know what’s best for transgender children as she is. Do people ever say to you: “First, do no harm”?

“Yes. Definitely,” she says. “First, do no harm. And doing nothing is doing harm. That’s what people find difficult to get their head around. Doing nothing seems safe — it’s not, because psychologically, suicidally, it causes a lot of harm.”

However, the fact that there are sex-change regretters around is surely enough to introduce doubts, I say. We are living in a period of experimentation, giving a generation of children the option to “switch puberties”. Dr Polly Carmichael, the lead consultant of the Tavistock Clinic in London, the only NHS treatment centre for transgender children, has said: “We don’t, and can’t, know the longer-term outcomes of these decisions.” As a result the Tavistock advocates no sex-change hormones until the age of 16. When you helped this 12-year-old genetic female to go through a male puberty, were there any doubts in your mind?

“That was a very unusual case,” Webberley says. “People reading this may think, ‘Oh my God, she must be giving all 12-year-olds this, how does a 12 year-old-know?’ And for the majority of 12-year-olds it’s completely the wrong thing to do. They’re not ready. For that family and child it was definitely the right time, 99.9 per cent the right time.”

In a way I’m jealous of her conviction, which has made her the hero of the transgender community. There is nothing zany about her. This makes her unlike Dr Norman Spack, an American paediatric endocrinologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital, who is way ahead of Webberley when it comes to confidently prescribing cross-sex hormones for children. Spack wrote in The New York Times that “mastectomies could be done at 14”. When he visited the annual conference of the British charity Mermaids, which supports transgender youths, last year he led the audience in a rendition of “The times, they are a-changin’ . . . there’s a battle outside and it is raging.”

Webberley was for most of her career a normal NHS GP, until in 2014 she set up a private practice website offering, among other things, transgender care. It was an interest of hers after ten years working in sexual health. The next morning her “inbox was full” of heartrending pleas. “I was like, ‘Woah.’ I thought this was a really rare thing.”

No one can be sure of the incidence of childhood gender dysphoria — estimates vary from 1 in 500 children to 1 in 10,000. It’s certainly disproportionate to the headlines it gathers, but still, the Tavistock had 1,400 referrals in 2015, double the number of referrals that it received the previous year, and the numbers are still rising. In 1989, when it first opened its doors to children, there were only two.

“It’s always been there, it’s just now it’s more acceptable,” Webberley says. “The adults will tell you very clearly that this is not a new thing. They knew from the first day they can remember . . . they may self-medicate as so many people do, just buy pills on the internet from Hong Kong, Thailand, India.”

You’ve got to wait until you’re 16. However much it’s killing you

Within six months of setting up her transgender practice — charging £75 to £150 an hour — parents found Webberley.

“I suppose I’ve pushed as many boundaries as a doctor would ever push,” she says. “So, transgender care, unusual, attracts attention. Children, unusual, attracts attention . . . when I started this I didn’t think, ‘Goodness, I’m going to be treating children’ . . . but I suppose it was inevitable.”

The first was a 16-year-old, and Webberley’s reaction was: “Oh God, 16, this is going to challenge me.” Now she says, “16-year-olds are easy-peasy”, but 18 months ago a desperate family contacted her about their 12-year-old. “I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I just knew it was going to cause controversy.” She was right. This year two consultants complained about her to the GMC. While it investigates she has been told that she should not treat transgender patients without a supervisor. Webberley’s practice has been paused while she finds one.

The child in question had already been prescribed what are known as “puberty-blockers” on the NHS. This is a holding treatment to delay a child’s puberty until the age of 16, when they are deemed better able to make a decision. To many, this is a compromise too far, to others, including the child’s family, it is not nearly enough.

“The thought that anybody at the school might ever find out that he was actually born a girl was hideous for them,” Webberley says. “When they came to see me in the clinic I’d never seen a child struggle so badly. “Mum was saying, ‘He won’t last, my child will not survive to 16.’ ”

Doesn’t she think the Tavistock protocol to wait until 16 for sex-change hormones is reasonable?

“If they asked me tomorrow, ‘Would you come and work in my NHS clinic with this protocol?’ I couldn’t . . . Where does 16 come from? Healthcare is not like that. If you’re 15 and you’re pregnant, you don’t have to wait until 16 to have an abortion. And the doctors won’t go, ‘Come on in, have an abortion!’ They’ll listen to you and they’ll say, ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do because you could have these other options?’ If it’s the safest thing for that young person to have an abortion, she’s allowed it. Not if you’re trans. You’ve got to wait until you’re 16. However much it’s killing you.”

Transgender teenagers often present as a mental-health emergency. In the case of transgender children, time is an enemy. Puberty changes the body in ways that are hard to reverse in adulthood. Webberley has heard several stories of children attempting to cut off penises and breasts. She once saw a 17-year-old female-to-male transgender patient who had spent years unsuccessfully waiting for puberty-blocking treatment — “they didn’t do it in time.” When he undressed “it was just awful, he was covered in self-abuse scars all over his breasts. They upset me, these images . . . going through the wrong puberty is hideous.”

Sure, I say, but for a lot of children puberty itself is hideous.

“It’s tricky. Some people say to me, ‘Teenagers hate puberty’, but they don’t want to turn it off, they just want to get through it. But these children, where it’s the right thing to pause, are the ones where the changes are causing them deep distress because they’re the wrong changes and they want them to stop.”

At present, there are more male to female transgender patients in the adult population. However, that will change — in the child population the ratio is reversed. At the Tavistock their referrals are predominantly female to male, which is also Webberley’s experience among her young patients. Why would there be a different sex ratio in teenagers? She speculates that male-to-female transgender children feel more pressure to hide.

“I’m guessing, but I imagine if you were to look at any school, it’s easier to stand up and say, ‘I feel more like a boy, I’m going to wear trousers’ than it is to say, ‘I feel like a girl and I’ll wear a skirt.’ ”

By contrast, some believe that our society hitting “peak trans” is in fact teenage girls reacting against the expectations of modern womanhood in the age of selfies and online porn.

“But we would hear that,” Webberley says. “The amount of listening we do — we have girls who have been abused by their uncle and then reject every single part of their femininity that’s been abused all those years and say, ‘I want to be a boy instead.’ That’s not gender identity. And girls who don’t feel comfortable with all the fluffy stuff, they carry on as girls, but they don’t wear skirts.

“If it’s like, ‘I got into a new crowd, got a couple of trans friends and so I think I’m going to identify as male,’ it’s no chance [of treatment]. Absolutely no chance, matey. Then you hear the story of somebody who from a really young age has identified as the opposite gender and it’s never changed, the whole family have known it was coming. Those are the people that we would consider. Not the teenager who’s having a fad with a tattoo and a piercing.”

I’ve pushed as many boundaries as a doctor would ever push

What about a future society where gender roles are more fluid, won’t that lessen the need for a medical intervention?

“Gender is a spectrum, but most of us don’t fluctuate very far. Sometimes I might feel a bit more masculine, but I don’t want to take hormones to grow a hairy chin.”

What about if it was easier for men to wear skirts and women to grow a moustache?

“We see people like that anyway. They don’t want hormones, that’s just how they express themselves. These other people . . . they want a massive swap, which feels right. And if it didn’t feel right then they wouldn’t carry on with it, but they do for the rest of their lives. And they will never forget to take their pill.”

But aren’t these children just too young to make life-changing decisions? How do you know that a child who is sure at 12 won’t become unsure at 21? It has happened before.

“Ask these people going through it and for them it’s just as serious as cancer. And by doing nothing, we’re not just saying, ‘Let’s wait.’ Their cancer for them is their puberty and it’s progressing in the wrong way and making changes to their body that they’ll never get back.”

Isn’t she haunted by the idea they may return to her in adulthood and say: “I wish I hadn’t”?

“Nobody wants to do anything as a doctor that makes changes to somebody that they’ll regret later. That’s for anything — breast reductions, sterilisations, lumps that you thought were cancerous, but they weren’t. You never want to make a mistake. So, boy, am I careful. I choose my patients really carefully. And maybe one or two will come back in the future and say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’ Be cautious, but don’t harm 99 just so the cautiousness was OK for the one.”

But, I say, you don’t know that is the proportion, do you? We’re back to what we don’t know.

“I think it is.”

Oh and should add, I would never take hormone treatment to up my female hormones either now.

I think it makes me who I am, and I would hate to be and feel different to who I am today.

The thing about same- sex hormone treatment is v interesting.

I have a high testosterone count for a female, and at one point (just as puberty hit, funnily enough) I dressed as, acted like, and pretended to be a boy.
Luckily for me, unlike a lot of women with high testosterone levels, it doesn't affect my ability to conceive, but it does give me some of the "traits" if you like.
I have severe acne, a tache, a v high sex drive and all the other shit.

If I had been 11 in 2017, I;m pretty sure I would have come under massive pressure to transition to male, and I would have jumped at the chance at that point, I hated being female, literally everything about it.
But the point is, that now, at the ripe old age of 33, I have embraced myself and am happy in my skin, and the thought of having never had the chance to experience life as I have (had I blocked puberty and transed), as a woman, even one with facial hair and shaved head, makes me really sad.

I feel for the kids, but we need to tell them, there is another way, and that transing won't fix that feeling of not belonging, being "weird" and "different".

What it took, for me, and lots of other people I know, is to embrace who you are, and to feel confident and comfortable as you are. To not think "I like 'boys' stuff, and don't like traditional 'femininity' so therefore I must be a boy" and instead think "I am a woman who breaks stereotypes, and i am proud of that".

Sorry for the rambling.

Just my musings.

Good news!

This is heartening too

"For under-16s seeking to change sex, the NHS can prescribe “blockers” that prevent development in puberty. Carmichael said most of her clinic’s child patients did not decide to go on blockers or go on to have cross-sex hormone therapy at 16"

Re fairy tales, there was once a site on the web that charted the oral history of fairy tales. I remember that one version of the original of Snow White included the dwarves being full-sized men and the locals dismissing her as a 'slut'.

So was The little Mermaid still a Mermaid after she gained her human legs, or was she now totally human, even though she lived underwater prior to drying out?

The Little Mermaid in Andersen's original story asked for a potion from the sea witch to transform her into a human. The witch in return took the mermaid's beautiful singing voice leaving her completely mute. The mermaid was warned that although she would have legs every step would feel like walking on the edge of sharp swords.

The prince she had fallen in love with found her on the shore and whilst he thought she was very lovely he was already in love with and engaged to a real woman.

The other risk she took was that if she could not win his love she would cease to exist. As mermaids are not human and do not have souls she could not have an eternal life after death and could not enter Paradise. There is a last minute reprieve where her corporeal self still dies but she is turned into a spirit of the air.

The Disney version I assume does not follow this. There was a faithful version on YouTube by Jim Henson of Muppets fame as part of his Faerie Tale series with a young Helen Mirren as the beautiful but quite unpleasant fiance of the Prince but the account is now closed.

I dont support medical transitioning before the age of 21.
The effects of puberty blockers are not reversible. Once your body has passed through the age of puberty the chance is lost. not all of the changes are reversible; girls who take testosterone have permanently changed their voice box and vocal cords, and are left with a masculine sounding voice,.

The drugs sterilise children. We should not promote sterilising children.

I too am intrigued by whether there has been any trials of giving same-sex hormones to someone with gender dysphoria, to see if that makes then feel better

I had not thought of that either, but, co-incidentally I have a family member who's just been diagnosed with extremely low testosterone - and that's only after paying for a private appointment with a consultant endocrinologist because multiple GPs hadn't even wanted to do blood tests for any of this, but instead had proscribed a variety of anti-depressants, getting out in the fresh air etc. - none of which worked, and many of which instead gave him intolerable side effects.

He was very low energy, his mental state was not up to scratch (I sometimes work with him, and had raised the with his family that he wasn't right at all compared to how he'd been previously), I can see that someone with a different personality could have latched onto whatever insecurities or hope for successful treatment was available to them.

Instead, after this appointment, he's going to be on testosterone injections for the rest of his life, but he's started feeling more himself very quickly.

Thanks enough.

Copying the article from behind the paywall;

A doctor who has given sex-change hormones to children as young as 12 has been stopped from working in the field by the medical regulator.

Dr Helen Webberley, a GP from Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, set up a private gender clinic in her home and started treating children who said they wanted to change sex.

Cross-sex hormone treatment, which Webberley has prescribed for a number of child patients, causes permanent body changes and compromises fertility. NHS guidelines do not allow it for children.

After complaints by two NHS consultants, the General Medical Council, the doctors’ disciplinary body, has begun an investigation into Webberley and imposed an order that prevents her from treating transgender patients unsupervised.

Last night she said the restriction “stops me” but was not a finding of fault.

“It’s a temporary thing while they’re investigating,” she said and blamed the inquiry on a “mafia” of consultants.

Webberley, who charges between £75 and £150 an hour, said she catered for children who had been denied sex- change treatment on the NHS and were “screaming in agony at being stuck in a puberty that isn’t right for them”.

She said she had given cross-sex hormones to four child patients. “Giving it at 12 is a very unusual situation — but if you met that child, you would say, ‘Oh my goodness, I understand that now,’” she said.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of Transgender Trend, a website for parents questioning the diagnosis and treatment of children as transgender, said Webberley was a “rogue doctor” who was giving “serious life-changing treatment” to people too young. “Children’s identities are fluid,” she said. “The medication fixes an identity in place, with girls in particular left with irreversible effects.”

Dr Polly Carmichael, of England’s only NHS gender identity clinic for children at the Tavistock Centre in north London, said: “We are talking about very young people and one of the things about young people is that their thinking changes.

“Really having consent is about the ability to fully weigh up all the options and the risks. Given the irreversibility of some of the steps, we need to be careful.”

For under-16s seeking to change sex, the NHS can prescribe “blockers” that prevent development in puberty. Carmichael said most of her clinic’s child patients did not decide to go on blockers or go on to have cross-sex hormone therapy at 16.

Webberley said: “To keep [children] pre-pubertal until they’re 16 is just killing for them, literally, because they do harm themselves.” Referrals of young people to the Tavistock Centre rose by 42% last year to more than 2,000. Of those referred, 84 were aged seven or younger, including two three-year-olds.

Transgender pressure groups have criticised NHS waiting lists and demanded an end to “arbitrary” age limits for cross-sex hormone treatment.

Webberley said she had provided medicine to 850 transgender patients, most of them adults.

Davies-Arai said the GP’s only training in the field was a one-hour online course in gender variance from the Royal College of General Practitioners designed by a transgender campaign group.

Webberley insisted she had “read everything going on gender care, met every single type of gendered person you can possibly meet and talked to different professionals from across the whole of the world to inform my practice”.

Doctor Matt, an online prescription website which is also managed by Webberley, was suspended in April for six months by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission, which said that it “did not provide safe, effective, responsive and well led services”.

The Times have a report on this today:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gp-gave-child-12-sex-change-drug-qtbqqsthz

Apparently the GMC have ordered that she is not to treat transgender children unsupervised.

I too am intrigued by whether there has been any trials of giving same-sex hormones to someone with gender dysphoria, to see if that makes then feel better. It sounds pretty outrageous and regressive - i.e. you are not masculine enough, let's give you more testosterone or you aren't feminine enough, let's try some more oestrogen. But if you think about it, that is surely far less risky (and less outrageous) than cross-sex hormones and surgery. I expect it has been tried rather horribly with unwilling patients (back in the days when transsexuals were considered some sort of evil deviant).
But if there is a biological basis to transsexualism, as some would have us believe, than same sex hormones must surely have the potential to affect one's gender identity?

ads First of all, thank you for taking the time to share your story. There was something in your account which interested me, so I hope you don't mind another question.

You mentioned in your backstory and medical history that your own testosterone levels were found to be low when you had blood tests. If we can set aside any reservations about the potential for increased masculinisation temporarily, do you not think from a medical standpoint that it would have been more ethical to seek to normalise your testosterone levels first to see if that addressed your 'out of sorts/wrong body' feelings rather than moving straight to cross-sex hormones, which is a long term intervention with associated health risks?

This is the thing that bothers me - that alternative, less harmful interventions are not considered. In other fields of medicine, less invasive, less harmful treatments are usually attempted first before resorting to the forms of treatment that carry the greatest risk of harm. No doubt you will cite suicide stats, but there is also evidence that cross-sex hormones and even surgery do not alleviate the emotional distress and dysmorphia of some transgender patients, so it is not even clear the push for transition has a firm evidence base. I find this whole area of practice ethically troubling, concerns which are greatly magnified when minors are involved.

Nooka and Buttery
You're totally spot on. There was some information from the GMC a few years ago about GPs prescribing these drugs while patients were waiting to see a specialist. All the GPs I know thought that was inappropriate. We are not specialists and would not routinely prescribe these drugs even for their licensed indication, let alone in an area fraught with so many uncertainties and potentially serious outcomes. On the information available I'm also surprised another GP would prescribe these drugs on her say so. While understanding and compassion is great it does not necessarily equate to doing the right thing.

nooka I also thought that about another GP prescribing the drugs under Webberley's direction. If I were the other GP I wouldn't want to do anything like that. You as the patient's GP are taking all the risks (professionally). Perhaps they accept Webberley as an expert. But I would be very uncomfortable about doing so.

nooka

So, it's not illegal what she's doing, just perhaps unusual?

I don't understand how Dr Webberley can be described as a specialist. She is a GP. GPs are generalists. She has the appropriate qualifications to be a GP, that is a Bachelor of Medicine, and membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners and she also is listed on various articles as having a sexual and reproductive health care specialism at the primary care level, although I see from her website that she does is not currently on the specialist register. She is not an endocrinologist, psychologist or psychiatrist. On her website there are three certificates displayed. One of them 'Gender Variance' is a one hour e-learning module produced for the RCGP by GIRES.

I am surprised that another GP would prescribe under her direction drugs that are usually overseen by a consultant. I would have thought that they would be concerned about liability.

ads, I don't want to tear you down, and I'm glad that you've found the help you need to get on with your life. Truly, I am. I believe that gender dysphoria exists, and that people need help to conquer it.

But I have to disagree with you on a couple of things. I have been on the drugs they use as puberty blockers (as an adult, for different reasons). These are powerful drugs, with lasting side effects. It's simply not true to say that their effects are "easily reversible". That's not true when it's adults who are taking them, and we simply have no idea of the long term effects on children's bodies. The people who assured you that they are harmless simply have no basis on which to say that. I'm sorry that you have been misled.

The second thing I have to disagree with you is that young people under 18 are able to form adult opinions on the course of the rest of their lives with a complete understanding of the long terms effects of extremely invasive medical treatment. I don't want to patronise you, but truly you will see as you get older that things that appeared as certainties to the 17 year old you might look quite different to 30 year old you. It's the duty of adults around you to protect you from harming yourself before you're able to take full responsibility for yourself. Much as it might seem restrictive or regressive.

ads
Puberty blockers are not reversible at all. That's a lie.
As I became more accepting of that fact, I began to admit to myself that the way I felt was female, and not any other gender. Sorry, it's a very odd thing to try and articulate!

Look, ads it's not possible to 'feel female'. Female is a sex category, not a feeling. Female is the fact of having a female body. It's not a gender identity. As a male person, you cannot feel female, any more than you can feel like a cat.
What you felt is intensely uncomfortable being male. That's ok. It's ok to take hormones if you are fully informed as to the life long effects (for which you need to be an adult, not a teenager). The issues that feminists have with trans people is when they insist they they 'feel' the opposite sex.

ads26

The fact that you would say "[p]uberty blockers have reversible effects" means that you were misled or just not informed.
Read anything about Lupron and you will see that it is a serious drug with serious side effects, its not something to be taken flippantly and it says a lot that you would claim such. Lupron's use as a puberty blocker is off label and has never been studied, it was first given to trans children in 2007, so those children are only maturing now but I implore you to read the harm that it has done to children to whom it was given for precocious puberty. In America the FDA has launched an investigation because of the side effects it has produced in this off label usage, there are more than 10,000 complaints to the FDA and that is just the tip of the iceberg. I wish you the best in your journey but please stop spreading misinformation.

Heres a quote from an article about Lupron:
" If the FDA reaches any conclusions, Derricott would like to know. She says she took Lupron from age 5 to 12 to shut down early puberty. At 30, she’s among the first patients who took the drug — even before it was approved for pediatric use. She says now that she’s had more surgeries than her 79-year-old father, and suffers from a blood disorder and bone and joint problems.“Excuse my language, but it’s hell,” she said."

www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

www.consumeraffairs.com/news/new-report-describes-dangers-of-giving-lupron-to-kids-020317.html

Did your doctor contact your parents and the relevant clinics to confirm the information that you were giving her? I wonder what the response would be for a 17 year old approaching this clinic who had not been in contact with specialists/clinics beforehand? Would there be more counselling and contact? I guess those aren't questions you can answer though.

In my opinion, 12 year olds are never going to be in the position to understand the full implications of taking cross-sex hormones. They should be protected from making permanent changes to their bodies in the same way as they are protected from making other decisions that lead to permanent changes.