"Pausing Puberty" on Radio 4

In theory 'puberty blockers' are reversible, in practise it appears not. I suspect this is partly, if not mainly, because vital brain development required to become a bit more at ease with yourself does not occur. There really needs to be more studies done on this.

Was DIane E one of the 'experts' on the radio Programme?

Yes.

Felt sorry for the mum, what a situation to be in. Impossible to know if pubety will actually help the dysphoria or make it worse.

GPs (private or nhs) must not be allowed to prescribe blockers. If the Tavistock are that strict, then it's clearly a very specialist area.

Was DIane E one of the 'experts' on the radio Programme?

Ha, whenever it's posted I expect people to say "we've all seen it dozens of times" but it always turns out that some people haven't seen it and they are gobsmacked.

Share it more!

Nauticant

That video- I'm lost for words! You're right, if more people get to see such lunacy then surely more will start to realize just how ridiculous some trans activist arguments are, and that such groups should not be pressuring and shaping public policy.

I've just listened to this and, whilst I totally take on board the criticisms, I thought it wasn't bad, especially the Tavistock's stance. There was far more focus on the downsides than might have been expected. I hated the last 5 minutes, though, with the dodgy suicide stats and appeals to the better a live daughter than a dead son viewpoint. And, yes, all about passing.

It always the case that one finds wanting articles or programmes like this when one knows something about the matter in hand. Having read stuff within my professional interest that made me enraged that people were paid for producing such guff, I thought it was cautionary enough for the audience.
We've heard far more imbalanced work, with not one element of GC concerns aired at all.

The program was repeated on R4 this evening.

I hadn;t realised it was a repeat so started a new thread which I've asked MN to delete as duplicates.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3499457-Radio-4-Pausing-Puberty-investigation-into-puberty-blockers

American doctor who regularly lays out the consequences of pharmacological intervention in children.
twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1090265287654424576

Yes I did wonder why the presenter was American and it continually referenced standards of treatment from America.
I was heartened to hear that the Tavistock seem to have quite a high bar for agreeing to prescribe blockers. But concerned that non specialist Drs and GPs might do so, muddling along, in the face of lack of guidance combined with demands from patients. Hopefully most have more sense.

Especially since one of them was Diane Ehrensaft.

It's a very shared link but the more people see this the better.

Jason Barker is presumably the one publicising their experiences of 'being a pregnant man', so is unsurprisingly gung-ho about the joys of transgender adulthood.

I became suspicious of the doctors interviewed in the Radio 4 documentary when I heard their American accents. Medical treatment is very profit-driven over there and I'm not sure how unbiased their views were they were wheeled out as the 'experts'.

Radio 4 had 3 items/programmes on yesterday with the focus on 'Gender confusion'

11.00 Pausing Puberty
2.15 : Chopsticks : 'Joanne and Pauline were teenage bridesmaids when they first fell in love. 20 years on, they are Joel and Blaise. Drama about love and identity by Jason Barker and Ellie Kendrick'4 I missed the first 10 mins of this , and did not have a clue who was who and who. It was full of shite Gender, Bingo 101.
4.30 : A Good Read : one book discussed was 'Argonauts' by Maggie Nelson. "The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language."
The conclusion of the discussion was that we can all be who we want to be and anyone who asks questions, ought to realise it isn't about them and they should shut up.

I wonder what lessons we will be taught today, on the good old Beeb.

Dr nor Er.

The poor child that thought he would actually become a girl. And his mum told him that wasn't likely so he disappeared off and came back and said 'well we don't know what science will be able to do in future'.

Lots of Ers believe themselves Gods and many view science as a religion. Science a theory that's not always proven.

Thank you

It was a letter to the Journal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

Solo - do you know where that's from? I think it would be good to use in the complaint

Oops - here it is now:

What about this point of view:



Just caught up with this on the way home from work.
I noted the doctor talking about bone density said he hadn't seen evidence of more fractures.
Which is surely a bit ridiculous - a child pre puberty doesn't have more fractures. Surely the point of the increase in bone growth is partly the increase in height that happens during puberty (do all these children who are on blockers and then cross sex hormones end up considerably shorter than they might otherwise have been?). And partly creating strong bones for the future. Osteoporosis happens in old age partly due to hormonal changes, especially in women post menopause. And old people have more fractures because their mobility is poor and they have falls. So I would hardly expect to see more fractures in a child that has been treated with puberty blockers. Not that I know anything.

To be fair Datun, they did talk about brain development and that it could/probably did have a negative impact ie brain development could be arrested. But there was a lot of 'well we don't really know, we need to do more research'. The fact that they're carrying out that research on live children was rather glossed over. And of course the 'I'd rather have a live daughter than a dead son' trope followed hot on the heels of all the potential negatives.

Spoiler re the play, they decided they were both chopsticks and they got back together again.