I missed this interview at the time, just saw it posted on Twitter.
Turns out PP knows what he is talking about, and here at least he agrees with Transgender Trend:
amp.theguardian.com/global/2019/sep/29/philip-pullman-i-am-a-citizen-and-a-writer?__twitter_impression=true
“I got into terrible trouble a year or two ago because I said, in all innocence, ‘Look what is this quarrel between feminists and trans people? What’s the argument about?’”
He claims, rather mischievously, that he still doesn’t understand the debate about whether gender can be overthrown biologically or socially, but I suggest it’s a relevant topic to his books, in which almost all children are born with a daemon of the opposite sex, who represents the other part of them, perhaps their soul. The daemon changes animal until puberty, when it takes a fixed form and the child finds out who they really are. It does make me think about the question of trans children and blocking puberty. He turns very thoughtful about this.
“If I had a child, boy or girl, who felt passionately from an early age, manifestly that they were in the wrong body, I hope I would be understanding and as kind as possible,” he says. “What I don’t think I’d do is hasten them away to an endocrinologist. I know that if you want to transition, it is physically more plausible, or persuasive, if you do it before puberty, but is a child before puberty capable of… I mean the answer is, we don’t know, do we? We don’t know. The only thing we can do is to be as kind as possible.”