Ban on puberty blockers to be made indefinite on experts’ advice

Thankyou for sharing. It sounds like you're going through an extremely difficult time and I'm sorry it's such a tortuous landscape to negotiate.

Would you like to hear what someone who did take PB's has to say on the subject?

The fact that so many on here are so confident the trials won't take place when they are due to start recruiting in 4/8 weeks time, the proposed protocols have been shared by the nhs and Wes said yesterday the trials would not be capped... really really worries me.

There is no consensus that no gender confused children require blockers except on here. Cass did not conclude this.

Genspect are trying to challenge the trials but even they aren't arguing no children should be given puberty blockers because they can't produce that evidence because it doesn't exist. Even though it seems bloody obvious to us.

Agreement we're right on here does not translate into medical consensus and policy.

Cass supported the idea of gender identity and some children benefitting from blockers. So the door to test that hypothesis is now open.

The new clinics are hugely compromised. We have no idea the extent to which the medical professions have been captured. The belief that it'll all be fine now because of medical ethics was what allowed the Tavi to happen. The trust in doctors to be ethical and rational was a mistake.

Wes and Cass have said they'll be no limit to the numbers on these trials.

The clinics are run by clinicians who believe in the notion of a trans child and are part of wpath.

Yes we're in a better position now to scrutinise and challenge, and to do that we need to get our heads out of the sand in thinking it's all over and vulnerable children now won't be given puberty blockers.

We still have this 'evidence' hoop to jump through, and more children are going to be harmed in getting that evidence.

If you listened to us then you would know.

Did IW take PB? Are they a medical professional or research scientist? or are they someone who went through male puberty, fathered a child and then transitioned.
How is their lived experience relevant to whether or not children should be put on medication that suppresses puberty with potential irreversible consequences?

How can there be a benefit, in any other way that immediately short term and psychological, for anyone in blocking a natural bodily process - for goodness sake - and then adding in hormones in quantities not suited to the natural constitution?

Dysphoria turns into short term Euphoria - and then reality sets in.

I'm going to add a personal note to this thread. I have a difficult day ahead of me tomorrow (meeting in school... related to the wider subject of gender identity) and I need to vent.

Why do I specifically need to vent today on this thread?

I'm so fucking angry. Partly about my meeting tomorrow but that's by the by. My meeting is about safety and fairness in relation to mixed sex sports in school. I mentioned on a previous thread that my daughter had been injured by a spiked volleyball that was hit by a boy. She's lucky that the net took most of the impact (she was playing at the front of the court, right by the net) and that all she was left with was a black eye, broken glasses and a cut to the eye from the broken glasses arm. It could have been a lot worse. Anyway. That's not why I'm really angry right now.

My specific anger today is because I came as close to losing my temper as I have so far, but I managed to rein it in. If I can't control my anger, I'll be "proving" that I'm a threat to my daughter, such is the well trodden playbook that so many parents will be familiar with.

My daughter desperately needs counselling. Not for gender identity issues, she's no longer actively gender questioning. She needs counselling because she's really struggling with adolesence. She's autistic and struggling with friendships. She's hurting because friendships go wrong. She gets overwhelmed and sometimes this can lead to a meltdown, especially if her anxiety is already high (which it is because she's baffled by how friendships work) and there is a trigger at just the wrong moment.

Previously she resisted counselling but now she's ready. Annoyingly, she's very specific about which counselling service she wants to go to, but we're working with that as it's better than complete refusal.

I've been trying to speak to the counselling service for a couple of months now to talk about her safeguarding needs around gender identity and autism conflation. They finally contacted me by email on Friday. Telling me that they had a space for her this week on Monday. Obviously we can't take that space until we know that the counsellor who will work with her understands that when my daughter talks about hating her breasts, and that she finds sex based stereotypes confusing and unnecessary, and that there's lots of stuff in school and online about this kind of thing, the counselling is not "neutral" if the counsellor isn't aware of the Cass Report. My daughter will mostly want to talk about friendships, but as she builds a rapport with her counsellor, I have no doubt that she'll share some of the things she still talks to me about regarding breasts, periods and how she hates how puberty has changed everything. She was happy as she was.

They phoned me today. I've been told we risk losing the place if we don't take the counselling now. But what made me really angry is that the lady I spoke to told me that they have lots of experience talking to autistic girls about their feelings (confidentially of course), that the Cass Report has no relevance to their counselling service and had I considered that my concerns were actually related to my own anxiety about my daughter growing up and finding her own identity. They offered me counselling to help with this.

For fuck's sake.

I shouldn't have to work this hard to safeguard my daughter and to get her the care that she needs to help her navigate the twists and turns of being an adolescent autistic girl.

Butterfly, I think you got some of my anger because of what you said about how we already know what the results of the trial will be. You didn't deserve all my anger, so that's why I added the edit. If you genuinely have experienced debilitating feelings of gender dysphoria (I'll take it at face value that you have) that must be awful. But that doesn't mean your experience invalidates the concerns of parents like me. Or of women who don't want TW identifying into women's sports, spaces and services and other similar things that I've seen you comment on.

I see Willoughby is spreading lies about PBs being totally safe,,,

I see Willoughby is spreading lies about PBs being totally safe,,,

I see Willoughby is spreading lies about PBs being totally safe,,,

I see Willoughby is spreading lies about PBs being totally safe,,,

Thank you.

Sounds like you may have dodged a problematic counsellor there tbh. I think no counselling is preferable to bad counselling.
Hope things go OK tomorrow at your meeting.

I agree.

We've been in this position before but things were a lot worse. When she was actively gender questioning and in the throes of a huge mental health crisis, we had to refuse care from CAMHS because of how she had been misrepresented in their paperwork. The hospital CAMHS team said she "identified as a boy". They later clarified that she never did and we eventually entered the CAMHS pathway. She's not at that same crisis point now. We got through that 2 years ago so we'll get through this.

Re tomorrow, I shall be back to being my reasonable self 😁 Each sport should be validated on its merit to decide whether it should be mixed or single sex. There's plenty of available guidance about this for schools.

The first thing they should do is follow up on all the children who have already had them prescribed, see how they're getting on. I believe there are thousands.

TRAs have blocked that from happening.

The announcement of an indefinite ban is a step forward.

There are multiple threads to what happens next.

The first is proposed puberty blockers trial which in practice may or may not happen. We shall see. Even if it does happen [horribly unethical] we know what it will show definite evidence of real physical and mental damage from puberty blockers, alongside dubious positive benefits.

The second is the assembly of evidence from those who have already taken the blockers. Previously this data was not gathered under the Tavistock, but this information gathering is starting to happen. We shall hear about the results. They are going to be negative of course for the most part.

Thirdly and perhaps most importantly is the political element. It seems to me Streeting is using the TAs own weapons against them in the way they used moderate language to shift ground and undermine women for years. Notice most TAs regard Streeting as basically being Hitler while rhetorically he appears to give ground to them in certain ways. The thing is time is on his side. Their extreme anti-Streeting hatred undermines their ability to influence policy. The TAs are basically undermining the gender moderates, actually far more dangerous than many TAs because they seem more reasonable, by either pushing them to break with Streeting or become EVIL themselves.

Streeting can say he is open to new evidence over time, but the TAs will not provide anything, because they have nothing. Remember the BMA council saying they would have evidence by Xmas that Cass was wrong. Nothing turned up so far.

By the time the ban is reviewed in 2027, there will be nothing new, BUT the evidence that they are a disaster will be even better documented. So Streeting can look even more reasonable.

This political element is key. Note the SNP see the writing on the wall. They have caved already. So that leaves the Lib Dems, Plaid and the Greens who might be fighting the 2028 election on pushing for experiments on kids or instead come round to saying Streeting was right all along. Politically this is a useful wedge issue for Labour. On other issues center/left parties have serious criticisms of Labour, but this is an issue where they can potentially morally grandstand and also neutralise some right wing rhetoric too.

Personally I think Streeting peaked long ago. He is a clever politician though and knows that seeming moderate is in the long term beneficial for him. He wants to be Prime Minister.