Puberty Suppressing Hormones, House of Commons, Wes Streeting taking a firm and intelligent stand

These are from the group's Instagram

Climbing up & down the building to hang a banner, fortunately not as high as the DfE building she did this to at their previous camping trip

I’ve heard of free range kids but that’s frankly ridiculously lax parenting.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/65702/1/young-trans-activists-trans-kids-deserve-better-wes-streeting-office
Looks like at least one of the 🦊 killer's trans kids was camping outside Streetings office last night.

Good stuff. I'm glad this Labour Government are focused on harm reduction and safeguarding children.

I know MPs are busy people but the knowledge level among the MPs was not impressive. Some of them were making statements with out of date information and some were making statements with info that seemed to have been given to them by lobbying orgs. The discussion in the HoC feels behind the times considering how the discussion has moved on in the wider world. The public seem to be ahead of their representatives on this (and other) issues.

Have none of these MPs thought to read widely on this important subject?

That is true Born

Hadn't got that far utopia. Good for him.

Certainly the general discussion seems to be that a trial will be favoured.

There seems to have been zero homework done by any of them. It's bonkers

It'll be interesting double think for Labour to support a clinical trial of drugs they have described as a scandal. I wonder if ongoing medical negligence cases in the USA will have a bearing on the feasibility of a clinical trial. I predict that in about in 10 years time there will be a flurry of publications comparing the puberty blocker era to frontal lobotomies - and not favourably.

I would need to go back and watch it again, but it’s possible to both acknowledge that the trans community - for want of a better expression - are indeed at the less desirable end of the mental health spectrum, with the attendant risk of suicide, and make it clear that the suicide rhetoric is reprehensible.
Gender dysphoria seems to coexist with other MH conditions that put individuals at risk, but it’s the underlying poor mental health that increases both the suicide risk and the gender dysphoria - no causal link between the two. I thought he was treading a very fine line, or trying to.

Currently watching my way through the statement to the House, and so far I’ve got the impression from some of the MPs asking questions that they believe the clinical trial will obviously produce results in favour of prescribing puberty blockers for gender incongruence and that they just want the trial out of the way as soon as possible.

Everyone talking about ‘building an evidence base’ seems to mean evidence in favour of blockers, they don’t seem to be considering that the findings might be negative.

I did like the (very nervous sounding) Labour MP who asked if Streeting could investigate how the NHS began prescribing PBs without doing proper research beforehand - he made an excellent point that prescribing what is considered to be a panacea doesn’t always work out in hindsight.

I thought the tone of the debate was much more measured than in the past but too many MPs were virtue signalling with their questions (catastrophising statements and all) rather than taking a curious and cautious approach as to how the NHS has got itself into this situation.

He may well have been advised (and did mention it a few times) that this announcement was going to mentally affect young people (and parents) who truly believe in them,

And so his speech may well have been over egged around holistic care etc.

It was a shame that it no point did anyone say "they were never truly legally allowed in the first place."

I'm not sure what his true intentions were but he didn't half look irritated and fed up with some of the (clearly stupid) questions.

I am so glad this seems to have moved to being an evidence-based healthcare issue rather than a magic ideology issue (well, by the health secretary at least - and a Labour health secretary at that).

I haven't listened to any of it yet but I'm wondering if perhaps he's making a distinction between the general low mental health (and suicide risk associated with this) of people who identify as trans, without implying which causes which, and the clear rebuttal to all the hyperbole that preceded the Louis Appleby investigation into whether suicide was linked to PBs being stopped or not.

I'm basing this purely on the Guardian quote I shared above. Nobody is denying that people who identify as trans often have poor mental health, which in itself can sadly lead to outcomes like suicide. But the TRAs always position it one way round.

Obviously I may be wide of the mark, having not listened to it yet.

2.25 ish on the film of yesterdays debate, after Nadia Whittome, Wes does give a blistering rebuttal re using suicide rhetoric from online sources. He quotes a paper published last summer and reminds members of the house to not stir up drama (my words) with unsubstantiated bs from social media.

The quotes he takes from that are at odds with what he says in his main speech.

@ScrollingLeaves I agree with you. Obviously girls who struggle don't have to have gender dysphoria or be transgender to feel that way. The point I'm trying to make is that such a struggle is not universal and that if girls in general are encouraged to see puberty as a natural and desirable progression towards adulthood it might be easier to help girls who do struggle with body and emotional changes to go with the flow. As it is - and perhaps I feel this way because of the focus on the struggling ones - I wonder if girls are being expected to see it as a struggle and a challenge and thereby making it a bigger thing than it needs to be.

I think the key is to acknowledge that some girls (whether neurodivergent or allistic) will struggle with the changes puberty brings and some won't.

Being distressed by your body changing is a perfectly valid and normal female response to puberty for anyone, as is welcoming it or sailing through.

If a girl wants to stop her periods couldn’t she simply take contraceptive pills?

I understand that autistic girls may struggle with this, and I definitely remember 13 year old peers of mine who felt afflicted by developing larger breasts earlier, precisely because of that unwanted attention. But I don't think it's helpful to girls in general if we automatically assume pubertal changes are a huge challenge rather than a natural progression in growing up. I have a 24 year old SGD and an almost 13 year old DGD, both of whom started their periods at 11 and very much took it all in their stride.