Puberty blockers are basically the same thing as cutting away children's daemons, right?

[QOFE]

(As in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials)

This was the conclusion DP and I came to after an hour long discussion yesterday.

It's scarily similar.

Good analogy.... Yes, that seems to fit.

Yes, that works ok. But if the child and the daemon choose to separate (as in The Amber Spyglass and La Belle Sauvage) is that equivalent to accepting you don't follow gender stereotypes but being OK with it and understanding you are either gay or, you know, just a girl who likes football.

Puberty blockers create a eunoch.

Mmm, I also think being cut off from your daemon is a bit more serious, it is losing touch with your soul, isn't it? So yes, death of a child, accidentally killing someone, type stuff.

It's a good analogy. The reason for cutting away a daemon was to keep the person in a child-like state forever: no critical thought, no depth of intellectual thinking - whether through creativity, scientific thought or reason. Putting a child on puberty blockers does essentially the same thing: doesn't allow their brain to fully mature, thus keeping them in a child-like state of mind.
(It - severing - also kept adults docile, placid, unthinking and unquestioning...)

but when Lyra leaves Pantalaimaeon (sp) she does it because she has to, it's a brave thing to do (can't quite remember why) and they are re united
maybe that's the difference between seperating voluntarily and being seperated against your will

and the purpose for the cutting was to provide energy, wasn't it

As maplecat says, the cutting was done to keep children as children, to stop them developing into adults. It prevented them from discovering sex and therefore kept them innocent.

Trans activists would say that puberty blockers (and then cross-sex hormones) allow a child to become their 'true authentic selves' but how can you be your authentic adult self if you haven't been through puberty?

Ah but your daemon IS yourself isn't it? So the cutting (intercision I think it's called in the books) is to do with severing your maturation and connection with yourself. The daemon stays with those who have been cut, but as described in one of the books it is then a "pet". Tame and tagging along but unaware and undeveloped. Choosing to seperate yourself from your daemon is a different thing altogether because you are exercising your own free will to do so and accepting the discomfort freely.

I personally think going through puberty is an absolutely essential part of growing into yourself - it's how you settle yourself within your body and forge your identity and sexuality.

So I still think it's a very similar process.

That’s a very interesting analogy!

I was a bit pissed at midnight last night and couldn't remember the word I wanted.

It was reconcile .

Puberty is this huge massive change in your body and it can be a deeply uncomfortable time BUT it's what you need to go through to reconcile yourself to your adult body and sexuality. There's no such thing as the "wrong puberty" - your body is your body and it has to reach maturity. Puberty is the process by which that happens. It's essential IMO for you to experience that development.

So puberty blockers stop that. They cut off that development and those feelings and potentially the reconciliation that comes at the end of those difficult years. It severs the child from their growing awareness and sexuality and halts their physical sexual development. And that's the same thing that "intercision" intended.

And then we end up with Jazz Jennings - no functional sexual organs, anorgasmic, completely cut off from their own reality and denied the chance of that eventual reconciliation.

Indeed, QOFE. It is deeply, deeply sad.