"Pausing Puberty" on Radio 4

[QuaterMiss]

This programme on hormone blocking drugs is on R4 at 11am this morning.

(I won't be able to listen til later.)

If the parents are unsure of the science, and who can blame them, given so many professional people appear very unclear on some of the basics, one would expect that the professionals treating the child at the gender clinic would make time to explain about how vanishingly unlikely it is that some time in the next ten or twenty years a natal male will carry a baby to term and give birth.

How many other healthy male-bodied 17yos of normal intelligence would be unaware what an orgasm is like?

I wonder, as an aside, if this is what gets most teenagers through puberty. Advantages outweighing disadvantages? Likewise, finding you have a good body for sports or rockclimbing or dance or something rather than what you see on social media. Having fun with it (oxytocin and stuff)

Yes, perhaps especially boys. My impression is that being gender nonconforming and/or gay is often a lot tougher for boys because stepping outside the man box (to borrow Michael Conroy's useful phrase) is harshly punished. But at least as they go through puberty they end up tall and strong and in possession of this great new toy which so many of them become obsessed with.

It's a long slog for girls to get through puberty, though, as the female sexual response typically takes a lot longer to mature and meanwhile there are all the other obvious problems to navigate through - unwanted male attention etc etc etc.

I posted on another thread - I am astonished that all the individual trans children discussed were boys wanting to be girls. So when they were talking about fertility loss, they talked about how horrible it was for the trans child to have to masturbate to produce sperm for future use and didn’t even mention what girls would have to go through. This despite the fact that girls far outnumber boys in wanting to transition, with the gap increasing all the time.

They really don’t give a toss about girls, do they.

They were careful not to use the word sterilisation as well, but that in effect is what they were talking about is a suitable roundabout way.

5/10 BBC. Must try harder.

Puberty blockers are being used off label. They should be careful about the claims they make, and warn people that the outcome is they will be sterile.

Except they don’t want to be careful, because the claims to date are being eaten up by the general public and lending them support. I see countless people buy hook, line, and sinker (and repeat) that “puberty blockers” are perfectly safe and reversible and it accusing thaf those asking for more precautions are wholly ignorant about what a safe option they are to allow a “child to decide” what they want.

Link to complain about this to the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

Bittermints, you've outlined pretty much what I put in my complaint to the BBC - though you've put in more because there's not enough space on their form for everything. I referred them to Transgender Trend after pointing out that the whole thing started and continued from an acceptance of trans ideology, with the idiocy of 'assigned at birth', and that they seemed to happily assume that the correlation of trans/gender non-conforming feelings and mental health problems was a causative one of 'if we don't give them what they demand they'll be seriously mentallyl ill" rather than the alternative causation of "children and adults who don't feel good or quite right about themselves will grab at something that appears to be an easy 'solution', in other words the mental health issue precedes the notion of being trans". Please, please, do put in a complaint - they need to get lots of them.

Really pertinent thread about the 'transition now or there will be calamity' narrative from a US doctor: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1089974023709110275.html

Incidentally, did anyone hear the afternoon play this afternoon? About two women who fell in love as teenagers, met again years later and one had transitioned. They started kissing and then the other one confessed she had had enough of they/them pronouns herself and wanted to transition. The one who had already transitioned was upset because he only fancies women.

I had to go out after that so no idea whether he managed to get over himself

I've taped it on the TV, but can't actually listen now, I don't think.

Could it be that even having the discussion on the BBC is a step forward?

I'm so worried that, not only will the children be sterile and have no sex life, but that their brains remain childlike.

I have yet to see a young adult who has been on puberty blockers, who acts like a young adult.

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

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.

Hah! I almost linked the play too - but was worried people would think I'm obsessed.

Found it rather disappointing, and didn't really take in the ending as was distracted by rl.

Fabulous critique of the earlier programme Bittermints.

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.

What about this point of view:



Oops - here it is now:

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

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

Thank you

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.

Dr nor Er.

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.

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'.

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.

Especially since one of them was Diane Ehrensaft.

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