Jane Fae “Puberty blockers just pause puberty”
WPUK article by women experts working in the field.
'The 'Natal Female' Question'
Notes to the reader:
We write this as experienced clinicians who have worked in the sole NHS clinic for children and adolescents presenting with distress around their gender identity and their sexed bodies. We have chosen to publish here, rather than a peer reviewed journal, to ensure greater reach than those journals achieve. Also, we publish here in solidarity with WPUK who are currently in the receipt of defamatory accusations of transphobia – accusations also levelled at us.
(extract)
"The distress of their body seems to accrue over time for these young females; it was not primary. Socially transitioning might even have an iatrogenic effect on gender dysphoria as the body becomes a shameful secret that needs to be disavowed – we see embodied disconnection and alienation snowball. We are now hearing first hand from detransitioners that, had they not found this relatively novel way of understanding their difficulties (inevitably with the assistance of the internet) through the explanation of ‘trans’, the natural history would suggest they would find themselves living as lesbians. Furthermore, how they looked, lived and loved needed no apology.
In summary, in the clinic we witness this toxic collision of factors: a world telling these children they are ‘wrong’; they are not doing girlhood (or boyhood) correctly. They realise their nascent sexual desire is going to be problematic; they struggle in puberty because it is uncomfortable, weird and unpredictable (particularly heightened if they happen to be on the autistic spectrum).
In all of our good-willed attempts to be empathetic, to share the pain of these very young people, we adults must not lose sight of the risk of joining too closely with them. Their pain is real, their way of making sense of it may be helpful, but it may not. Adults and professionals have a duty to step back from the feelings, whether their own or the young people’s, in order to consider what is fundamentally in young people’s interests. Listening can occur at many levels. We can hear and respond to distress without agreeing with the other person’s explanation of why they are experiencing it.
The significant treatment decisions being made are adult decisions. It is simply not possible for a child or adolescent to conceptualise a loss of fertility or sexual pleasure before they have developed their adult body." (continues)
womansplaceuk.org/2020/02/17/the-natal-female-question/