Talk by Dr Aidan Kelly (Tavistock)

[rogdmum]

This is worth a listen from around the 15 minute mark for anyone concerned about the use of puberty blockers.

Some quotes from the talk:

“We are putting responsibility back on the family because we don’t have the evidence base to say ‘it’s these kids or it’s these kids’, or how we can pick out which kids should go forward and which kids shouldn’t. “

“The blocker is not a benign thing, it comes with - I don’t mean financial costs- it comes with downsides, especially around energy- if the young person has mood difficulties the blocker can sometimes make that worse- it also takes away those sex hormones, so that whole thing I was talking about, of being attracted to, developing crushes, when all your teens and peers are getting into relationships and developing social connections in that sense- that’ll be gone, well not totally gone, but that drive that interest whether it’s the opposite or same sex or whatever will be greatly reduced. And we do worry, because we don’t have long term evidence for this. We do worry for what impact that might have on their identity because sexuality is such an important part of your identity,who you’re attracted to.”

“It can often mean you are signing up to be a patient for the rest of your life. In a way you taking what is essentially a physically healthy, you know it’s not got medical- you might say internally in terms of gender it’s not right- but medically it’s a healthy body and you’re introducing medication and making it dependent on medication, so ethically it’s really quite a complicated area, especially for children.”

“We’ve only started talking about fertility in the last 4 to 5 years. Before that, we were putting people down this pathway and actually they were coming back to us 15 years later and going, “oh, you never really said, you know.” And that’s what I mean about this being such a new area, CoS we weren’t even doing hypothalamic blockers under the age of 16 until 5 years ago. We don’t have people who are 40 to 50 to see, you know, how’s your life been, were we right to intervene so early? We don’t know.”

The issue with experts offloading all responsibility for decision making (in the absence of evidence) on the families, is that the families will be forced to rely even more on information from charities like Mermaids.

At 13.05 mins. This is what the GIDS holistic assessment is all about. Read and wonder "In terms of physical interventions, which people especially young people are really keen to know more about, what can I get, how can I get it, um we start off with something that is physically reversible, ok, so which is something called a hypothalamic blocker which basically pauses puberty it stops your body producing its naturally occurring sex hormones so for assigned males its testosterone, assigned females its oestrogen, it doesn’t further masculinize or feminize your body it just stops things progressing any further.
That won’t be offered until you are at least half way through puberty and obviously for different people that is different ages,

That’s because for lots of young people beginning puberty is a really important thing and how you integrate your identity, your idea about yourself in terms of not just gender but sexuality and other things its really important that a certain amount of puberty is allowed to occur, you’re allowed to develop an idea of who you who might be attracted to and also we know, the limited evidence that we do have in this area - which this is a massively under researched - um really its quite an experimental area - especially in terms of young people. um the limited evidence that we do have is that people, young people, before coming into puberty who express gender related difficulties - um its not clear whether that will sustain throughout puberty. its probably - the numbers people argue about the numbers but its certainly a kind of fifty fifty sort of split in terms of what we expect.

There are so many people who go through puberty and continue on to kind of express a wish or an identity with the gender that they weren’t assigned at birth but then there also the young chlldren who experiment and play and for them once they hit puberty - sorry who experiment and play with maybe things which are maybe stereotypically viewed as the other gender or a different gender sex and once they come to puberty they find a way of incorporating that identity within the body in which they inhabit.

So its really so puberty is pivotal really really important, um it’s a scary thing but it’s a really really important thing too.

So once we’ve gotten to a point where we think this is the right thing to do with the family and really often we are putting responsibility back on the family because we don’t have the evidence base to say its these kids and not these kids or how we can pick out which kids should go forwards and which kids shouldn’t and its really a holistic piece of work to make sure that it’s the young person well as much as they can the young person but with the family are thinking about everything they need to be thinking, engaging with conversations, open and honest with any difficulties which have gone on in the past just so we know if people come back to us in ten to fifteen years - not that they come back to us - but just that they think themselves and they say , you know what, I think I made the right decision for myself at that time and that’s really what our kind of holistic assessment is all about".

That’s the bit that stopped at. I’m just too angry to go back just yet. Putting the onus on a child and their nervous parents who just want to do what’s best for their child!

Not read the thread properly but listening. Teaching children how to sit? The S shape in folding their legs if they want to look like a girl? Vomit.

Gosh I've just seen this thread.

So it is almost a gay conversion therapy. If this takes away your desires, you may not get to work on your feelings and likes/ dislikes and realise you're actually gay. Hence a possible reason why all children ok blockers do transition?