Blockers Blocked - Over To Labour
I remember exactly where, if not exactly when, I heard about puberty blockers. It was sometime in the noughties in a gay pub in London - remember them? - and the person who told me was a friend of very long standing whose judgment I’ve always respected.
‘They’re sort of a pause button,’ she said, ‘so that kids get a chance to stop and think and sort themselves out.’
And I remember exactly the reaction I had, under the surface. That this could not be right - that interfering with puberty must be a dangerous thing, that medical interventions on kids who don’t behave like ‘normal’ girls or boys was obviously, blatantly wrong, that this was validating prejudice and conformity.
But I swallowed it and nodded along. Because other parts of my brain kicked in, telling me I must have it skewiff. Surely doctors and psychiatrists must know what they’re doing, and know their job better than I possibly could? They couldn’t be basing this ‘treatment’ on hokey old assumptions about sex stereotypes, not nowadays, could they? And there must be research and evidence, and trials and double-blind trials and testing, and reams of data and all that kind of stuff, mustn’t there? Medical professionals don’t stick children on major drugs that interfere with their growth at a vital stage, not on a whim, do they? GPs fuss and fidget about handing out tiny little diazepams or statins, after all, so it was hardly likely that proper doctors would be prescribing dangerous and unnecessary drugs to children.
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