Epside 84: Puberty Blockers and Medical Violence Against Gay People

Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week announced Labour will uphold the UK ban on puberty blockers. We discuss Wes's political history of taking flack from LGBT groups, explore why gender non-conforming kids might view puberty blockers as a barrier to the onslaught of demonisation that gender non-conformity elicits (beyond the usual reason of a Munchausen by Proxy parent enforcing a trans identity on a child). We also comment on the pure and total horror gender non-conforming lesbians often receive from feminine heterosexual women, who genuinely think we would be better off cosplaying as straight men (as they are of highest value in their eyes) and how their endorsement and promotion of transgenderism is partly a sop to their own hostility. For men and women invested in traditional gender norms, puberty blockers are understood as a hope for the future, where children who would likely grow up to by gay, are instead given the 'golden opportunity' of replicating the superior lives of those traditionalist heterosexuals who believe gender non-conformity to be a disease or medical problem to solve in the first place. The effect of 'transing' a child is also a message to other children about the absolute essentialism of gender. It sets up a pathologisation of all other gender non-conforming kids around the 'trans child', working as a political statement that seeks to ensure absolute conformity to gender norms, or risk being considered defective, and in need of urgent corrective medical intervention.We discuss examples of girls 'transitioned' in childhood who are bald and miserable by age 28, and women who have phalloplasties no longer being able to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time due to pain, or ride a bicycle as can’t grip the handlebars anymore. That true picture of cultural sadism, personal misery, and quasi-eugenics taking place through puberty blockers as the first step on the conveyer belt to the destruction of gay people's health and sexual function, often makes it hard to believe it can possibly be true. However, public awareness since the Cass Review combined with adults 'transed' as children documenting their heath disasters on social media, means no one can any longer claim ignorance when tribunals arrive.