Mick Hartley

More gender ideology woo from Scientific American, this time pushing the benefits of puberty blockers:

Adolescence can be a uniquely distressing time for young transgender people, who often experience gender dysphoria: a discrepancy between the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender that matches who they are. During this period, hormone production increases, leading to secondary sexual characteristics such as facial hair and breasts. The irreversible, slow-motion physiological changes can be emotionally and mentally disturbing, leading to depression, social withdrawal, self-harm and a risk of suicide. Hormonal medications called gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHas), often referred to as puberty blockers, temporarily halt the production of sex hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone with minimal side effects. They can pause puberty and buy transgender children and their caregivers time to consider their options.

These medications are well studied and have been used safely since the late 1980s to pause puberty in adolescents with gender dysphoria….

Medication that pauses puberty, specifically, has the power to prevent a mental health crisis, making the treatment a “profoundly meaningful intervention” for a young person and their family, says Meredithe McNamara, an adolescent medicine physician at the Yale School of Medicine. “Puberty-blocking treatment is probably one of the most compassionate things that a parent can consent to for a transgender child.” It allows transgender children and their families the opportunity to weigh their options carefully, without the constant pressure of physical changes, she says.

The assumption right from the start is that there are transgender children who need medical help – children born in the wrong body, with "a discrepancy between the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender that matches who they are". This is straight gender ideology. How do you know they have gender dysphoria? Because they play with the wrong toys, according to strict gender stereotypes? Because they're miserable, and have been persuaded on social media that all their problems will be solved if they somehow decide to change sex? Far from being "probably one of the most compassionate things that a parent can consent to for a transgender child", this is absolutely a dereliction of every duty of parental care. Just let them be! Let them grow through puberty and resolve whatever problems they have, as teenagers have always done, by the natural business of growing up and maturing.

And of course puberty blockers have not been shown to be safe. Doctors in the UK, in Scandinavian countries, are increasingly backing away from their use because there are increasing concerns about their long-term effects – never mind the evidence from the Tavistock that their use almost inevitably leads to hormone therapy, at which point the medical intervention becomes definitively irreversible. It's mainly in the US, where medicine is driven by money and profits, that we see this fixation on early medical traetment. What a disgrace it all is. The article even recycles that old canard about how "gender-affirming" intervention decreases the risk of suicide

Jerry Coyne has a post on this, and points to this long critique from Jesse Singal.