Mick Hartley

Victoria Smith (again)  – NHS puberty blocker ruling will save lives:

Halting the development of children who wish to be the opposite sex is insane. It’s so insane that you could be forgiven for thinking there’s something about it you must have missed. Do bodies and time no longer function in the way that you, and billions of other humans, have always known them to? Are panic-stricken nine-year-olds world experts on gender as a social construct?

When you think back to your schooldays, were your peers dropping like flies due to the absence of life-saving gender affirming care? It’s either that, or the entire concept of puberty suppression — one that has been supported by countless adults and institutions that ought to know better — is ludicrous….

It is staggering to realise just how flimsy the evidence in favour of all this was. Experiments have been conducted on the bodies of children due to the political cowardice of adults. Humans cannot change sex. We cannot go through any other puberty than the one our body is destined to go through. This is what makes us adults. It is obscene that so many have lied to children, and by doing so put them at risk of so much long-term damage.

Right now, social media is awash with ideologues insisting that children will die because of this decision. On the contrary: lives will be saved, and it will be due to the work of campaigners who kept naming the madness even when told they had no right to speak.

They will not be thanked for it; far more likely is that they will be blamed for stoking a culture war which made due diligence impossible. Anyone who lies to children about their own bodies will have no difficulty lying about the part they played in this scandal. Still, some part of them will know: it was always insane.