Why, asks Patrick West at Spiked, did it take so long to ban puberty blockers? The trick, from groups like Stonewall and Mermaids, was to persuade people that trans liberation was the next step in a narrative of liberation:
The thinking among many has been that, ever since the Enlightenment, we have been on an emancipatory trajectory in the West. It began with religious toleration, then came the campaign for racial equality, moving on to women’s liberation and then, by the 1960s, gay liberation. With these goals achieved, the next step was surely liberation for the trans community. As [Helen] Joyce explains: ‘During the past decade, the trans lobby has been stunningly successful in selling false analogies… [such as] that separate toilets for men and women are like racial segregation and that insisting people can change sex is “gay rights 2.0”.’
The insinuation made by radical trans activists is that if you deny the validity of someone’s preferred gender, you also belong to the oppressive hegemony of white, heterosexual males (and, more recently, mainstream feminists). Indeed, this is precisely the argument made by the godmother of trans, Judith Butler, in her latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?. Here she writes that critics of gender ideology seek ‘the restoration of a patriarchal dream-order where a father is a father; a sexed identity never changes; women, conceived as “born female at birth”, resume their natural and “moral” positions within the household; and white people hold uncontested racial supremacy.’ This is mendacious sophistry. It suggests that anyone questioning trans must be a racist homophobe….
The trans movement’s treatment of children has done nothing to advance freedom or equality. It is primarily a tale of disfigurement, experimentation and exploitation. Hopefully, this dark chapter can soon be consigned to the past.
But, before we get too excited about the NHS puberty-blocker ban:
NEW: NHS England has announced that new youth gender services will provide masculinising and feminising hormones to children from ‘around their 16th birthday.’ This goes further than GIDS ever did: YPs cld only access hormones at 16 if they’d been on puberty blockers for 1 year🧵
— Hannah Barnes (@hannahsbee) March 21, 2024
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"Just last week, it seemed that the new services would have no medical pathway, with NHSE ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers. Today’s announcement, which was not put out to consultation, appears to signal a move in the opposite direction."
Mick Hartley 
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