Mick Hartley

Victoria Smith at The Critic on the puberty blocker trial:

The Pathways trial, which seeks to explore “the possible benefits or risks that young people with gender incongruence may experience when taking puberty suppressing hormones”, is not just an inadequate and harmful “solution” to a problem. It is part of the original problem. Benefits and risks can only be understood in relation to what one might have experienced without puberty blockers, yet the very prescription of blockers makes it impossible to imagine a life in which gender stereotypes are not imposed on the body. The trial literature describes puberty as difficult for “young people with gender incongruence […] because their body starts to change in ways that don’t match how they feel inside”. Are breasts, hips, facial hair etc. meant to “match” inner feelings? If someone believes that they should, shouldn’t we be challenging the forces that make them feel that way? We are told that puberty suppressing hormones “may help some young people with gender incongruence explore their gender identity more comfortably without feeling rushed or distressed about their body changing”. At no point is it acknowledged that gender identity, as a concept, alienates people from their bodies to start with.

The whole premise of the trial is based on the reality of this feeling of “gender incongruence” – ie the feeling that you were “born in the wrong body”. But it’s an illusion stoked by social contagion. Gender identity is a nonsense: it not real; it’s not there. We are the sex we ‘re born with – as everyone knew until Queer Theory and the like spread out from academia. So this trial, predicated on a falsehood, is incapable of offering any solutions. All it can do is ruin the lives of the subject children – and the reputations of all those involved.