ENGLAND: “We tried it blindly and it is doing a lot of harm to children, so we’re not doing it anymore!”
 
PEI: “We’re going to try it blindly because we want to keep it simple and about ‘rights’, not the actual well-being and safety of children!
 
 
At the same time as Premier King, the Peers-Alliance, Local Media, and the Head of the PEI Human Rights Commission were joining their voices together on Friday at the Legislative Building in a public show of support for trans people, and to reiterate that the province and Human Right’s Commission is committed to stand for a child’s “right” to chose his or her “gender”, England was announcing an end to the use of puberty blockers in children, and the launching of an entirely new approach to dealing with gender dysphoria.
 
This decision comes as a result of the known HARMS (and unknown POTENTIAL HARMS) from the use of medical interventions, including hormones that belong to the opposite sex) detailed and documented in the final report of a investigation that came about as A RESONSE TO PARENTAL CONCERNS RAISED WITH GOVERNMENT!
 
The new model adopted by England now ensures that the parent’s INVOLVEMENT, with no ‘secret’ behind-the-parent’s backs cloak-and-dagger intrigue dividing families to be part of the new approach, which also moves from a ‘clinic’ to the hospital setting, with a holistic multi-team and personalized approach.
 
Meanwhile on Friday, on this side of the pond, our leaders were digging-in and doubling down on their ‘anti-parent’ and entirely-ideologically-driven position that can be roughly paraphrased as:
 
“WE’RE HERE FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD, AND IF A CHILD SAYS HE IS A ‘SHE’, SHE IS A ‘HE’, WE’RE HERE TO HELP THE CHILD MAKE THAT FANTASY AS REAL AS POSSIBLE – THAT’S WHAT OUR SENSE OF ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ TELLS US IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD!”
 
PEI Public School staff are being used to directly interfere with parental rights and responsibilities, trusting the judgment of a young child incapable of making such a decision in their own best interest!
 
Yet PEI is committing itself to follow and respect that now-abandoned approach in England, and a growing number of other countries, refusing to address the true safety concerns at issue, and not even bothering to mention any need for a “minimum age” below which a child would not be capable of informed or reasonable decision-making, so presumably, the position the government is taking to make it all about what the child wants applies to all school children.
 
School staff are now being directed to provide children expressing an interest in ‘being the other sex’ with support to pursue their desire to change their gender, and they are prepared to direct and advise them to access so-called “gender-affirming” health services (services which include using puberty blockers, which I have been told was OFFERED ON THE VERY FIRST MEETING with one person at least, with the idea that the child can in that way take a ‘pause’, calm down about everything, and then make better decisions at a later date for the long-term)!
 
THIS IS EXACTLY THE ROAD ENGLAND IS ABANDONING FOLLOWING A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION INTO THE TAVISTOK GENDER CLINIC AND THEIR GENDER-AFFIRMING MODEL/APPROACH!
 
 
For the one-issue for this post let’s continue with the issue of puberty blockers – the word in PEI I’ve heard associated with their use are “safe and effective” and “provide a pause”.
 
This is what the Chair of the committee undertaking the investigation in England had to say about ‘puberty blockers’ and their use, in a follow-up letter to the investigations’ report concerning the framework for a new approach that would replace what the Tavistock gender clinic was following, which was essentially uncritically promoting blockers and surgery as if they were the sales products in a business, which they were! There’s a few paragraphs, so I’ll end with that:
 
“As already highlighted in my interim report, the most significant knowledge gaps are in relation to treatment with puberty blockers, and the lack of clarity about whether the rationale for prescription is as an initial part of a transition pathway or as a ‘pause’ to allow more time for decision making. For those who will go on to have a stable binary trans identity, the ability to pass in later life is paramount, and many will decide that the trade-offs of medical treatment are a price that is fully justified by the ability to live confidently and comfortably in their identified gender.
 
The widely understood challenge is in determining when a point of certainty about gender identity is reached in an adolescent who is in a state of developmental maturation, identity development and flux. It is the latter option regarding a ‘pause’ for decision making about which we have the least information.
 
The rationale for use of puberty blockers at Tanner Stage 2 of development was based on data that demonstrated that children, particularly birth registered boys who had early gender incongruence, were unlikely to desist once they reached early puberty; this rationale does not necessarily apply to later presenting young people, including the predominant referral group of birth-registered girls.
 
We do not fully understand the role of adolescent sex hormones in driving the development of both sexuality and gender identity through the early teen years, so by extension we cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. We therefore have no way of knowing whether, rather than buying time to make a decision, puberty blockers may disrupt that decision-making process.
 
We do not fully understand the role of adolescent sex hormones in driving the development of both sexuality and gender identity through the early teen years, so by extension we cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. We therefore have no way of knowing whether, rather than buying time to make a decision, puberty blockers may disrupt that decision-making process.
 
A further concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e. maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement). If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences. To date, there has been very limited research on the short-, medium- or longer-term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development.
 
In light of these critically important unanswered questions, I would suggest that consideration is given to the rapid establishment of the necessary research infrastructure to prospectively enroll young people being considered for hormone treatment into a formal research programme with adequate follow up into adulthood, with a more immediate focus on the questions regarding puberty blockers. 
 
The appropriate research questions and protocols will need to be developed with input from a panel of academics, clinicians, service users and ethicists.” READ MORE     
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The NHS shut down its only pediatric gender clinic, Tavistock Gender Clinic, in July 2022. The clinic would be replaced with regional holistic clinics focused more on the mental challenges which gender-dysphoric children faced, and would be more cautious in their implementation of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex changes surgeries. The NHS was developing plans to limit sex changes for kids, saying that many are going through a phase that they are likely to outgrow. READ MORE