Recently, when cornered by journalists, the leader of the Canadian Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, opposed puberty blockers echoing Alberta Premier Smith’s banning them for minors. Puberty blockers are the lodestar of gender medicine for kids. Here’s why. Neither temporary nor benign, families may think they’re getting a puberty workaround, a medical placeholder, and the ability to reverse course. Not so.
Meanwhile, in the US, Assistant Secretary of Health Richard/Rachel Levine claims ignorance that gender medicine is contested in declaring “no argument” as to their benefit. Consequently, Levine faces a scientific integrity complaint, and as the Florida Surgeon General noted: "The federal government's medical establishment releasing guidance failing at the most basic level of academic rigor shows that this was never about health care." For example, Levine claims: “Sex reassignment surgery and puberty blockers for KIDS is “‘lifesaving, medically necessary, age-appropriate, and a critical tool.’” Is that really the case?
Levine’s cheerleading of blockers as “life-saving” and “medically necessary” suggests they prevent the suicide often suggested in the context of youth transition. Yet, in actuality, “increasing minors’ access to cross-sex interventions is associated with a significant increase in the adolescent suicide rate.”
This is the finding of Dr. Jay P. Greene’s 2022 study utilizing state data on suicide. Comparing adolescent suicides in states based on access to gender medicine, Greene concluded “it became ‘observable’ in 2010 that suicide rates were elevated among minors living in states where puberty blockers and sex hormones were more easily accessible.” This finding is corroborated by a more comprehensive review of research. The American College of Pediatricians, ACP, provides overwhelming evidence of physical and mental dangers from gender medicine. On their website, they state: “Puberty blockers may actually cause depression and other emotional disturbances related to suicide.” In fact, suicides go up after transition—way up.
Why Such A Focus on Puberty? Hint: It’s All Around the Block
Enthusiasm for a class of drugs no government official in the world could countenance as suddenly “age appropriate” and “a critical tool” makes Levine’s reassurances suspect. Jennifer Block, who reports for the BMJ, emphasizes “The puberty blocker to hormone regimen interferes with sexual development and function. Natal males may never orgasm. Natal females will have vaginalatrophy. Also, many patients are pre-sexual kids.” Interrupting normal sexual development represents premature foreclosure of sexual function and orientation and, since children are unprepared to contemplate their sexuality, constitutes child abuse.
No worries though. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra testified before the U.S. Senate that if any medication was unsafe, the FDA would “raise the alarm.” Well, they have. So, while the Biden administration was retelling its very nice tale of affirming medicine, the FDA uttered a dire warning. Known for causing loss in bone density, blockers are linked by the FDA to brain damage and blindness.
The dangers of blockers are familiar. Most will recognize Lupron from its use as a cancer drug or for precocious puberty but these gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists are rebranded for gender. Already in 2018, patients filed nearly 24,000 FDA reports of adverse reactions (more than half deemed serious). This “raises a serious question about the official position of the Biden administration, which views [puberty blockers] as ‘lifesaving drugs.’” In a remarkable move, Xavier Becerra has okayed the off-label use of drugs never approved for gender-confused kids anywhere in the world.
Why is Puberty Treated like an Emergency rather Than a Developmental Stage?
Puberty blockers preserve a pre-puberty appearance through adolescence. It hasn’t escaped notice that this use of puberty blockers is questionable. In his analysis of UK data on blockers, for instance, Michael Biggs references their appeal strictly for aesthetic purposes. In fact, Genevieve Gluck argues the influential World Professional Association of Transgender Health, WPATH, prioritized appearance over healthy sexual functioning in its most recent Standard of Care, SOC8.
According to Gluck, the criteria for puberty blocking reflect the close association of WPATH members with a boylove fetish forum: “The SOC8 guidelines were created in partnership with academics that have been leading figures in the castration fetish forum for over twenty years.” SOC8 removes age limits for puberty blockade with the proviso of reaching the earliest stages of puberty, which could be as young as 8 or 9 years old.
Parents are not happy about the results of this zero-hour focus of doctors. One parent described blockers being “presented as a tourniquet that would stop the hemorrhaging.” Another parent in the same New York Times article became furious on learning of her child’s resulting osteoporosis. To solve the problem the blockers caused, “The doctor recommended starting testosterone, explaining that it would help the teen regain bone strength. But the parents had lost faith in the medical counsel.” Blockers govern the course of treatment.
Rather than providing a break, blockers literally break puberty, pressing patients onto cross-sex hormones. Another patient felt “steered into transitioning,” wishing there had been more time to explore ways to cope with puberty. The supposed “pause” button, according to Plastic surgeon Dr. Lappert, becomes a “go” button locking in trans ideation. Dr. Lappert explains that the children typically feel like outsiders and the puberty blockers leave them behind developmentally. If kids are stopped on their developmental path, they’ll get stuck in a “developmental limbo” as described in a letter to the BMJ losing out on sexual maturation essential to growing into adulthood through embodying one’s human personality.
Kids on blockers may look younger than they are and may fall behind their peers developmentally. Founder of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity clinic in Toronto, Canada, Dr. Susan Bradley says blockers “cement a child’s sense of confusion out of which they would likely otherwise grow.” Gender medicine halts sexual development at one stage as if genitalia is all there is to an adult sexed embodiment. Yet, we know that’s not the case any more than personal beauty is merely a matter of attractive features but invades the whole person.
From the perspective of psychosocial hurdles, adolescents avoid stereotypical roles by committing to gender medicine. Unfortunately, the resolve to block puberty disrupts and thus devastates the maturation process involving growing into oneself within the context of social expectations. Jonathan Wells writes: “Imagine being a 16-year-old boy with the voice and genitals of an 11-year-old. Or being a 16-year-old girl with no breasts or pubic hair. Would you prefer to hang out with a transgender-friendly peer support group? Or would you choose to rejoin your non-transgendering contemporaries?”
There is unmerited urgency around prescribing blockers. In Canada, puberty blockers are prescribed for most kids at their first visit. In America, Planned Parenthood plays a similar role in meeting consumer demand. Blockers are not at all a compassionate pause, and Pierre Poilievre took international leadership in speaking, rightly, against them. An endocrinologist from Montreal points out the compassionate action is to protect kids from gender medicine such as puberty blockers.
Gender crusaders like Levine want the public to regard puberty blockers as totally safe, operating like an on/off switch. However, a Washington Post-KFF poll found that almost 70 percent oppose kids getting puberty-blocking medication.
Canadians, as well, are not down with the block party.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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I must say you’ve put this in a very comprehensive fashion which I doubt many people think about. They may for e.g. instinctively feel it’s wrong, but you’ve actually demonstrated how that’s so on a number of levels. One doesn’t have to be trained in medicine to know that hormones are very tiny substances that have powerful effects on the body. Whether one is a child or an adult, they should not be prescribed without due consideration. In addition, sex hormones have their origin in the endocrine glands of brain, a developing brain in the case of a child. But it’s also true, as you say, that messing around with hormones may not allow for a normal commensurate emotional level development. All round, it’s insane. If I had to guess, I’d say people like Levine and Becerra are either fetishists themselves or receive some form of compensation for pushing these drugs/surgeries. It’s certainly not for the reasons they may claim.
Becerra is very much a Judas & his act is without question in the gutless mold.