Trans activists face internal challenges over puberty blockers, surgery for minors

First, a friendly reminder, as I blogged last month, that sex is NOT gender and that the National Institutes of Health says so.

Now, the actual story.

Two British doctors, both transsexuals themselves (sic on the word, as sex is not gender!), Dr. Marci Bowers and child psychologist Erica Anderson, both say that puberty blockers are overprescribed for minors and that surgical procedures, ditto, as first stated on Bari Weiss' Substack and then reported by the Daily Mail.

First, Bowers:

'We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases. 

I think there was naivete on the part of pediatric endocrinologists who were proponents of early [puberty] blockage thinking that just this magic can happen, that surgeons can do anything.' 

She said that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) could be intolerant of dissenting opinions. 

'There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn't absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there's no room for dissent,' Bowers said.

Tribalism is a biatch, is it not?

Now, I've warned the Dialogue not Expulsion group of current and former Greens about "the company you keep." Ordinarily, I wouldn't reference the Daily Mail and Bari Weiss.

But, mainstream media left no choice, according to Anderson:

Anderson said that she had submitted an op ed to The New York Times warning about the risks of treatments, and the paper turned it down because the story was 'outside our coverage priorities right now.'

There you are. Oh, and I know that's a piece of crap, whether it comes from High Country News years ago with refusing to run the likes of Jim Styles, or the NYT now refusing to run this. You DEFINE what your coverage priorities are, and in the large sense of the word, this is a political decision, Kathleen Kingsbury.

It's even higher-grade bullshit because, per Weiss' piece, guest-authored by Abigail Shrier, Bowers is scheduled to take over leadership of WPATH next year. "Trans activism" and state laws on transsexual issues have been all over media coverage earlier this year, to boot.

The Substack gets into other issues beyond the Daily Mail summary, too. Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, a Dutch psychologist who first latched onto puberty blockers, has also gotten skeptical about their side effects.

I know Mayo Clinic guidelines for when and when not to use puberty blockers AND to not use them in the absence of counseling at the same time, as I told one trans advocate on Twitter last week. (That said, per the Substack, the Mayo Clinic apparently does not note all the physiological problems they may cause.

The pair also noted one other thing I already knew, at that same link above: About 70 percent of juveniles reporting gender dysphoria outgrow it. That said, many outgrow it by realizing they're gays and lesbians of their biological birth sex. And, in some cases, entertaining the idea of being transsexual, for teenage boys especially, may be safer at home than accepting being gay. We're still there, folks.

And, while I don't totally like being even briefer fellow travelers with wingnuts, when the mainstream media offers no option, to riff on an old Texas cliche, I'll dance with who's gonna brung me.