Even the Left is waking up to the truth about trans

After years of demonising ‘terfs’, The New York Times accepts more research is needed on puberty blockers

The New York Times, a bastion of liberal thought, has until recently pursued but one line in the war over gender identity. All things “trans” are good, and anyone who even questions any of this stuff is a vile bigot.

It has occasionally had to commission garbled articles explaining why some British women are not on board with having to give up our rights to singlesex spaces or being erased through language where we become menstruators or people with a cervix. But the paper was so assured of its stance that, in February, it even ran an ad campaign featuring a young woman with the caption: “Lianna is imagining Harry Potter without its creator.” At a time when J K Rowling was subject to death threats, it was apparently acceptable to imagine she did not exist, all because of her views: biology is real.

One of Rowling’s concerns, and indeed mine, is the medicalisation of distressed children who are gender dysphoric. The prescribing of puberty blockers to kids nearly always sets them on the path to cross-sex hormones and surgery. In the US, they can be given to those as young as eight or nine.

These drugs have been described as reversible (although the NHS is not so sure), lifesaving and as giving children a pause to work out who they are. They are part of the “trans affirmative” healthcare demanded by activists and to question this is to be deemed transphobic. The more children who identify as trans, the more these drugs that block the production of oestrogen or testosterone are given out.

This week, though, The New York Times performed a reverse ferret with an investigation into what these drugs actually do and whether they are risk-free. When ideology is set aside and the evidence studied, it is clear that not enough is known about them. In its piece, the newspaper found studies showing significant links to osteoporosis: “It’s increasingly clear that the drugs are associated with deficits in bone development.” There are problems with understanding the long-term effects of the drugs as they only started being given to children in the 1990s in a clinic in Amsterdam.

Yet if we listened to women who are also prescribed one of the drugs given to children, Lupron, for endometriosis, we would know there are debilitating side effects. Indeed in the UK, there have been worries about brain development, and after Dr Hilary Cass’s review, the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock – which had seen a huge uptick in the number of girls being prescribed blockers – was shut down. She said that instead of buying teenage girls time to make a decision, “puberty-blockers may disrupt that decision making process”.

There are also concerns that puberty blockers may prevent sexual enjoyment ever. Dr Marci Bowers, herself trans, has talked of how blocking puberty means underdeveloped genitalia, so surgery such as vaginoplasty is more difficult. How are children able to consent to this – or indeed their parents?

It is finally being acknowledged in this polarised debate that there is more than one view. Here, and in Sweden and Finland, doctors and psychiatrists have pulled back from medical intervention and adopted a “watchful waiting approach”. Many of the patients, particularly girls, turn out to be gay and we have heard from enough detransitioners that many had complex problems that could not be cured by fundamentally changing their bodies.

It is not transphobic to pause this experiment yet, as the NYT piece says, while “European countries continue to examine and tailor their treatment, in the United States the public discourse about transgender care is growing more incendiary”. One of the reasons that it is so incendiary is because outfits such as the NYT have not until now allowed evidence-based debate. Repeatedly we are told trans lives are not up for discussion, which actually means the safeguarding of children is not considered.

Next time the NYT wants to explain “Terf Island” to its readers, it might begin with an apology. Those of us who raised alarm bells about medicalising and sterilising children may have had a point. At least the paper might acknowledge, as Dr Cass did, that much more research is needed. Indeed, in 2015 the NYT informs us four prominent gender clinics were given $7million to study the impact of puberty blockers – especially in children under 12 as there is no data. Their findings are yet to be published. This is part of this ongoing scandal.