There's a special kind of anger, resentment, frustration, and sadness - a conglomerate, holistic feeling we don't yet have a single word for in English (the Irish "fearg" - pronounced 'fae-rak' - would be a close option, being the word for "passion-driven anger", which includes resentment; the Irish word "brón" - pronounced 'brone' - translates as "sorrow", so "fearg-brón" would be an appropriate word, and will be the one I use for this particular set of emotions going forward) that comes from seeing, in real time, with highly personal impact, that you're being passed over for meaningful, well-paid work by people who, apparently, either can't or won't read key reports.
I read the Cass Review when it was published - with no one paying me, no opportunities for paid work, or even a role as a Trustee or Non-Executive Director, as a recognition for doing so.
I read the Cass Review even though it caused a lot of intense feelings, and triggered an episode of depression I still haven't fully recovered from.
I also read every UK Party's Manifesto.
I knew that, unless the Liberal Democrats somehow managed to win the July 4th General Election, puberty blockers were always going to be banned as an option for transgender children and young people.
And now, I'm having to see high profile trans content creators, advocacy organisations, and pressure groups acting all Surprised Pikachu and outraged, as though this decision came from literally nowhere, with no hint of it anywhere in advance. Whilst still benefiting from salaries, income, and financial support that the past 10yrs have proved will always be beyond my reach.
I've had employers mock and berate me for the fact that, even as I'm going blind, I will still engage with extensive, densely packed, highly technical written content; both reading it (typically with the help of a screenreader these days) and writing it.
It reminded me of high school, where being drawn to written communication, able to sustain attention, and rapidly able to understand key information, and present it in more accessible ways, was apparently something to be despised, one of many reasons to be hated.
High school. Which I attended from 1997-2002, as a "gender-non-conforming", highly masculine person whom records identified as female, who knew, in the same intangible way I know I'm sexually attracted to women, and that I don't want to eat concrete, that 'female' was wrong, but didn't have another option.
At 12yrs old, I was already 5ft 10" (I'm 6ft exactly as an adult), broad built, with a deep voice (I sing tenor-baritone; I'm tone deaf, and can't carry a tune, but my range is solid); I'd started showing visible facial hair at 10 - the same time I started my menstrual periods.
From the age of 5, I'd identified strongly with male characters and role models (my Dad, Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, football players, and the character of Tony Stamp from ITV's The Bill), and memorably threw a fit, again age 5, at the suggestion I wore a WPC's uniform in a school play. Age 7, when I first heard about this thing called "puberty", and the "changes" it would bring, I assumed it meant I would "get to be a man, like my Dad." (I did NOT take well to the reality.)
I didn't know that trans men even existed until I was 17, in 2003 - but as early as 1991, aged 5, I was one.
Not because I had male interests - I did; skateboarding, den-building, tree-climbing, football, cars - but so did a couple of girls I was friends with, and who are happily engaging with adulthood as women now.
Not because I was inclined towards practical tasks, self-sufficiency, and a desire to live independently, and earn my own money when I grew up - I grew up in a rural, working-class, farming village; a lot of the adult women I knew could fix fences and cars, and who earned their own money.
Not because I didn't have female role models - The Bill had female officers, I read the Sweet Valley High books, which were entirely centred on young women, and I had female teachers, and female friends.
Not even because I was unusually tall - and therefore unattractive - as a female; in high school, I knew two girls who were a similar height and build to me, several girls with voices as deep as mine, and two girls with visible "Adam's Apples" - none of them were trans. (Medical transition has never been an option for people under 18 in the UK, and it certainly wasn't in the late 90s when I started high school.) Those girls were happy being girls, and they were frequently actively involved in violently bullying me for my "gender non-conformity" - including, in one situation, being active participates in an attempted gang r*pe which involved both male and female students. (And for which a female teacher violently assaulted me when, after fighting off over a dozen students in the school toilets - the girl's toilets, incidentally - I staggered out covered in my own blood, calling me an "evil animal" as she screamed at me demanding to know what I'd done.)
I went through all of that - the constant sense of "wrong-ness", the hatred of my body, the daily bullying, the frequent physical assaults, two su*cide attempts before the age of 16, one admission to a psychiatric ward for "observation", mandatory appointments with an Educational Psychiatrist, frequent physical beatings and verbal abuse from my mother - without any understanding of why I felt the way I did, what any of my feelings meant about anything.
And without puberty blockers, or even the possibility of them.
I was recommended puberty blockers, at the age of 11, when I was in literal, screaming agony for one week out of every month with what every woman I encountered dismissed as "just a normal experience of womanhood", and what, looking back, was almost certainly endometriosis. My mother refused to allow them to be prescribed, because she had a religious conviction that it was "wrong" to medically "interfere" with a person's body. (No, she does not accept me. No, we're not in contact in any real sense.)
A doctor encountering an 11yr old missing days of school, barely able to move during their period, who had started menstruating at 10, who had "PMS" that was so violent I literally pulled doors off their hinges on more than one occasion, had zero hesitation, in 1997, about recommending a medication that now, when it is discussed as a possibility for trans children, is described as "unproven" and "untested", and presented as something terrible and potentially lethal.
My experiences of both my mood swings and my periods didn't improve. My best friend from high school still remembers me, age 15, picking up a heavy double desk and throwing it clean across a room at a group of students.
I would punch first, think later. I punched holes in walls, kicked in doors, and on one occasion put a male student in hospital during a fistfight.
I didn't get to start testosterone until 2008 - December 18th, at 10.05am, incidentally - but from that moment on, my temper has dropped way down, I have greater resilience, more tolerance for frustrations and failures.
So, what are my thoughts around puberty blockers for trans children?
I read the Cass Review when it was published - with no one paying me, no opportunities for paid work, or even a role as a Trustee or Non-Executive Director, as a recognition for doing so.
I read the Cass Review even though it caused a lot of intense feelings, and triggered an episode of depression I still haven't fully recovered from.
I also read every UK Party's Manifesto.
I knew that, unless the Liberal Democrats somehow managed to win the July 4th General Election, puberty blockers were always going to be banned as an option for transgender children and young people.
And now, I'm having to see high profile trans content creators, advocacy organisations, and pressure groups acting all Surprised Pikachu and outraged, as though this decision came from literally nowhere, with no hint of it anywhere in advance. Whilst still benefiting from salaries, income, and financial support that the past 10yrs have proved will always be beyond my reach.
I've had employers mock and berate me for the fact that, even as I'm going blind, I will still engage with extensive, densely packed, highly technical written content; both reading it (typically with the help of a screenreader these days) and writing it.
It reminded me of high school, where being drawn to written communication, able to sustain attention, and rapidly able to understand key information, and present it in more accessible ways, was apparently something to be despised, one of many reasons to be hated.
High school. Which I attended from 1997-2002, as a "gender-non-conforming", highly masculine person whom records identified as female, who knew, in the same intangible way I know I'm sexually attracted to women, and that I don't want to eat concrete, that 'female' was wrong, but didn't have another option.
At 12yrs old, I was already 5ft 10" (I'm 6ft exactly as an adult), broad built, with a deep voice (I sing tenor-baritone; I'm tone deaf, and can't carry a tune, but my range is solid); I'd started showing visible facial hair at 10 - the same time I started my menstrual periods.
From the age of 5, I'd identified strongly with male characters and role models (my Dad, Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, football players, and the character of Tony Stamp from ITV's The Bill), and memorably threw a fit, again age 5, at the suggestion I wore a WPC's uniform in a school play. Age 7, when I first heard about this thing called "puberty", and the "changes" it would bring, I assumed it meant I would "get to be a man, like my Dad." (I did NOT take well to the reality.)
I didn't know that trans men even existed until I was 17, in 2003 - but as early as 1991, aged 5, I was one.
Not because I had male interests - I did; skateboarding, den-building, tree-climbing, football, cars - but so did a couple of girls I was friends with, and who are happily engaging with adulthood as women now.
Not because I was inclined towards practical tasks, self-sufficiency, and a desire to live independently, and earn my own money when I grew up - I grew up in a rural, working-class, farming village; a lot of the adult women I knew could fix fences and cars, and who earned their own money.
Not because I didn't have female role models - The Bill had female officers, I read the Sweet Valley High books, which were entirely centred on young women, and I had female teachers, and female friends.
Not even because I was unusually tall - and therefore unattractive - as a female; in high school, I knew two girls who were a similar height and build to me, several girls with voices as deep as mine, and two girls with visible "Adam's Apples" - none of them were trans. (Medical transition has never been an option for people under 18 in the UK, and it certainly wasn't in the late 90s when I started high school.) Those girls were happy being girls, and they were frequently actively involved in violently bullying me for my "gender non-conformity" - including, in one situation, being active participates in an attempted gang r*pe which involved both male and female students. (And for which a female teacher violently assaulted me when, after fighting off over a dozen students in the school toilets - the girl's toilets, incidentally - I staggered out covered in my own blood, calling me an "evil animal" as she screamed at me demanding to know what I'd done.)
I went through all of that - the constant sense of "wrong-ness", the hatred of my body, the daily bullying, the frequent physical assaults, two su*cide attempts before the age of 16, one admission to a psychiatric ward for "observation", mandatory appointments with an Educational Psychiatrist, frequent physical beatings and verbal abuse from my mother - without any understanding of why I felt the way I did, what any of my feelings meant about anything.
And without puberty blockers, or even the possibility of them.
I was recommended puberty blockers, at the age of 11, when I was in literal, screaming agony for one week out of every month with what every woman I encountered dismissed as "just a normal experience of womanhood", and what, looking back, was almost certainly endometriosis. My mother refused to allow them to be prescribed, because she had a religious conviction that it was "wrong" to medically "interfere" with a person's body. (No, she does not accept me. No, we're not in contact in any real sense.)
A doctor encountering an 11yr old missing days of school, barely able to move during their period, who had started menstruating at 10, who had "PMS" that was so violent I literally pulled doors off their hinges on more than one occasion, had zero hesitation, in 1997, about recommending a medication that now, when it is discussed as a possibility for trans children, is described as "unproven" and "untested", and presented as something terrible and potentially lethal.
My experiences of both my mood swings and my periods didn't improve. My best friend from high school still remembers me, age 15, picking up a heavy double desk and throwing it clean across a room at a group of students.
I would punch first, think later. I punched holes in walls, kicked in doors, and on one occasion put a male student in hospital during a fistfight.
I didn't get to start testosterone until 2008 - December 18th, at 10.05am, incidentally - but from that moment on, my temper has dropped way down, I have greater resilience, more tolerance for frustrations and failures.
So, what are my thoughts around puberty blockers for trans children?
I survived what was - although I didn't realise it at the time - a trans childhood without puberty blockers.
But not without cost.
I don't trust easily.
I don't know how to ask for help.
I'm not great at working with others.
I'm almost pathologically risk averse.
I prefer to keep away from busy places and loud people.
Would I still experience depression if I had been able to avoid a female puberty? It's impossible to know. Plenty of people who aren't trans are chronically depressed - life is quite depressing, especially in recent years.
Would I be a more relaxed, engaged, and extroverted person if I hadn't had to go through the physical experiences I did? Again, it's impossible to know - plenty of introverts are not just not trans, but actively hostile to trans people.
And, in a strange kind of way, not being able to avoid a female puberty made being trans - even if I didn't know I was trans at the time - easier; I was visibly "other", which meant I didn't have to worry about people finding out my genitals didn't match my identity or overall appearance. The attempted gang r*pe wasn't the first time I'd had my trousers and underpants yanked down by a group of kids who "wanted to see if you have a d*ck or a c*nt." I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if someone had discovered I was a boy without a penis when, in all other respects, I'd been accepted, recorded, and recognised as a "normal" boy.
I was punished - often violently - for being visibly different.
How much worse might that punishment have been if people had assumed I was just like them.
But not without cost.
I don't trust easily.
I don't know how to ask for help.
I'm not great at working with others.
I'm almost pathologically risk averse.
I prefer to keep away from busy places and loud people.
Would I still experience depression if I had been able to avoid a female puberty? It's impossible to know. Plenty of people who aren't trans are chronically depressed - life is quite depressing, especially in recent years.
Would I be a more relaxed, engaged, and extroverted person if I hadn't had to go through the physical experiences I did? Again, it's impossible to know - plenty of introverts are not just not trans, but actively hostile to trans people.
And, in a strange kind of way, not being able to avoid a female puberty made being trans - even if I didn't know I was trans at the time - easier; I was visibly "other", which meant I didn't have to worry about people finding out my genitals didn't match my identity or overall appearance. The attempted gang r*pe wasn't the first time I'd had my trousers and underpants yanked down by a group of kids who "wanted to see if you have a d*ck or a c*nt." I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if someone had discovered I was a boy without a penis when, in all other respects, I'd been accepted, recorded, and recognised as a "normal" boy.
I was punished - often violently - for being visibly different.
How much worse might that punishment have been if people had assumed I was just like them.
And how much worse would that punishment be for a little girl who was suddenly discovered to have "the wrong" genitalia? How much more paranoid and self conscious about the one thing puberty doesn't alter would trans children become if puberty blockers were widely used? How much more intense would their dysphoria - the psychological distress experienced by a self-image/physical appearance mismatch - be if they looked completely "normal" in the mirror, but still had "abnormal" (for their gender) genitalia?
And then there's the motivations of adults advocating for puberty blockers to be available to trans children. Almost certainly, many, if not most, are probably desperate to help their children feel comfortable as the people they are. They genuinely don't want to see their kids upset.
But at least a few will want puberty blockers so their children "grow up to look normal". They're perfectly okay with the child they thought was their son being their daughter, but she is not going to be a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced woman. She is not going to be a woman with small breasts.
They're perfectly happy to accept they were wrong to call their son Emma, but Anthony is not going to top out at 5ft 6", he is not going have a high-pitched voice and soft skin.
Puberty blockers are part of a wider polarity around gender norms and gender roles, around the way men and women look, what men and women "should" be doing.
Why do I believe this decision was made?
This won't make me popular, but I feel a large aspect of the decision to ban puberty blockers was made in the wake of an increasing number of young people seeing no distinction between being "trans" and being non-binary (it is possible to be both, but they are separate states), and increasing discussion on social media, possibly by "bad actors" who are actually pretending they are trans - with the full immersion in the role that any method actor or member of a sleeper cell would show - that "gender is a construct", "being trans absolutely can be a phase", "dysphoria isn't relevant!"
Permanent rights are not granted for temporary situations.
The rights someone acquires during pregnancy end when the pregnancy does - even if it ends in a miscarriage.
There are distinctions between how men and women exist in, experience, and engage with the world. Between what men and women are comfortable with their bodies doing. Between the expectations men and women operate from, and if we follow blindly along with the trending social media group-think that dilutes the very real experiences of trans people, both binary and non-binary trans people, then the inevitable result is that "transgender" comes to be understood as "wanting to do things, and wear clothing, that isn't typical for people of your sex" - which isn't what makes someone trans, and is never going to be something that permanent rights of access and identity, or expensive medication and procedures, are going to be made available for people in respect of.
I know several tall, deep-voiced women who prefer to wear men's clothing, have very masculine hobbies and interests, and are exclusively attracted to women; they don't consider themselves to be anything other than women. They are cisgender - ie, not trans.
I knew I wasn't female when I was five; it just took me another twelve years to understand what the other option could be.
And I did that without puberty blockers.
No, being trans shouldn't be defined by suffering - but there is an element to all suffering that refines people. That creates depth, nuance, and texture to their self-hood.
And then there's the motivations of adults advocating for puberty blockers to be available to trans children. Almost certainly, many, if not most, are probably desperate to help their children feel comfortable as the people they are. They genuinely don't want to see their kids upset.
But at least a few will want puberty blockers so their children "grow up to look normal". They're perfectly okay with the child they thought was their son being their daughter, but she is not going to be a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced woman. She is not going to be a woman with small breasts.
They're perfectly happy to accept they were wrong to call their son Emma, but Anthony is not going to top out at 5ft 6", he is not going have a high-pitched voice and soft skin.
Puberty blockers are part of a wider polarity around gender norms and gender roles, around the way men and women look, what men and women "should" be doing.
Why do I believe this decision was made?
This won't make me popular, but I feel a large aspect of the decision to ban puberty blockers was made in the wake of an increasing number of young people seeing no distinction between being "trans" and being non-binary (it is possible to be both, but they are separate states), and increasing discussion on social media, possibly by "bad actors" who are actually pretending they are trans - with the full immersion in the role that any method actor or member of a sleeper cell would show - that "gender is a construct", "being trans absolutely can be a phase", "dysphoria isn't relevant!"
Permanent rights are not granted for temporary situations.
The rights someone acquires during pregnancy end when the pregnancy does - even if it ends in a miscarriage.
There are distinctions between how men and women exist in, experience, and engage with the world. Between what men and women are comfortable with their bodies doing. Between the expectations men and women operate from, and if we follow blindly along with the trending social media group-think that dilutes the very real experiences of trans people, both binary and non-binary trans people, then the inevitable result is that "transgender" comes to be understood as "wanting to do things, and wear clothing, that isn't typical for people of your sex" - which isn't what makes someone trans, and is never going to be something that permanent rights of access and identity, or expensive medication and procedures, are going to be made available for people in respect of.
I know several tall, deep-voiced women who prefer to wear men's clothing, have very masculine hobbies and interests, and are exclusively attracted to women; they don't consider themselves to be anything other than women. They are cisgender - ie, not trans.
I knew I wasn't female when I was five; it just took me another twelve years to understand what the other option could be.
And I did that without puberty blockers.
No, being trans shouldn't be defined by suffering - but there is an element to all suffering that refines people. That creates depth, nuance, and texture to their self-hood.
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