Why puberty matters

Allison Bailey, a co-founder of LGB Alliance, makes some excellent points in this Twitter thread on the Keira Bell judgement (via):

[I've copied the text rather than embedding each tweet. Makes it clearer, I think.]

1/ What turns a child into an adult? Puberty. It follows that if a 10 year old is given puberty blockers & 8 years later, legally an adult, decides to take cross - sex hormones, having missed this crucial stage in human development, is this really the consent of an adult?

2/ Adulthood isn’t merely the passage of time. It’s about physiological, sexual & cognitive development, including independence of thought. PBs block all of this. They deliver physically, sexually & emotionally immature ‘adults’ into the arms of big pharma & the trans lobby.

3/ This is why PBs in gender dysphoria are *completely* different to PBs for precocious puberty. A 7 yr old taking PBs to stop an early puberty will be on them for a short time before experiencing full puberty. A GD child on PBs will not & will never complete normal development.

4/ To see advocates of PBs for gender dysphoria insist that children can consent to them; that it’s about “bodily autonomy”; that it brings them “joy” —turns my stomach. Those of us that know what grooming looks like, know what this language is painfully close to.

5/ Those orgs that are blithely ignoring the Bell v Tavistock ruling, from a court that considered evidence from around the world, including from WPATH & the Endocrine Society & are saying that they know better & chanting slogans, are truly disgracing themselves & their orgs.

6/ I didn’t expect these orgs to celebrate the Bell ruling, although they should. But I did expect them to respect it. That none of them have is a crisis in child protection. It reveals something rancid at the heart of their organisations.

7/ That’s why we need a public inquiry that examines what happened at the Tavistock & what is happening with LGBTQ orgs & child safeguarding. We need a moratorium on their funding & influence. The stakes are too high. We are either a country of laws or empty ideologies.
END

Comments

[Richard]

It's worth noting that among the organisations that are "disappointed" with the High Court ruling are Amnesty and Liberty, who have issued a joint statement. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/amnesty-international-uk-and-liberty-joint-statement-puberty-blockers?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=awareness_education&utm_content=news

I have no idea what Liberty are for these days. When they were the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) their role was clear. Now they seem to take little interest in what should be their core business. Cases such as those of Sarah Phillimore and "Miss B" opposing the police's heavy-handed approach to non-criminal "hate speech" seem to pass them by entirely.

Amnesty may or may not do good work for prisoners of conscience in places like Iran, but that looks increasingly like a fig-leaf for their obsession with a handful of pet projects. My local branch seems to have been taken over by people energised by the standard set of leftie causes (Palestine, Trump &c), rather than concern about the worst human rights abuses (Uighurs, Rohingya, Yazidis...) When I was an active member at University there was an iron rule that Amnesty groups could not campaign about issues in their own countries, and we were pushing the boundaries by showing films about Northern Ireland. Nowadays Amnesty UK seems to be mostly about the UK, perhaps covering the ground that the NCCL used to. It is very sad because there is a real need for a group which does what Amnesty once did.

I've gone on a little but I hope someone will find it relevant.

[Mick H]

I used to contribute to Amnesty. Not any more.

[Martin Adamson]

Like many “charities” they have become seperated from their true purpose because their core funding comes from permanent money that has been left to them in wills. They don’t have to fundraise anymore and are not answerable to anyone.