During a recent panel at the Genspect conference in Ireland, a science documentary filmmaker made a strong case against puberty blockers, arguing that puberty is the natural cure for gender dysphoria.
Malcolm Clark was speaking on a panel titled "Should puberty blockers ever be used for gender dysphoric children?" during which he argued that the medical world’s belief that gender dysphoria is caused by puberty is backwards and that the truth is that puberty is the remedy for gender dysphoria.
Drawing on his experience as a documentary filmmaker, Clark drew a parallel with an outbreak of the Zika virus in Brazil where babies born to mothers infected with the virus had deformed heads. Knowing the virus was spread by mosquitoes, the Brazilian government responded by spraying insecticide on the areas with the most deformed babies.
But then along came a group of scientists “with an environmental bent,” who observed that there were more babies born with deformed heads in the areas that had been sprayed, and so attributed the deformities to the insecticide.
“It seems to me that that's what medicine is doing now is looking at gender dysphoria and seeing puberty is causing gender dysphoria, when in fact, puberty is the solution to it. Just as in Brazil, in fact, they then worked out the insecticide was not causing the problem, the insecticide was a solution, and eventually they managed to stop the epidemic,” explained Clark.
“I don't know how medicine can move quickly to realise that the solution is in front of them: that kids need to go through puberty,” he added.
Another reason Clark opposes children being given puberty blockers is that he believes it amounts to medicalizing homosexuality.
Clark explained that one of the first achievements of the gay rights movement was when gay activists managed to get the American Medical Association to de-medicalize homosexuality, but that it now looks to him as though we are back to medicalizing.
“What we are now doing is re-medicalizing homosexuality, by encouraging parents who worry they have a gay kid to take them to a doctor to get puberty blockers. This means they are effectively sterilized,” Clark told The Post Millennial, explaining that 99% of children who are put on blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones, the combination of which is believed to leave the young person sterile.
It has long been observed that extreme gender-nonconformity in childhood is strongly correlated with homosexuality in adulthood, meaning that many of the children being funnelled through pediatric gender clinics are just future gay or lesbian adults.
This has led some to suggest that transitioning children is a form of conversion therapy. There was even a dark joke going around at the soon-to-be-closed Tavistock gender clinic that soon there will be no gay people left.
The stories of celebrity “trans kids” are just stories of gender-nonconforming children. Jazz Jennings liked princess dresses and wearing a sparkly bathing suit, Kai Shappley’s mother tells of spanking Kai for “stealing girl toys,” and Susie Green, former CEO of disgraced trans charity Mermaids, revealed in a TED Talk how her homophobic husband wouldn’t tolerate her son’s liking for a tutu and a Snow White costume.
When the puberty blockers experiment was first conceived, the idea was that the drugs would give gender-distressed children more time to think. Then, as the years passed, it became clear that almost all children put on blockers were proceeding onto cross-sex hormones. This was in stark contrast to all existing literature on childhood gender dysphoria that showed most children would cease to desire medical transition after puberty.
Many experts now argue that puberty blockers are better thought of as a start switch for further medical transition rather than a pause. This belief led the British High Court to rule in 2020 that in order for a child to be able to give informed consent to puberty blockers, they must also have the capacity to consent to the irreversible cross-sex hormones that will almost inevitably follow.
“So I suppose my conclusion would be, my strong preference is for not giving any child puberty blockers,” said Clark.
