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It's really disturbing that Foreign Policy would publish this. There's just been complete ideological capture on this issue, and it's an issue that demands careful research and reporting because kids are involved. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/15/uk-transphobia-transgender-court-ruling-puberty-blockers/
2/ Slotting the Tavistock situation into one's preexisting fury at "TERFs" and "gender critical feminists" ignores a huge amount of context and turns a question of bioethics and developmental psychology and healthcare quality into yet more culture-war circus.
3/ If you write in line with the present orthodoxy, you can get arguments that are, on their face, trollishly ridiculous published in a major outlet. This makes no sense. It doesn't even come close to attempting to understand why 'sex' was seen as important until 30 seconds ago.
4/ Lavery does not appear to have read this judgment closely before writing 2,000 words on it for a major outlet. For example, she claims that "the court" argued blockers "pave the way" to transition. But that's a section where the court is *summarizing the claimant's argument*.
5/ Because Lavery doesn't appear to have read the judgement closely, she is missing really important, basic stuff. There's a three-page section specifically labeled "The impact of Puberty Blockers and their reversibility" which goes to great lengths to explain that actually,
6/ we're not quite sure whether blockers are fully reversible. There's enough uncertainty here that the NHS updated its website *away* from language suggesting full reversibility.
Here's how Lavery sums things up PBs: "the effects are reversible."
Okay! Nothing to see here.
Here's how Lavery sums things up PBs: "the effects are reversible."
Okay! Nothing to see here.
7/ Foreign Policy has decided that it isn't important for readers to have as informed and dispassionate a view as possible on one of the single most consequential legal documents to emerge from this subject. Instead, obfuscation and oversimplification and demagoguery.
8/ Whoops, one missing screenshot above, about the NHS changing its language on puberty-blocker reversibility.
