Top Tweets for #endTRANS

I’m sure you all remember Avery Jackson, the “trans girl” who, at 9, was on the cover of National Geographic. Avery was given the gold standard in gender affirming care: he was chemically castrated and sterilized with “blockers” to hold off male puberty. Now, at age 17, Avery has come out as “nonbinary” — but that’s not the worst part. He also identifies as asexual, meaning that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction. This is undoubtedly the result of the medication used to delay male puberty; the president of WPATH, Dr, “Marci” Bowers, has said on camera that so-called puberty blockers, which are used to chemically castrate sex offenders, chemically castrate the young boys who take them as well, leaving them incapable of arousal or orgasm. For adult sex offenders, the process is reversible. For boys like Avery, the effects are permanent. He will never feel sexual attraction, or any of the experiences that accompany it. He is completely sterile; he can never father a child, and his own childhood was spent in the national spotlight. The blockers he was given have also stunted his growth and mental development in irreversible ways. All of these things were stolen from him, and he has said that transitioning “ruined my life.” It’s high time that we stop pretending that children can make an informed decision to transition or take blockers, even if their doctors are honest about the risks and consequences — which most are not. Blockers are not reversible: the intellectual deficits they cause will never repair themselves, and neither will the damage done to the child victim’s emotional intelligence and maturity. This will, of course, make it easier to push them into transitioning; ie, to sell them hormones and provide surgical alterations. Parents like Avery’s, who try to monetize their child’s struggles with gender identity, belong in prison, not on television, and so do the doctors who are complicit in his chemical castration and sterilization.