The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

by Shon Faye

Current waiting times for a first appointment at GIDS are over two years. The GIDS assessment process for referral, and the waiting times involved in commencing treatment once referred, mean roughly another year will elapse before those teenagers approved for blockers start taking them. Three years from first referral to starting treatment is a long time in an adolescent’s life. Yet, medically, to be at their most effective in suppressing the development of secondary sex characteristics, blockers should be started at the outset of puberty, or what paediatricians call ‘Tanner Stage 2’ (at ‘Tanner Stage 1’ the child’s sex characteristics are entirely prepubertal). The precise timing of this optimum stage of course varies from child to child; typically it occurs at any time between the ages of nine and twelve. In cases of precocious puberty, blockers are usually first administered to children under the age of eight without any need for court oversight. As a result, international consensus outside the UK is that it is not clinically prudent to specify a blanket minimum age for blockers in cases of gender dysphoria.