No turning back: what puberty makes permanent
Dr Helen Webberley on The Dr Hilary Show: ten years of GenderGP, with Dr Hilary Jones, The Dr Hilary Show
Puberty blockers are the treatment people worry about being irreversible. The changes that happen without them tend to get a free pass, as though an unwanted puberty is just something a young person can sort out later.
What I was pointing to there is something people rarely stop to think about: the changes that puberty makes are the permanent ones. A broken voice does not mend. Hair on the chin takes years of laser treatment to remove, and even then it is not simple. When people ask me whether affirming care is reversible, I want to turn the question around. The puberty we allow to happen without intervention, that is what leaves marks that last a lifetime. Every month of an unwanted one is a change a young person did not choose and cannot easily undo.
