Puberty blockers cause permanent inability to orgasm
Ben Leo said:
“the president of WPATH, doctor Marcy Bowers, said that the impact of early blocking of puberty on sexual function and adulthood said to date, she writes, I'm unaware of an individual claiming the ability to orgasm when they were blocked at tanner-two”
The quote is attributed to the president of WPATH, the organisation that writes the international standards of care for trans healthcare, so it carries real authority. A viewer would reasonably take it as an insider admission that puberty blockers routinely destroy sexual function.
What Dr Bowers said was that she was unaware of individuals who had been blocked at Tanner stage 2 reporting the ability to orgasm, which is a clinical observation about a gap in the evidence, a prompt for more research, not a study result showing that every person treated this way is affected. Ben Leo restated it as meaning every single case, and that is not the same thing at all. The WPATH Standards of Care 8, which went through two years of peer review across the global research base, do not conclude that puberty blockers reliably destroy sexual function: they flag an area where more data is needed, which is what responsible clinical guidelines do when a question has not yet been fully studied. Families who hear the misrepresented version and turn away from a treatment that might have been right for their child are making a decision based on something the original speaker did not actually say.
What I said at the time:
“What about the what about the WPATH standards of care 8, which went to a 2 year peer review process looking at all the research, that does not say that then a 9 year old an orgasm is that what you said or you're talking about an adult?”
Young trans people and their families who hear this and conclude that puberty blockers inevitably destroy sexual function, and who may then forgo care that could reduce lifelong distress.