How gender affirming hormones actually work over time
Dr Helen Webberley on Times Radio: the gender debate, with Jo Coburn, Times Radio
The moment someone starts gender-affirming hormones, everything that follows is immediately and permanently irreversible. People assume it is a single point of no return, a door that closes the instant treatment begins.
What I was trying to explain is that hormones begin a second puberty, and a second puberty unfolds across years, just as the first one did. The irreversible changes people are thinking of do not happen on day one: they develop gradually along that trajectory, which is exactly what the person going through it wants and has chosen. By the time someone has moved through a full programme of treatment, yes, some changes are permanent, but that is the destination they set out for, not a trap that closed behind them without warning. The framing of "irreversible from the first dose" misunderstands how puberty, either one, actually works.
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