Puberty blockers permanently eliminate sexual feeling
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull said:
“you would disrupt the brain function, puberty, uh, the puberty, the brain function that happens through puberty, all the really important things that happen through puberty, uh, the, the, uh, fertility, the sexual function of a child, rendering someone for the rest of their lives never even having a, a sexual feeling, never having an orgasm, never ejaculating.”
The idea that blocking the hormones that drive puberty would also block the development of sexual sensation is intuitively plausible: if the body never goes through its natural hormonal development, it seems reasonable to worry that sexual function would be permanently affected.
What the claim misses is the difference between pausing a hormone-driven process and ending it. Puberty blockers create a pause; gender-affirming hormones then restart that process in the direction that fits the person's gender, and the body, including sexual sensation, develops through that second puberty. The adults who have been through this pathway consistently describe sexual feelings, arousal, and satisfaction as genuine parts of their lives. Withholding care on the basis of this claim means real adolescents, weighing up a decision that is already hard enough, are handed a picture of lifelong numbness that the evidence simply does not support, and some of them will carry that fear into a future of untreated dysphoria instead.
What I said at the time:
“They do develop sexual feelings”
Trans adolescents and their parents, who may refuse or delay care that could prevent serious psychological harm, based on a catastrophic outcome claim that the evidence does not support.