Why hormones matter for every body across a lifetime
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Giving trans people hormones is a risky, experimental intervention that medicine should approach with extreme caution. The assumption is that withholding hormones is the safe, neutral option, that doing nothing protects the body.
What I was pointing to there is something every endocrinologist already knows: the human body needs sex hormones, and it needs them across a lifetime. Testosterone, oestrogen, these are not optional extras. Spend too long without them and your bones thin, your brain becomes vulnerable, your body changes in ways that are painful and sometimes irreversible. Withholding hormones from a trans person is not caution. It is a decision with consequences, and those consequences fall on a real body. The question was never whether hormones carry risk. The question is which risk you are asking someone to carry, and who gets to decide.
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