News Summary

• )Treating gender dysphoria as a clinical diagnosis with a medical solution, Chu argues, has “hung trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity”—the idea of a male or female essence (or something in between) that resides inside all of us.
• Adopting a similar “born this way” argument for medical transition, Chu writes, “won us modest gains at the level of social acceptance.”From the July/August 2018 issue: When children say they’re transShe doesn’t think this is enough.
• Removing barriers to medical transition was a “life-saving” approach, supporters claimed.However, the evidence that adolescent medical transition prevents suicide turns out to be thin.
• As early as 2018, the Gender Identity Development Service—Britain’s leading child gender clinic, staffed by doctors involved with transition-related care—criticized a television drama called Butterfly that showed a gender-nonconforming 11-year-old attempting suicide.
• “We will never be able to defend the rights of transgender kids until we understand them purely on their own terms: as full members of society who would like to change their sex,” Chu writes.
• Just after Chu’s essay was published, England’s National Health Service announced that it would no longer routinely prescribe puberty blockers for dysphoria, saying that the evidence for their safety and effectiveness simply was not good enough.