The Pro-Trans Movement Has No Credibility Left. Time to Say ‘Game Over’

T he United Kingdom has recently confirmed a sweeping ban on social-media platforms for children under age 16 to mitigate “harm,” yet it is proceeding with a clinical trial — or more accurately, a doomed experiment — that gives puberty-suppressing drugs to girls as young as eleven.

Here’s a bit of background context for the Americans who haven’t followed the developments abroad: NHS England commissioned an independent review known as the “Cass Report” to evaluate gender-related medical care for minors, which concluded in 2024 that existing studies on the topic are of “poor quality” and there is “very limited evidence on the longer-term outcomes” associated with medicalized transition. (The findings are similar to those in the U.S. Health and Human Services’ umbrella review that was published last year.) The Cass Report, led by Hilary Cass, cites a previous systematic study that showed puberty blockers compromised bone density and found “no changes in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction,” and the report further notes a range of irreversible side effects. Cass and her team recommended a “tiered approach” that “addresses urgent risk,” alleviates mental-health issues to improve decision-making, and develops a plan that may involve “any combination of social, psychological and physical interventions.” In response to the review’s publication, the government indefinitely banned puberty-blocking drugs (sometimes referred to as “puberty suppressing hormones” in the United Kingdom) as a treatment for minors with gender dysphoria, except in clinical trials, due to the “unacceptable safety risk.” Wes Streeting, who was then serving as the health and social care secretary, announced at the time that a clinical trial would be established to further examine the effects of puberty blockers.

That trial, called the “Pathways Trial” and conducted by King’s College London, was suspended in February after a medical regulatory agency raised concerns about “long-term biological harms” and suggested a minimum age of 14 for participants. Nearly 300 members of Parliament voted this week to reapprove the trial, albeit with a “modified protocol” that has “strengthened safeguards” and clearer guidelines regarding “safety for bone health, cognition, and vaginal bleeding. . . [and] fertility preservation.” The minimum age is eleven for female participants and twelve for males, who will be recruited beginning in August. A judicial review was brought earlier this year to ax the trial and prevent the enrollment of any children or young people; it will be heard in the High Court in late July, which means the trial will likely begin before the court reaches any decision.

So, to summarize: The United Kingdom’s recent Cass Report recognized that puberty blockers are dangerous, yet there’s going to be a trial to see whether these drugs are dangerous.

The bizarre twist is that Hilary Cass herself supports the trial: She is “absolutely convinced that more children will be harmed if we don’t do the trial than if we do.” She recently told the BBC that the trial is “essential” to answer “whether these drugs are helpful or not.” Cass has seemingly departed from the views that she and her research team espoused in the report, saying now that “some of the hype about risks have been exaggerated in that we genuinely don’t know if there are harms” (emphasis mine). But she also said that “we have young people turning up in the clinics on testosterone at 11, which we know is irreversible,” which subtly concedes that these drugs do have significant consequences.

Allow me to explain what Cass once understood: There isn’t good evidence that these drugs have benefits in treating gender dysphoria, and there is irrefutable evidence that these drugs cause serious harm that cannot be undone. Therefore, any further clinical studies will injure their child participants without improving their condition.

But the heart of this controversy ultimately is not the (in)effectiveness of puberty blockers. Instead, it is whether any form of medicalized intervention should be performed on an individual struggling with bodily dysmorphia, especially that related to sex. The answer is basically no. (The minor exceptions, I think, might include specific antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs that are used for a broad range of disorders.) We must dispense with the idea that anyone, child or not, is “transgender.” By rejecting that particularly pernicious theory of mind-body dualism, we then understand that doctors are not tasked with diagnosing who is legitimately “transgender” and therefore eligible for certain hormones or surgeries. The problem lies not in determining which patients should undergo medically induced bodily changes, but rather, what alternative therapeutic treatments for mental well-being should be provided instead. No clinical trials on the efficacy of “gender affirming care” should be performed, on minors or adults, because such experiments operate on the assumption that an individual can be “born in the wrong body” and medicine can approximate a sex change. What needs treatment is psychological, not physical.

I have admittedly grown impatient with the discourse related to “transgenderism.” To be blunt and honest: I’m done being nice, or however nice I was. It is ridiculous that anyone ever entertained the possibility that a man can be a woman, a girl can be a boy, a person can be no sex at all, and all the other nonsensical identity swaps that conceptual “gender” entails. Even worse, that view was implemented in the law, advanced by doctors who mutilated people, celebrated in the media, and weaponized to socially punish anyone who mildly challenged it. We, the supposed “transphobes” on the “wrong side of history,” democratically participated in the public discourse (sometimes at great expense to our livelihoods) and contributed reasons, arguments, evidence that prove our (obviously correct) view, whereas the “feminist philosophers” and LGBTQ+ activists churned out unintelligible academic papers and bogus studies while spewing ad hominems. There are no good arguments to justify the notion of “gender identity,” and there are no good data suggesting that hormonal treatments or surgeries are effective treatments. But even in the fanciful hypothetical realm where those medical interventions are beneficial and have zero negative consequences, we should not allow doctors to perform them because doing so would accept and legitimize an individual’s self-delusion. Why is anyone, like supporters of the Pathways Trial, still pretending that the “transgenderism” theory might be even a little bit valid? More crucially, though, why haven’t the propagandists who advanced this ideology prostrated themselves in the public square and admitted they were wrong, so horrifically wrong? The cycle of leftists avoiding the obligation to apologize — let alone endure penance — must end. It’s time to say “game over.”