By: Stephen McAlpine
Moving between Australia and the UK several times in my youth (the 1980s) showed me one thing: Australia was always a couple of years behind the UK and Europe.
By that I mean, it was behind in terms of fashion, music, styles, direction. If it were 1983 in the UK, it still felt like 1980 in Oz. It’s as if Australia were the last train stop on the line, which of course it was. Eventually Australia caught up, and by 1986 it felt like their UK 1983. But it took its time!
It’s kinda funny when Australia is a few years behind the rest of the world, at least in most things. But not in all things. Not in things such as safety features in cars or houses. And certainly not in things such as safety features for young people. Yet here we are again.
It’s 2024 in the rest of the world. Here in Australia, it’s seems like it’s still 2019.
“Hey Australia, there’s a COVID pandemic coming next year!”
“What’s COVID?”
Nevermind, you’ll find out!”
Jokes aside, what else are we to make of the fact that as the rest of the world, including most markedly the UK, has brought the runaway caboose of puberty blockers for children in the whole transgender movement to a screeching halt, while here in Australia it’s still 1983 (or perhaps 1984 in terms of how any dissent is dealt with)?
Sometimes being a few years behind the rest of the world becomes dangerous
So we get this in The Times of London in 2024:
And then a full article on what was, quite clearly, a deeply ideological agenda fuelled by misplaced concern, and misdirected activism.
The article quotes the medical expert who was tasked with reviewing the now defunded Tavistock Clinic:
“A review of the Tavistock clinic in 2022 by Dr Hilary Cass warned that puberty blockers may “permanently disrupt” brain development and “lock in” children to an irreversible, life-altering path of cross-sex hormone treatment.The new NHS clinical guidelines, issued following a public consultation, said: “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty-suppressing hormones to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
And it’s not that there were not concerns well before that. Dozens of senior clinicians have been speaking out about this matter, including psychologists who worked at the Tavistock Clinic, along with senior psychiatrists in the UK. However many clinicians working there had felt pressured to administer the drugs upon fear of losing their roles, and the threat of constant harassment from activists. The Times article goes on to say:
“As far back as 2015, staff from the clinic, also known as the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), told a select committee hearing that its treatment protocols were safe, regulated and based on guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, “which are almost universally observed in Europe”. In fact, the guidelines of that US-based organisation were not based on medical evidence, and there was little evidence about what the off-label use of these drugs really did to the brains and bodies of young patients.”
The article quotes several young people who, having been through puberty blocker treatments in the UK, have lived to regret the decisions they now see were ill-informed or not informed at all. At least not informed by actual science. It makes for sad and disturbing reading.
Though the unconvinced will remain so, as the article notes, quoting Stonewall, the LGBT charity, which “continue[d) to refer to puberty blockers as “reversible” in a statement following the announcement.”
Here in Australia however, we’re still to catch up with that. It’s still 1984 here such is the level of shut down when it comes to inquiry about such matters.
Puberty blockers are still being presented as a great option, and those in favour are conveniently ignoring the scientific evidence and aiming at the real bogeyman for those given over to the Sexular Age: conservatives.
So we get this in The Australian newspaper, which ran a piece commenting on the material in The Times article:
“The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne – despite being the setters of quasi-national standards of care that incorporate the prescription of hormone blocker drugs to children in the early stages of puberty – refused to respond to the English National Health Service’s move to restrict the prescription of puberty blockers to clinical trials, the move mirroring growing doubts over the safety and clinical effectiveness of the hormone drugs in a host of European countries.”
Yet state governments in Australia are either refusing to comment on the issue, or are still backing the radical, puberty blocker approach. It would seem that the radical agenda being driven by the Australian equivalent of the Tavistock Clinic is being given aircover by those who are a few years behind.
The Sydney Morning Herald quotes a senior researcher who is full steam ahead like its 1999 (2001 everywhere else).
“However, Associate Professor Ada Cheung, a leading researcher who established the Trans Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne, said prescribing puberty blockers for patients who had been assessed was evidence-based.”
And then the bogeyman comment:
“Unfortunately, trans health is politicised and there’s a lot of conservative groups with an agenda to limit access to gender-affirming care, which is not based on scientific evidence.”
Let me just fix that for you Professor Cheung:
Unfortunately, trans health is politicised and there’s a lot of radical ideologies with an agenda to increase access to gender-affirming care, which is not based on scientific evidence.
At the very time huge swathes of the clinical population around the world is saying exactly the opposite: that there is very little evidence scientifically about the help that such blockers provided compared to the vast, and irreversible damage being done, that seems so behind the times coming from Australia.
But hey, you know those conservatives. Always out to damage people.
Yet speaking of irreversible damage, go read the book of the same name by the brave Abigail Shrier, who for her bravery over the past few years in speaking out against the social, medical and psychological dangers of acquiescing to the cult-like activism around what is a very real condition for a small number of people, has been pilloried, hated and cancelled.
For the likes of Abigail Shrier, and those who bravely spoke out at Tavistock down the years, it’s felt like 1984 every year for some time.
Maybe only now, thanks to their brave work, we’re moving beyond the pall of suffocating suppression that saw the likes of the Australian Psychological Association’s journal publish articles telling psychologists in Australia to report their colleagues if any of them appeared less than affirming in their treatment of trans issues among young children.
Come on Australia, you’ve been left behind so often in the fashion stakes, the music stakes, even the use of solar power for goodness sake! Now’s the time to come into the present before the future leaves us behind.
Article supplied with thanks to Stephen McAlpine
About the Author: Stephen has been reading, writing and reflecting ever since he can remember. He is the lead pastor of Providence Church Midland, and in his writing dabbles in a number of fields, notably theology and culture. Stephen and his family live in Perth’s eastern suburbs, where his wife Jill runs a clinical psychology practice.
Feature image: Canva Pro
