In early September I recieved an email from the Department for Health and Social Care, inviting me to participate in a closed consultation on the Labour government’s proposed extension of the Tory ban on puberty blockers. The deadline was 1st October 2024.

September was already extremely busy. I started the month at the International Trans Studies Conference in Chicago, and ended it at the WPATH Symposium in Lisbon. In the meantime I was faced with various writing deadlines, administrative tasks, and the start of a new teaching semester. The small number of other academic experts and voluntary organisations who were also invited to respond no doubt faced very similar challenges with the short notice and unforgiving deadline.

Nevertheless, I scrambled to respond. Like Cal Horton, I regard government consultations on trans healthcare to be inherently abusive at this stage; as I wrote to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in 2018, “we respond not with hope or optimism, but in fear. This is the power you wield over us”. Given the turgid vibes found in recent political discourse, I also held little hope of a long-term ban being prevented. However, it seemed worth using what little prestige I have as an academic to at least try to encourage the government to listen to actual evidence.

Trans Writes are now reporting that an extension of the ban until 2027 is on the cards for Britain, following a unanimous vote on the same by the Northern Ireland Assembly. With this in mind, I am now publicly sharing the evidence I provided in the closed consultation, plus slides from an oral presentation to the Commission on Human Medicines, who advised the Government.

I don’t think for a moment that sharing these materials will change anything in the short term. However, I feel it is important to put them in the public realm now for the sake of transparency.

Going forward, I hope the work that many of us have done in building and sharing an ethical base for the ethical provision of trans healthcare will make a difference. In the meantime, there is an important lesson here about relying on existing, unequal systems of power and control. As Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift argue in their new book Trans Femme Futures, making demands of institutions leaves the power in their hands. It is more important than ever for trans people to build power and knowledge within our own communities, in collaboration with others.

We have survived worse in the past by sharing information, ideas, and life-changing medication between us, and we will do so again.