It’s great that Britain’s high court has ruled that children can’t give informed consent to receive puberty blockers. I only wish that we had made that sort of progress here in Australia. But we haven’t — we’ve gone the other way.
Not only are we still handing out puberty blockers to children, we have also introduced ‘self-identification’ for legal sex status in multiple states. What’s more, there are serious attempts under way to introduce legislation that could be used to make it an offence to fail to affirm people’s chosen gender identities. This is happening under the banner of expanding hate speech protections and prohibiting conversion therapy.
I’m not writing this to pat Britain on the back. I’m writing to warn you. What happens in Australia may well affect the culture in the UK too. When it comes to the trans debate, what happens in one country can lead to the same thing happening in others.
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