@batchofcookies I think that others have sufficiently answered this question - First, the personal: from my position I'm 47 and still undoing the damage that my wrong-sex puberty wrought on my body. I got to start HRT *young* for 2000. I started at 20 years old. By then I'd already got changes to my body that I couldn't undo and that hurt me to look at and consider. It's taken me a *very long time* to come to terms with and love my body and I'm still thinking of expensive surgery to change some stuff that makes me dysphoric.

Every day of puberty->adulthood I considered killing myself. I held knives, I thought about jumping in front of vehicles, I remember looking out of the upper story windows of the biochemistry tower when I was at uni and I thought about jumping. That was Every. Single. Day.

Because every day my body betrayed me.

I nearly killed myself at 20, I was so fucking scared and all that could have been avoided. All that pain and trauma.

And look, I love my life now. It's really hard for me to think how I'd change mine because I love my wife, I have a home and pets, and *really phenomenal* friends. But fuck, if I could go back and fix it for teen me? I would.

The not personal:

We know - from evidence - that nearly all trans kids who go on blockers go on to seek HRT. We know kids who *aren't* treated go on to kill themselves (and kids in unaffirming environments try to do so at a rate of 70+%, as demonstrated by the studies in the US post the banning of blockers; also incredibly damning is the fact the NHS now refuses to release or tracks stats properly for self harm/suicide for trans for kids now they're denied blockers). We know from the evidence that it's better for >99% of the kids treated.

So the alternative is that we don't treat - because we're concerned that <1% would have the pain that you're putting the >99% through now.

Putting the risk we *might* harm one cis kid above more than one hundred trans kids we'd save from that torture? I don't see how that's acceptable.

And honestly? If you don't feel better on HRT you can stop it. I know how I felt when my primary circulating sex hormone was testosterone and it was *fucking awful*. Nearly all trans people I know feel better on HRT. Some are ambivalent about it but like the changes in their body.

These aren't *immediately irreversible*. Kids take *years* to get through puberty. They can start it and go "oh shit, no, this is worse" and stop no harm no foul.

But what you can't ever do is completely eradicate the pain caused by going through the wrong puberty - and those trans kids that survive this? They're going to be righteously angry because this is trauma inflicted for a tiny few to harm many.