Guardian.co.uk – Richard Green – The Guardian
Halting development allows teenagers time to consider their potential treatment, says Richard Green
Your article (‘My body is wrong’, G2, August 14) sensitively reports the anguish of the young teenage transsexual as the body changes in the direction of the wrong sex. That anguish is medically treated in other countries. But in the UK the “wrong puberty” is allowed to progress for years before treatment. Not only are these unwanted body changes traumatic as they develop, but if the teenager goes on to live as an adult of the other sex, they pose additional hardship. Aptly, the article tells of a mother whose (now) daughter was denied hormone treatment “until the age of 16, by which point she already had an Adam’s apple, a deep voice and facial hair”.