This isn’t NHS lead, this is political and fuelled by anger, propaganda, misinformation, poor journalism, and pure lies. Most healthcare practitioners (I’m married to one, I have three more in my close family and know a few others) want nothing but the best of care to support whatever health and wellbeing concern people have. They don’t care about labels and hysteria, they care about healthy happy people. It is of course true some online health services will have different attitudes to trans people, law of averages of course.


At the moment trans people are part of the election campaign by the tories, they’ve promised our lives will be further restricted already making headlines, and this isn’t going away after the election. They won’t have much of a voice post election though, they can shout, but it’s not going to get them as far as it does now. Right wing media will obviously amplify this as they always do, but noise doesn’t always equal policy, especially if you are a long way from being in power and making legislation, and the government can push through pretty much any legislation they want with a large majority.

I’m not delusional, I hate how we have to live in fear of others making critical decisions about our lives. As a trans woman I am directly impacted not so much by any recent political decisions, but very much by how venomous the conversation has become; I’m not being physically harmed, but the psychological harm means I’m currently having to see my MH care coordinator more frequently and have had to start taking additional medication as my anxiety is debilitating. I am scared to go out. I’m terrified just living my daily life.


I’m not at all important though, and certainly not to your article. I don’t disagree at all either how absolutely terrible things are, and of course I could be utterly wrong about Labour taking pressure off our necks and instead giving us support instead of restrictions. I feel they are currently trying to play everything very safe, which is unhelpful, but if that allows them to win a larger majority that they can use for good once in power, and unleash kindness and support for many, then I think it’s worth the wait.

My response was to ensure people understand that if the currently legally receive blockers (as in prescribed by the NHS) then they are not currently impacted. Of course it’s terrible to try to ban anyone from taking a medication that could save their life, and will definitely make life easier if/when they decide to legally take HRT. We just need to be clear about what has been threatened, and what hasn’t. As far as I can tell this isn’t actually legally binding as it stands, they can try all they want to prosecute, but blockers are not a class A drug, and they aren’t even a controlled drug - for those who don’t know this means a medication needs ID and a signature to be collected.

This is noise and threats. And as it stands the threat expires I believe in early September. Labour could go further. Will they? No idea. If u had to bet I’d say no though. Doing nothing is better for us, and probably easier. They may take things further. But again I’d bet they won’t. Things would be different if children and young people had easier access to NHS support, but as you know that’s a whole other conversation and absolutely terrible in its own right.

I follow you, Riki, and I read everything you write, I enjoy your work and you clearly make a huge amount of effort to create high quality content. I’m not disparaging your article, the anger is absolutely valid, and as I wrote in my first comment there is a lot more to this with letters full of lies being sent to parents, and CAMHS being pressured - I think I’m correct in saying ‘instructed’, but I’m not 100% clear that’s correct - to basically convince trans kids to detransition or report, or at least threaten to, report them to social care as a safeguarding issue. This is disgraceful, and that’s a huge understatement. I’d argue it’s worse than trying to restrict access to blockers privately. We are on the same page, basically, I just really want nothing but the truth absolutely made clear and people not living in more fear than they already suffer from.

All I wanted to do really was clarify that anyone currently prescribed blockers by the NHS can legally take them, and really as far as I can see, the chance of anyone being prosecuted for buying them privately is zero. Remember so many trans men obtain the controlled drug testosterone by various methods outside of NHS prescriptions and I’ve not heard of a single prosecution. Different, but also connected. This may well continue after the end date if the ‘order’, but it’s not at all a guarantee. I wanted to clarify things for any readers searching the comments.

What we really need is adequate healthcare for trans kids. But that’s a long way off unfortunately.