Yet another study proves puberty blockers are life-saving for trans youth

I have never understood the rights hate of LGBTQ+ people just for being different.  I used to think it was they couldn’t understand it because they did feel that way.  If they did not feel that way then it must be wrong or not exist.    The very same things they say about trans people they said about gay people when I was a school kid.  I remember that people were pushing to ban gay guys, and it was always gay guys just like it is always trans women, from teaching because they would molest the kids.  Now it is we can’t let trans people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity because of some fear they will molest the little girls.  Always to protect the kids but if that was the goal then may I mention religious leaders?  I think also the fear some religious right wingers have is that they find trans women attractive and that terrifies them.  They want to force kids to go through the wrong puberty so it is harder for them to fit in with the stereotypes people have of what is masculine or feminine.   For some they think they are doing the bidding of their deity but I don’t remember reading Jesus saying anything about trans people.  But he did preach love and tolerance a lot.  Maybe the pain and cruelty is the point after all.  Hugs

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/01/08/puberty-blockers-study-another-one/

Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty)

Yet another study proving that trans youth almost always feel less suicidal on gender-affirming care has been thrown on the pile of evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective.

Research set to be published in the Journal of Paediatric’s February volume has once again proved that trans adolescents show “meaningful reductions” in depression and anxiety after beginning clinically-endorsed hormone therapy.

Co-written by paediatricians in Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, the study examined the wellbeing of 432 patients before and after undergoing treatment.

The participants, aged 12 to 20, were surveyed on their mental health before and at least 364 days after beginning appropriate medical treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Trans youth regularly come under attack by politicians. (Getty)

Using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) toolkit – an internationally acknowledged assessment of suicidality in young people and adults – researchers found significant improvements in the mental health of patients across the board.

Suicidality among participants decreased significantly over time, according to the study’s results, with rates continuing to decrease as time went on.

The reductions, clinicians noted, were consistent regardless of gender identity, treatment duration, and, interestingly, the age at the start of therapy.

This not only once again proves that gender-affirming care is remarkably effective in improving the wellbeing of trans patients, but that its effectiveness in reducing suicidal tendencies does not diminish as patients get older.

Clinicians recommended following-up the study with a “larger sample and longer follow-up” to sufficiently prove the consistency of gender-affirming care’s mental health treatments.

Politicians continue to ban puberty blockers despite evidence

Numerous studies across the globe have proven that gender-affirming care is almost always a good thing for trans people, especially trans young people.

One study from October 2024 found that 97 per cent of trans under-18s were “highly satisfied” with the results of gender-affirming treatment, while another from March in the same year found that, out of 548 patients who accessed trans healthcare, just two regretted it.

Regret rates for gender-affirming treatment are very low according to a paper from May 2024, which found that patients are more likely to regret knee surgery, breast augmentation, and even having children than those starting gender-affirming care.

Despite the mountain of evidence proving that gender-affirming care can be, and almost always is, life-saving, anti-trans politicians and political pundits regularly claim trans young people shouldn’t be allowed to access clinically-approved medical treatment.

Wes Streeting, pictured.
Wes Streeting has routinely come under fire for his policies on trans people. (Getty)

At least 27 states in the US ban gender-affirming care in some capacity, preventing over 40 per cent of America’s trans youth population from accessing care. Puberty blockers are also banned for trans youth in the UK, despite being freely available for cisgender youth.

The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organisation, warned these bans have “detrimental impacts” on the mental health of trans young people, who are already disproportionately likely to feel suicidal.

Research conducted by Dr Natacha Kennedy in the University of London found that Wes Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers for trans young people is “significantly, extensively, and relentlessly harming trans children and young people”.

She spoke to the parents of trans young people who were once “happy, well-adjusted, and little different from most cis children”, but who have now resorted to self-harm because of an inability to access care.

Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.

Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding

I love Erin’s posts and reporting.  The attack on trans rights and health was planned and coordinated by religious conservatives who felt they lost the culture war on gay acceptance and same sex marriage so they decided to jump quickly on the trans issue with lots of money.  Their first attempt failed because they went after the idea of trans people itself.  So then they changed to the old “protect the children” play book with the entire focus on protecting little cis girls but they never mention the trans boys that cis boys need to be protected from.  See how patristical it is?  It is all about males needing to protect the little womans.  They don’t care about trans kids, they don’t care about female sports.   It is about not letting trans kids transition with puberty blockers and the correct hormones as then the kids will grow up as they are fitting the societal view of what men and women look like.   That scares the straight cis male religious guys because they are terrified they will be attracted to a trans woman.   Imagine the horror if trans people moved freely in society not raising any question of their gender because they conformed to how society sees each gender.   That sounds like a grand thing to me, but it terrifies these fanatical religious grifters that want to control how everyone lives to please their god.   They make up untrue and scary what ifs, what if a man uses the letting trans people use the bathroom of their gender ID to go into a girls … notice they phrase it girls not womans because that make people more protective from the start, and they harm a little girl, your little girl?  Well nothing stops a man from doing that now!  Predators don’t need permission and won’t wait for it.  And that has happened where a straight cis male dragged a little girl into the male bathroom and raped her while his friend watched.   There was a famous court case on it.   Look it up if you want.   Want to know what has not happened, a trans woman going into the female’s bathroom and assaulting a female.  Sorry.  The right has tried hard to make one happen, but each claim of a trans person in a  locker room or bathroom acting inappropriate has been debunked and disproven.   This is all a made up scandal and crisis by people who can not accept the society progressing beyond the old traditional binary they grew up with and they think their holy books claim must be as their god insists on it.   Weird how it is always how their god insists on what they already believe or promote.  Handy that.  So many people can not move past the idea that if it dangles you MUST be a boy regardless of how you feel and if it is an inny you must be a girl regardless of anything else idea.  They can not seem to grasp personal feelings, needs, or medial science.  Hugs


 

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/vermont-bill-would-create-state-trust?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3nse02&triedRedirect=true

The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.

The New Anti-Trans Rules Are SO Much Worse Than You Think

Top Democratic Officials Target Their Most Vulnerable Constituents In New Strategy Document

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/top-democratic-officials-target-their?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=994764&post_id=177659051&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2r5nx6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Top Democratic officials put out a new guide, entitled “Deciding to Win,” that encourages Democrats to be a little more like Republicans on “identity and cultural issues.”

Why Anti-Trans Hate Makes a Toxic Environment for Women Athletes

These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.

“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”

The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/why-anti-trans-hate-makes-a-toxic

Jul 22, 2025

Photo by Nik via Unsplash.

Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.

While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassed at a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by adult protestors wearing XX/XY armbands, representing an anti-trans sports clothing brand. And in British Columbia, a 9-year-old cis girl was accosted by a grown man who accused her of being trans and demanded that she prove her sex to him.

While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, far-right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Leadership Institute, have been putting hate before science to turn the public against trans athletes since at least 2014. And it’s working.

Laws, rules or regulations currently ban trans athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity in 29 states, with 21 beginning the ban in kindergarten. The majority-conservative Supreme Court announced this month that it’ll be taking on the question of the constitutionality of the bans. Meanwhile, the federal government is pressuring states without bans to change their policies in compliance with a Trump executive order that attempts to institute a nationwide ban.

Trump signs an executive order calling for bans on trans women and girls from women’s sports. Photo by: The White House.

These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.

“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”

Harassment and Mental Health

Grace McKenzie has been deeply affected by these hate campaigns. A lifelong athlete, McKenzie has stayed healthy by playing multiple sports where she’s met “amazing people.” Shortly after she transitioned in 2018, she was thrilled when she was invited to join a women’s rugby team at the afterparty of a Lesbians Who Tech conference.

Grace McKenzie. Photo courtesy of McKenzie.

“Rugby became my home, it was my first queer community, it was the space where I really discovered my own womanhood,” McKenzie told Uncloseted Media. “I could be the sometimes-masculine, soft-feminine person who play[s] rugby and loves sports.”

But that started to change in 2019, when McKenzie and others on her team started to hear rumors that World Rugby was considering a ban on trans athletes. Fearing the loss of her community, she started a petition that racked up 25,000 signatures—but it wasn’t enough, and the ban took effect in 2020.

As anti-trans rhetoric in sports has ramped up, McKenzie says she’s had soul-crushing breakdowns that have left her “sobbing uncontrollably and unconsolably.”

“It would be these waves of such intense despair and rage—it was like going through grief for five years,” she says. “I have to wake up every single day and read about another state or another group of people who say that they don’t want me to exist.”

While McKenzie says she’s found the strength to keep playing where she can, sports psychologist Erin Ayala has seen clients leave sports altogether due to the hate toward trans athletes.

“It can be really difficult when they feel like they’re doing everything right … and they still don’t belong,” says Ayala, the founder of the Minnesota-based Skadi Sport Psychology, a therapy clinic for competitive athletes. “Depression can be really high. They don’t have the strength to keep fighting to show up. And then that can further damage their mental health because they’re not getting the exercise and that sense of social support and community.”

That was the story of Andraya Yearwood, who made national headlines in high school when she and another trans girl placed first and second in Connecticut’s high school track competitions. The vitriol directed at her was intense: Parents circulated petitions to have her banned; crowds cheered for her disqualification; the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit against the state for letting her play; and she faced a torrent of transphobic and racist harassment.

“It’s a very shitty experience,” Yearwood, now 23, told Uncloseted Media.

Fearing more harassment, she quit running in college.

“I understood that collegiate athletics is on a much larger and much more visible scale. … I just didn’t want to go through all that again for the next four years,” she says. “Track obviously meant a lot to me, and to have to let that go was difficult.”

It’s understandable that Yearwood and other trans athletes struggle when they have to ditch their favorite sport. A litany of research demonstrates that playing sports fosters camaraderie and teamwork and improves mental and physical health. Since trans people disproportionately struggle from poor mental healthsocial isolation and suicidality, these benefits can be especially crucial.

“In some of these cases, kids have been participating with a peer group for years, and then rules were made and all of a sudden they’re pulled away,” says Fry. “It’s a hard world to be a trans individual in, so it’d be easy to feel lonely and separated.”

Caught in the Crossfire

The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.

Ayala isn’t alone. Numerous cis female athletes have been “transvestigated,” or accused of being trans, including Serena Williams and Brittney Griner. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly accused Algerian boxer Imane Khelif of being trans after her gold medal win, as part of a wave of online hate against her. She would later file a cyberbullying complaint against Musk’s X.

While women of all races have been targeted, Black women have faced harsher scrutiny due to stereotypes that portray them as more masculine.

Yearwood remembers posts that would fixate on her muscle definition and compare her to LeBron James.

“I think that is attributed to the overall hyper-masculinization and de-feminization of Black women, and I know that’s a lot more prevalent for Black trans women,” she says. “It made it easier to come for us in the way that they did.”

A Big Distraction

Joanna Harper, a post-doctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, says that the jury is still out on whether the differences in athletic performance between trans and cis women are significant enough to warrant policy changes.

“People want simple solutions, they want things to be black and white, they want good guys and bad guys,” Harper says, adding that the loudest voices against trans women’s participation do not actually care about what the science says.

“This idea that trans women are bigger than cis women, therefore it can’t be fair, is a very simple idea, and so it is definitely one that people who want to create trans people as villains have pushed.”

Even Harper herself has been the victim of the far-right’s anti-trans attacks. Earlier this year, she was featured in a New York Times article where she discussed a study she was working on with funding from Nike into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on adolescents’ athletic performance.

After the article came out, Riley GainesTurning Point USA and Fox News-affiliated sports outlet OutKick attacked Nike for funding the study.

Riley Gaines and OutKick founder Clay Travis attack Harper’s study on X.

“That Nike chose to fund a study on trans athletes doesn’t actually say that they’re supporting trans athletes. They’re merely supporting research looking into the capabilities of trans athletes,” Harper says. “You don’t know what the research will show until you get the data … but the haters don’t want any data coming out that doesn’t support what they want to say.”

Harper says this anti-trans fervor and HRT bans are making it more difficult to conduct studies in the first place.

And while the far-right argues that they are “protecting women’s sports” in their war on trans athletes, multiple athletes and experts told Uncloseted Media that this distracts from bigger issues in women’s sports, including sexual harassment by coaches and a lack of funding.

“If the real goal was to help women’s sports, they would try to increase funding [and] support for athletes,” says Harper, noting that women’s sports receive half as much money as men’s sports at the Division I collegiate level. “But that’s not what they’re doing, and it becomes pretty evident the real motivation behind these people.”

Share

Moving Forward

Since Trump’s reelection, Grace McKenzie has somewhat resigned herself to the likelihood of attacks on trans people getting worse. Despite this, she finds hope in building community with other trans athletes, such as the New York City-based trans basketball league Basketdolls.

“If that’s the legacy that [the anti-trans movement] wants to leave behind, good for them,” McKenzie says. “Our legacy is going to be one about hope, and collective solidarity, and mutual aid, and I would much rather be on that side of the fence.”

Meanwhile, Fry remains hopeful that conflicts can be resolved and that trans people may be able to find a place in sports over time.

“If we could all have more positive conversations and not create such a hateful environment around this issue, it would just benefit everyone.”


If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

Donate to Uncloseted Media


Trans Kids Are On The Chopping Block

The thing I like about the video is that she points out how the state claims it must do this to protect kids from the dangerous drugs yet allows their use for straight cis children just not for trans children.  The law states it is about making kids accept their birth assigned gender and keeping them from transitioning.   

They tried these laws with kids who were gay decades ago and some still fight for it.  Force gay kids to accept a heterosexual orientation through conversion methods and then outlaw being homosexual along with erasing anything homosexual from society.  It did not work.   The courts vigorously defended and backed up gay people’s rights to exist as themselves and have full equality of societies benefits as straight people do.  

Sadly we have much different courts now stacked with bigots and racists by bigots and racist who will push and promote the bigotry.  But in the law itself they wrote the bigotry out loud, clear, and easy to see.  The republican lawmakers are making it plain this is about erasing trans kids and that will make erasing trans adults much easier.   I wonder if they will succeed, but I am worried.   The video is well worth the watch.  If you do not wish to watch the video but prefer to read the transcript she provides a link to it in the description box.  Many of the podcasters now do.  Hugs