REVEALED: UVic set to host talk on 'benefits of puberty blocking medications'

The University of Victoria is set to host a talk highlighting the "benefits of puberty blocking medications."

It is scheduled for Tuesday, April 15, via Zoom and in-person at UVic Cornett A317.

According to UVic's Chair in Transgender Studies, the event will feature New Zealand-based lecturer Dr. John Fenaughty, the lead researcher of the 2021 Identify Survey that claimed almost all those who took puberty blockers benefited from their effects.

The event description begins by calling the New Zealand government's recent launch of a public consultation on the safety and efficacy of puberty blockers "a move that appears influenced by political pressure from populist coalition partners and the highly contested UK Cass Review."

In an attempt to try and prove that such medical interventions are a net positive, Fenaughty is set to cite data from the aforementioned study. The conclusions were drawn from a sample of 87 people between the ages of 14 and 26 in New Zealand who "responded to an open-ended question about how gender-affirming medications had affected their lives."

Fenaughty and his team claimed that 95% of respondents "described positive or extremely positive impacts, including improved mental health, reduced suicidality, improved body image, better social connections, enhanced quality of life, and a renewed sense of hope," and recommended the "removal of any further restrictions on access to puberty blockers."

In the ensuing report, the researchers highlighted six positive effects felt by respondents and included numerous quotes from those who felt the medication had improved their lives.

They prefaced the non-positive responses by noting that, "at the risk of providing undue emphasis to the very small number of neutral, ambivalent responses or the sole negative response received, we share these to emphasise that young people in this study are also able to critical of the impacts of gender-affirming medication, as well as agentic in their decisions to stop usage if they feel they need to."

In the years since, much more research has been conducted on the issue. The 2024 Cass Review, for example, found that there was insufficient evidence to support the use of puberty blockers as a go-to treatment, and discouraged adults from facilitating the gender transition of children.

The April 15 talk is only the latest in a series of events hosted by UVic related to LGBTQ research. Just days before Fenaughty is set to take the stage, Finnish researcher Luca Tainio will discuss "challenging cisnormative ideals of the penis through trans male embodiment."

They said the goal of the talk was to "critically bother the common cultural idea(l)s of what is, or what counts as, a penis, and in a wider sense to create a counternarrative to the cisnormative ways in which we see and understand male embodiment."