Remember when Irish singer Róisín Murphy was set upon by the mob last year? Her crime: she criticised puberty blockers and said we should stop dishing them out like candy to vulnerable kids. The blowback was furious. Armies of activists damned her as a transphobe, a bigot, a bitch.

They pronounced her ‘over’, which is PC-speak for ‘unpersoned’. They threatened to boycott her gigs. Virtually every review of her new album, Hit Parade, contained a swipe about her sinful utterance. The most shameful was the Guardian’s. It’s a great record, the reviewer said, but it comes with the ‘ugly stain’ of its creator’s evil views.

It was the liberty blockers who made the puberty blockers scandal possible

Well, now, six months on, NHS England has banned puberty blockers for gender-confused children on the basis that there is ‘not enough evidence’ they are safe. Róisín was right. Remember this next time you witness a witch-hunt – often the witch is just a woman telling the truth.

The vindication of Róisín Murphy raises serious questions about the state of our public life. That someone could be so ruthlessly maligned merely for raising questions about medical interference in the lives of fragile children is shocking. That she was shamed for saying something that was plainly correct makes it even worse. It was a timely if chilling reminder that crusades against so-called ‘hate speech’ are as apt to crush truth as they are to tackle hate.

It wasn’t only Murphy who felt the prong of the digital mob’s pitchforks. Everyone who raised concerns about the prescription of puberty blockers to healthy kids risked expulsion from polite society. Even though, in the words of the Times, these are ‘controversial drugs’, whose use to treat gender dysphoria was essentially ‘experimental’, a climate of censorship made it incredibly difficult to have frank, open discussion.

NHS whistleblowers have been raising the alarm about puberty blockers for years.

QOSHE - How was the puberty blocking scandal ever allowed to happen? - Brendan O’Neill
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How was the puberty blocking scandal ever allowed to happen?

23 15
17.03.2024

Remember when Irish singer Róisín Murphy was set upon by the mob last year? Her crime: she criticised puberty blockers and said we should stop dishing them out like candy to vulnerable kids. The blowback was furious. Armies of activists damned her as a transphobe, a bigot, a bitch.

They pronounced her ‘over’, which is PC-speak for ‘unpersoned’. They threatened to boycott her gigs. Virtually every review of her new album, Hit Parade, contained a swipe about her sinful utterance.........

© The Spectator


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