Susan's Place Transgender Resources

If anyone's interested, this is the answer I posted to that question on Quora.com:

https://www.quora.com/What-causes-a-person-to-be-transgender/answer/Hugh-Easton-1

Thanks Hugh.  That was a great post and is now bookmarked.

I wish i knew whether my mom took DES. She has long passed on and i'm sure there is no way to find out. She was pregnant with me in the mid 60s and she was 43 yrs old at the time. A very late pregnancy for that time and a large percentage of late pregnancies had downs syndrome and other issues, at that time. I do not know what her prenatal regimen with me was.

I recall her saying her doc told her to eat lots of red meat for brain development. She smoked some and i think drank lightly as well. It would stand to reason that her doc would have prescribed DES because of her age and because she had miscarried in the past. I was premature by about 4 weeks.

I had so many female features, i wish i knew.

Blimey, Makes you wonder doesn't it. My mother had a series of premature births before me all of which failed in miscarraige or in my brothers case he died at 3 months. I wasn't given much longer when i was born premature, but i'm still here, could DES have played a role in all this. We probably will never know.
Sophie

I can't speak for anyone else, but it definitely wouldn't surprize me if it has something to do with our parents' health. I'm 99% convinced that in my case it's a problem of a lack of nutrients in my mother's body (and maybe my father's condition at the time of me being conceived helped). I was born very premature (at 28 weeks) and have a random genetic eye mutation that came with birth, that no one else in my family has, causing me to be almost blind. Recently I found out that a lack of vitamin A (I think it was) will cause a cow's calf to be born blind, and that each progressive generation of human mothers that grows up on bad nutrition (meaning: stuff like English/French/American food) has progressively more and more problems giving birth, among other things.

They thought I would be brain-damaged and have learning disabilities but that didn't happen. My mom couldn't stop bleeding after the surgery to get me out (which again points to some kind of deficiency) so they almost gave her a forced hystorectomy or something like that so that she wouldn't die, but she stopped in time.

Knowing all that I know now about nutrition, my mom's probably only getting like 5% of her daily nutrients and has been living like that for as long as I've been alive at the very least, ingesting poison (like aspartame) on the side. She's constantly sick, has tons of pain, can never sleep and so on because all she eats is junk food and I don't know how it was before I was born but I imagine it was similar. She also used to go to those tanning salons all the time, the kind that use radiation, and she never used to listen to me when I told her that this or that caused cancer or that this or that food was no good, so I really have no idea what she was up to before I was born. She takes a lot of pills, like antidepressants and anti-allergy pills, nowadays but I don't think she took anything when I was a kid.

If you want to be healthy and get all your nutrients you need to eat stuff like liver and soaked beans, and stop eating stuff like table sugar, white flour, microwaved food and ultra-pasteurized dairy products (by the way, if you hear stuff like "red meat causes cancer" - most meat nowadays has sugar in it, sugar causes cancer. Not sugar inside honey or fruit, I mean stuff like table sugar and molasses). My mom, for long as I can remember, has only eaten the cheapest food that has tons of sugar, white flour and artificial food colouring in it, stuff like instant macaroni and cheese in a box, with hamburger meat so cheap it's been filled out with so much who-knows-what until it's a different colour than it should be, topped up with McDonald's. If you're not even getting all of your OWN daily nutrients then it's no wonder if the kid you have is then born abnormal.

As for what medicine/drugs she may have taken, I have no clue, but she was born in the late 60's (me in the early 90's). She hardly drank, never got drunk, and never smoked - but her mom smoked cigarettes (and possibly marijuana) inside the house while she was growing up.

There's a lot of info out there now about how stuff like when children have a lack of nutrition or eat artificial food colourings, it cause stuff like ADHD and Asperger's symptoms. I would guess that some fetuses are just affected in different ways to the same stuff, so maybe you got Asperger's and I got ->-bleeped-<- and eye problems, you know?

And I thought it was girl cooties...

Well, my mama smoked, drank and did only goodness knows what else while pregnant with only me and not my other siblings. They came out cis, so maybe that says alot. I dunno. Still love my mama though. I'd die for my mama. I mean that.

Absolute nonsense. There is plenty of evidence that transgender people have been around for thousands of years. It's a genetic fluke. Most people fail to understand what a complete mess genetics are. That blog also fails to consider transexual men.

My mother had 3 healthy pregnancies and never took any hormones. And I was born several weeks late.

Ummmm what about FTM trans people, DES can't be the catalyst for half our people and not others. Also, there were trans people before 1940, so there's a possibility for DES increasing chances of gender/sexual developmental changes, but it isn't responsible for transness. Population increases and larger lifespans have caused more trans people by proportion. Feminizing plastic derivatives that are ingested can act like estrogen in our body and can disrupt hormonal balances as well, but any and all of this is supposition based on conjecture while ignoring trans men.

     Hugs,
- Katie
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is kinda a random question and I'm not trying to steer the focus of the topic onto something else, but does a long labia in your genitalia signify intersexuality or something? I am still wondering if I could be intersexed. I heard that theory too about pregnant women or whatever taking something that tampers with the hormonal balance with MTFs. But what about in the case of FTMs. Good point.

Quote from: Jill F on November 25, 2015, 09:17:59 PM
And I thought it was girl cooties...

LoL me too xxx

Katy

There are lots of things that can cause prenatal hormone irregularities in a pregnant mother.  DES is just one that is particularly egregious. The same process would cause FTM except the hormone imbalance in later stages of pregnancy would lean towards testosterone.  The theory isn't without foundation since the process has been duplicated experimentally with animals in both directions.

Quote from: Juliett on November 26, 2015, 01:05:53 AM
Absolute nonsense. There is plenty of evidence that transgender people have been around for thousands of years. It's a genetic fluke. Most people fail to understand what a complete mess genetics are. That blog also fails to consider transexual men.

The single most important point I've been trying to make is that your sex isn't determined by genetics though. Instead, it's entirely dependent on what hormones you're exposed to during the time your prenatal development is taking place, as shown by the two videos I've linked to in that answer. Both the people in those videos are genetically male, and yet, as you can see, they've developed so completely as female that there's no way you'd know there was anything unusual about them if you hadn't been told. In the first instance it's because that person's testicles failed to develop altogether, so no testicular hormones were produced. In the second it's because the testicular hormones failed to have their normal effect, due to a mutation in that person's gene for the androgen receptor. In both cases, the absence of androgen exposure during the critical period prenatal development was taking place caused all their development to occur as female instead of male.

What this means is that exposing a genetically male fetus to anything that interferes with the normal functioning of the testicles, or otherwise prevents testicular hormones from doing their job, runs a high risk of causing abnormalities of sexual development to occur. It doesn't have to be chemicals, things that stress the fetus can probably do it too, as of course can genetic conditions (such as XXY karyotype) that affect the functioning of the testicles. It's just that so many pregnant women have been given DES and/or progestins over the years (at doses well beyond that required to suppress testosterone in an adult man), that those substances are probably the main thing causing it to happen at the present point in time.

As to the cause of FTM ->-bleeped-<-, it's due to having higher than normal androgen levels during the later stages of prenatal development, which causes the brain to become masculinized. I don't know what the main causes of that are though (or whether manmade hormones or other endocrine disrupting substances are contributing to the problem). Someone needs to do some research basically. At one time there were hormones with androgenizing properties being used during pregnancy, however AFAIK they've all been withdrawn from use.

Yes. It is interesting, and I agree that prenatal exposure to drugs can be one among dozens causes.

barbie~~

Well, to me, the answer is somewhere on the line of whatever leads to someone having transgender brain state, and that includes alterations to the brain way later than prenatal events, and none of those can be induced by choice. That state can be just the way someone is born, or changes without choices involved. I used to be heterosexual before somewhere age 15-16, but after some months after that, my heterosexuality completely died and been asexual ever since. No other explanations other than brain changes explains what happens.

Quote from: Reptillian on November 26, 2015, 02:52:12 PM
Well, to me, the answer is somewhere on the line of whatever leads to someone having transgender brain state, and that includes alterations to the brain way later than prenatal events, and none of those can be induced by choice. That state can be just the way someone is born, or changes without choices involved. I used to be heterosexual before somewhere age 15-16, but after some months after that, my heterosexuality completely died and been asexual ever since. No other explanations other than brain changes explains what happens.

There are sectors of the brain that change easily and some that don't change that easy.
Imo the part of gender identity doesn't change that easily. Its fixed before birth, while other sectors develop still later on.
Those sector to do with learning, and regular use, like trained body responses in sports.

There might be a few reasons for asexuality...
including hormonal changes...
a change in lifestyle...
nutrition and sports or regular exercises might make a change...


hugs

Quote from: Laura_7 on November 26, 2015, 03:02:09 PM
There are sectors of the brain that change easily and some that don't change that easy.
Imo the part of gender identity doesn't change that easily. Its fixed before birth, while other sectors develop still later on.

Yes, you're right about that. Every parts of the brain is subject to a probability of changing, but some are just far less likely to change than others.

Quote from: RobynD on November 25, 2015, 12:26:56 PM
I wish i knew whether my mom took DES. She has long passed on and i'm sure there is no way to find out. She was pregnant with me in the mid 60s and she was 43 yrs old at the time. A very late pregnancy for that time and a large percentage of late pregnancies had downs syndrome and other issues, at that time. I do not know what her prenatal regimen with me was.

I recall her saying her doc told her to eat lots of red meat for brain development. She smoked some and i think drank lightly as well. It would stand to reason that her doc would have prescribed DES because of her age and because she had miscarried in the past. I was premature by about 4 weeks.

I had so many female features, i wish i knew.

My mom 39 when I was born. I was due May 12 and born February 26 due to AO blood incompatibility. Mom smoked, no des. I am on the ASD spectrum as is my older brother. I think it's a combination of genetics/epigenetics and development issues in the womb. We're definitely born with this.


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Quote from: barbie on November 26, 2015, 01:50:48 PM
Yes. It is interesting, and I agree that prenatal exposure to drugs can be one among dozens causes.

barbie~~

On mtf my question my mother had a child born before me was a miscarriage and was female could I have gotten some female hormones?


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Good answer Hugh. You got me thinking so I ran a couple of other internet searches. The in utero hormone wash makes a lot of sense. What if it were anti-androgenic compounds exposure or alternatively, anti-estrogenic exposure? That could perhaps explain some the ftm cases. While we were considering purely pharmaceutical exposure, what if there was maternal environmental exposure? Doing the various searches on anti-androgen and anti-estrogenic chemicals, I came across this from a Danish study.

Danish Scientific Study Concludes Chemical Estrogens Causing Decreased Fertility and Maculinity
http://www.hormoneimbalanced.com/danishstudy.html

This wasn't the only time I came across reference to this study, but this put it pretty succinctly. Doing the reverse anti-estrogen  searches brought to light many chemicals with the reverse effect.

Given various genetic make-ups and exposures could give us the non-homogeneous effects we see. I mean, let's face it if the chemicals are in the water and on the foods consumed, we should see "clusters" of mtf and ftm cases. But, given different genetic make-ups and sensitivities, perhaps some people are more prone to being transgender.

Just a thought.

Quote from: traci_k on November 30, 2015, 12:56:53 PM
Good answer Hugh. You got me thinking so I ran a couple of other internet searches. The in utero hormone wash makes a lot of sense. What if it were anti-androgenic compounds exposure or alternatively, anti-estrogenic exposure? That could perhaps explain some the ftm cases. While we were considering purely pharmaceutical exposure, what if there was maternal environmental exposure? Doing the various searches on anti-androgen and anti-estrogenic chemicals, I came across this from a Danish study.

Danish Scientific Study Concludes Chemical Estrogens Causing Decreased Fertility and Maculinity
http://www.hormoneimbalanced.com/danishstudy.html

This wasn't the only time I came across reference to this study, but this put it pretty succinctly. Doing the reverse anti-estrogen  searches brought to light many chemicals with the reverse effect.

Given various genetic make-ups and exposures could give us the non-homogeneous effects we see. I mean, let's face it if the chemicals are in the water and on the foods consumed, we should see "clusters" of mtf and ftm cases. Nut, given different genetic make-ups and sensitivities, perhaps some people are more prone to being transgender.

Just a thought.

Part of the problem is measuring who is transgender. Right now, it's based on those that self identify in studies. There's a lot more that don't than do identify. If someone could design a study that captured a majority, that would be useful.

I was conceived in early spring 1946, out of wedlock. I can only imagine the emotional stress my mom must have endured during that point in history. She and my father, a big band musician, married that June. He had to quit playing music and go find a "real" job, which caused him to become an unhappy person who took it out on the rest of the family. Oh, yeah, my mom smoked and drank through my gestation, too. I share those facts from my history because I think they have some relevance.

I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject transsexualism and brain chemistry. Frankly, there are some hypotheses on the causes that sound pretty convincing to me, but nothing has been conclusively proven. I'm most comfortable with the concept that quantity and timing of appropriate hormones during fetal development have much to do with the gender identity of the child after birth. While chemical intervention from docs, as Hugh argues, is likely the cause in some cases, the timing and quantity of hormones is probably the culprit in most.

The nice thing about timing and quantity is that it accounts for both MtF and FtM throughout history. It isn't dependent on medical advances to account for the existence of transsexuals.

Could the stresses of being a single, pregnant woman in the mid-1940s have altered hormone delivery? I don't know if my mom was given synthetic estrogen, or other drugs, during her pregnancy. I also don't know if her smoking/drinking affected testosterone delivery. In 1950, when I first expressed my non-conforming thoughts, I learned very quickly to suppress, suppress, suppress. After me, my parents produced three daughters, none had gender identity issues.

As you can see, I'm new here, and didn't want to miss making a timely post on this thread. I'll see if I can find any of the research I read. I had everything on a laptop that was stolen a few years ago. I haven't bothered to recreate my files.