A few days ago, I was doing some internet research spurned by noticing that a lot of my trans girl friends seemed to have very androgynous eunuchoid body shapes. I went on a research binge to see if it's possible that disorders which result in hypogonadism, like mild AIS and Klinefelter's and the like, resulted in higher rates of transsexualism. And then I started looking to see if hyperandrogenic disorders like CAH and PCOS were more common among trans guys.

While I'm still trying to find medical studies on the former, I did find a study on the later, and I thought it was really enlightening, so I thought I'd share it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9279941

This was admittedly a small sample size, but in terms of results... wow.

Transgender men in this study, before any medical intervention at all, naturally had 31% higher total testosterone levels than cisgender women on average. (54.0 vs. 41.1,) and a whopping 173% higher levels of free testosterone (testosterone unbound by Sex-Hormone-Binding Globulin,) with trans men having average levels of 72.0 and cis women having average levels of 26.4.

More and more studies showing that there's a lot more than just social factors going on in people with trans identities, there's a component which is very much biological.

Interesting  Not very surprising but good general knowledge.

It´s interesting also how some women can have decidedly androgenic features (e.g my mother had a hormonal imbalance that caused beard growth, oily skin and a lower voice, among others), but not be trans - but they do seem to have a possibility for some kind of dormant trans gene 

Seeing that I inherited all these androgenic features from her and I decidedly feel much more male because of those things. Friends often say that my body already thinks it´s male.

Well, can't say I'm surprised. I can grow a goatee, have a male hairline, male pubic hair growth, am a little larger downstairs (apparently) than cis ladies, etc. etc.

There is, I think, a definite biological component to my need to transition.

Here's another study that found very high rates of PCOS/hyperandrogenism in FTMs:

"Association between polycystic ovary syndrome and female-to-male transsexuality"

http://www.shb-info.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/14_saito_et_al.pdf

There's heaps of studies showing that PCOS can be experimentally induced in female animals by exposing them to androgens during their prenatal development. Here's quite a good paper I found that focuses particularly on the research that's been done in Rhesus monkeys:

https://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/4/357.full

This research doesn't prove that all cases of PCOS are due to prenatal androgen exposure, but it certainly shows that genetic females prenatally exposed to androgens are at high risk of developing PCOS later in life! It provides further support for the idea that FTM ->-bleeped-<- is the end result of the brain being masculinized through exposed to higher than normal female androgen levels during prenatal development (just as there appears to be an association between hypogonadism and MTF ->-bleeped-<-, supporting the idea that MTF ->-bleeped-<- is the result of having below normal male androgen levels during prenatal development).

Some features common in transsexuals, such as digit ratio, are from prenatal androgen exposure. It's the second part of the process determining the sex of the baby. The first part happens at conception. So clearly with many of us we get more female secondary sexual characteristics; i.e. Finger length, overall body size and shape, etc.

Throughout my life I was built like a preadolescent girl. When I was in my teens and 20s, and when I would wear my hair long, I always got addressed as "miss" when they couldn't see my face.

My hands look just like my daughter's, only a little wider, I have wrists the size of a female, and I'm only 5'5".


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