Transgender Documentary on BBC2 Thursday 2100 "Transgender Kids: Who Knows best?"

Thanks for the article it makes interesting reading but I don't think offers much in the way of support for your argument of male and female brains for a number of reasons. Firstly, the paper is from 1962. Medicine and in particular our understanding of the management of threatened or recurrent miscarriage has changed a lot since then. The study itself ( from what I can read from your exerpt) reports only on the cases of 385 women who received some form of progestogen in early pregnancy and in those cases reports on the virilisation of the external genitals of female babies. It lists clitora swelling and some degree of labial fusion as these effects. There is no evidence (again from what I can see) that this supports the female/male brain idea. We recognise that some female babies seem to have enlarged breast tissue, "swollen" external genitals and in some cases even hormone withdrawal vaginal bleeding due to drop in circulating estrogen after birth. There is no evidence that these females go on to be ultra-feminine in their behaviours and we know that the external manifestations of maternal estrogen exposure disappear shortly after birth. This is likely to happen with progestogen exposure too and does not necessarily mean that these babies will have undergone surgery.
Secondly, as I said before this paper is for outdated clinical practice, so even were it true that antenatal progesterone cause feminisation of male foetus or masculinisation of a female foetus it still fails to account for the surge in young people/children presenting with gender dysphoria because they are simply too young to have been exposed to this practice, at least in the UK.

So again are coopting a known medical condition/abnormality to hypothesize about causes of transgenderism. In a way that I find quite alarming on this particular website given that the vast majority of women here will have taken synthetic hormones and many of us will even have taken them either during an unplanned pregnancy or during treatment for fertility issues.
It's infuriating. A small number of women given a physical birth defect due to medical treatment in the 60s (when the thalidomide thing also happened) is not an indicator that synthetic hormones taken by the mother during pregnancy cause a mental disorder in children today.
And in doing so, you provide yet another stick to beat pregnant women with Go you.

Females produce low levels of testosterone anyway. It doesn't make them male. This is normal!

And why would that hypothetical masculinisation cause these females to think they were male?

"hormone-exposed babies will have experienced masculinization of their endocrine system and brain" will they? Do we know that? If so, what form does this masculinisation of the brain take?

Poppyred85 "Hundreds of thousands of women take norethisterone as a contraceptive or to manage their heavy periods without "masculinisation" occurring."

Evidently, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry made the same assumption when they rushed the first progestins to market more or less as soon as they could be produced in bulk, and despite warning signs during the clinical trials. Yes, norethisterone is only weakly androgenic in adults, however, if taken during pregnancy, it act as a strong androgen in the foetus. I've attached the first page preview of one of the papers I've found reporting on the phenomenon. Let me quote from it:

"An infrequent but growing clinical literature has accumulated on the occurrence of masculinization of the female fetus in cases of recurrent and threatened abortion treated with ethisterone. Although norethindrone, its 19-nor analog, is of more recent vintage (year of introduction, 1957), its widespread use in obstetrics has been associated with an increased number of published cases of fetal masculinization ... During the course of evaluating the efficiacy of norethindrone in the management of abortion, a clinical trial among 385 consecutive private obstetric patients revealed a high incidence of maternal and fetal virilization. More than 5 per cent of treated women manifested masculinizing side effects, but of greater significance, more than 18 per cent of the female infants born to mothers given this compound during pregnancy manifested some degree of masculinization of the external genitals, viz., clitoral enlargement with or without partial fusion of the labioscrotal folds."

From what it says in that quote (and the fact that some of these drugs were definitely still being given to pregnant women as recently as 1969), there must be a lot of affected people - thousands if not more. Nonetheless, you don't hear anything about it today!

One of the papers I've obtained includes photos of some of the affected babies, and their genitals do look very much like a scrotum and penis. Judging by what the authors of those papers say, nearly all of the affected babies will have been operated on to give them normal-appearing female genitals. Genital appearance was the only concern of the doctors writing up these case reports, however, along with genital masculinization, the hormone-exposed babies will have experienced masculinization of their endocrine system and brain (which the surgery won't have fixed of course).

As to why progestins that are only weakly androgenizing in adults can have strong androgenic effects on female foetuses, I found a paper that talks about the foetal metabolism of hydroxyprogesterone caproate. The foetal liver isn't as good at breaking these compounds down as the adult liver, and as its first stage of trying to get rid of them, it produces metabolites with added hydroxy groups, that are still hormonally active. The parent compounds are all highly lipid soluble and can easily cross the placenta, however these hydroxylated metabolites are less lipid soluble and don't cross the placenta so easily. As a result, you can end up with hormonally active compounds building up to a considerably higher level in the foetal bloodstream than there are in the mother's bloodstream. An added problem with the early testosterone-derived progestins is that some of the metabolites might be much stronger androgens than the parent progestin.

Ach well- if Zack Ford said it, it must be true.

Hugh, could you explain why a male baby who is exposed To progestin in utero would become a male baby with a female brain, instead of a male baby with a male brain in his male body who perhaps had a lower than average testsosterone level? And why this would mean he would need to have his penis removed and wear dresses? That's the bit I struggle with.

The point I'm trying to make is that doctors are happily giving women synthetic female hormones as treatments for preventing miscarriages and premature births, when if you were to give exactly the same drug in exactly the same dose to an adult man, his androgen production would be profoundly suppressed.
Doctors give women synthetic female hormones to treat lots of conditions including acne, menopause, PCOS, heavy periods and of course as a contraceptive. I'm not sure why it's a surprise that synthetic female hormones would have a negative effect on an adult male? And I'm not sure how that's at all relevant to transgenderism. I'm sure you will explain your theory however I don't believe it's backed by evidence.

Just a few points on the science...
Hundreds of thousands of women take norethisterone as a contraceptive or to manage their heavy periods without "masculinisation" occurring.
Functional MRI and structural anatomy,including at postmortem, show that there is no statistically significant difference between male and female brains beyond male brains being around 10% larger.
NICE and RCOG have said the role of progestogens in the management of miscarriage is lacking in evidence and is not routine practice.
Intra-vaginal progestogens are sometimes used in the management of preterm labour occurring between 24 and 29+6 weeks gestation. This would therefore mean only a very small number fetuses exposed to antenatal progesterone.
Even if we assume the hypothesis regarding the use of DES or progesterone does cause a male fetus to develop a female brain is correct DES has not been used since the 1970s so does not account for children presenting with gender dysphoria now.

Is there anything as close to definitive as anything can be about whether there are men's brains and women's brains? I thought that they were indistinguishable.

"It;s been known for decades that there are significant structural differences between male and female brains that arise during your prenatal development, and drive many of the differences between adult male and female behaviour"

No. In reality, there are variations that cross over between the sexes. Many males exhibit at least some "female behaviour" alongside typical "male behavior" and vice versa for females.

Didn't that professor of neuroscience on the documentary say there is zero difference between men & women's brains? I'm getting really fed up of the pink brain/blue brain thing. Next we'll be told we aren't really suited to work and hard thinking & should get back to the kitchen...

Mary - No, what Hugh did there is called cherry picking in science: Selective blindness to evidence that doesn't fit his preconceived ideas.

No trans person could possibly find their way back from gender dysphoria without altering their bodies. It can't possibly be a phase of confusion for anybody. That would be a disaster for Hugh's dogma that all gender dysphoria is because brains are "the other sex" (which if course is nonsense, since brain cells are the same sex as all the other cells in the body).

"transgender hormone treatment to turn a man into a woman"

Except that nothing can "turn a man into a woman", as per dictionary definitions below:

Woman = Adult human female
Female = Of the sex that can bear young or make eggs

Man = Adult human male
Male = Of the sex that can make sperm

Artificial hormones push a man's body to resemble that of a woman externally - softer skin, rounder features, breast growth, etc. They don't "make* a woman.

"One of the tricks Zucker & co. pull is that they diagnose kids that aren't trans, as trans, and then proceed to "cure" them."

So.... what you have done just there, is you have admitted that there are a lot of kids who are gender dysphoric as kids and do not go on to be transgender as adults.

Which is exactly the point Zucker was trying to make.

DeviTheGaelet "Progestin is a synthetic form of progesterone, which is a female sex hormone. How would that "masculinise" a woman? This makes no sense at all."

One property of synthetic hormones is that they tend to cross-react to a certain extent with non target receptor types. This is particularly a problem with progestins and androgens. Most progestins cross react with androgen receptors, and many anabolic steroids cross react with progesterone receptors (I guess the two receptor types must have a fairly similar structure).

When they were testing their various newly developed progestins for hormonal activity, they must have trialled them on adults and just assumed that their hormonal activity would be no different in a foetus. However, that assumption turned out to be disastrously wrong for progestins (and it probably didn't help that the two first mass-market progestins, ethisterone and norethisterone, are actually derivatives of the testosterone molecule!). I now have an option to attach images, so I've attached a screen shot of a page from one of the case reports I have. This particular one was reporting on babies masculinized by ethisterone and norethisterone, however I've obtained other case reports showing that several other progestins do it too. Doctors at the time were entirely focused on effects on the genitals, and it looks like nearly all the affected babies were operated on to make them into normal looking girls (however, that won't have fixed the masculinization of their endocrine system and brain!).

What are the significant differences between male and female brains? Does this mean that it is possible to accurately determine whether a brain is male or female e.g. at autopsy or via brain imaging?

What are adult male and female behaviours?

ageingrunner "... and neuroscience tells us that there is no such thing as a male Brain or a female brain? "
No it doesn't. It;s been known for decades that there are significant structural differences between male and female brains that arise during your prenatal development, and drive many of the differences between adult male and female behaviour. In primates, whether you get the male or female version depends on whether there are high levels of androgens present or not during the time your prenatal development is taking place.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146061/

The point I'm trying to make is that doctors are happily giving women synthetic female hormones as treatments for preventing miscarriages and premature births, when if you were to give exactly the same drug in exactly the same dose to an adult man, his androgen production would be profoundly suppressed. The usual uses for these drugs in adult men are for chemical castration of sex offenders, and as part of transgender hormone treatment to turn a man into a woman. Check out the note I put together explaining why exposure to these substances disrupts normal male development. I've included links to some of the research where they produced animals with opposite-sexed brains, just by administering hormones to the pregnant mother.

www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-unborn-child-from-synthetic-hormones/how-synthetic-female-hormones-can-interfere-with-male-sex-determination/1637590369877264

Hugh - "CoteDAzur I'm not sure how to post images here"

Really? It says "Images" right under the box where you write a post. Click on "Choose file".

"according to Williams Endocrinology 12th Ed., male genital differentiation is complete by the end of week 12, and the only events still ongoing after that as far as genital development are concerned are "external genital growth" and "testis descent""

We heard all about how you are such a woman, have always been a woman with a lady brain, even before birth etc and yet the above looks awfully similar to mansplaining. I was actually hoping you would do that. Thank you for giving me this opportunity

First of all, fetus development and other stages of pregnancy are measured in weeks of amenorrhea, not weeks since conception. You really should understand the basics before you lecture a group of mothers about the baby making process.

I can't know what Williams Endocrinology means by "differentiation" without actually reading that chapter, but speaking as someone with practical experience on the matter who has seen the ultrasound doctor predict the sexes of both my son and daughter during the 12-week scan, I can assure you that the genitals of both male and female fetuses are external and virtually identical at 12 weeks. The only way male and female genitals can be differentiated at that time is by observing the "angle of dangle" - i.e. the angle of the genital tubercle.

Read this website on fetal sex determination to learn all about it. There, you will also see that
"there is no appreciable difference in the size of the penis and clitoris until after 14 weeks gestational age".

So yes, there is of course some differentiation between the genitals of male fetuses and female ones at 12 weeks. No, it is not true that this differentiation is complete at 12 weeks.

couple of natal women in our group who were masculinised by progestin exposure
Progestin is a synthetic form of progesterone, which is a female sex hormone. How would that "masculinise" a woman? This makes no sense at all.

whose brain has predominantly (or overwhelmingly it seems in a fair number of cases) developed as female. That's what I think is happening anyway.

This is balls but I guess you need to tell yourself something.

"One of the tricks Zucker & co. pull is that they diagnose kids that aren't trans, as trans, and then proceed to "cure" them."

Is that what you tell yourself? Yeah, right. Parents love to take children who are not saying they are the other sex, who are not in distress, and who are not persistent to gender clinics. Because they love to spend time in psychologists' waiting rooms, and spend their time & energy going to psychologist appointments, sometimes for years.

That must be why, because gender dysphoric children could not possibly grow out of these feelings with the right kind of help. Oh no. That would be disaster for your dogma worldview, wouldn't it? It is best to ignore those children and call them Not Real Trans.

I don't understand how someone would know that they feel like the opposite sex when they have no experience of being the opposite sex and neuroscience tells us that there is no such thing as a male Brain or a female brain?

Here's an article I've found which answers many of the points people here have raised:
thinkprogress.org/american-college-pediatricians-transgender-kids-falsehoods-384716df13c5#.2m14t2myn

Here's an article that deals specifically with desistance, and the reasons behind Zucker being sacked:
www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690.html

Also, an oldie but a goodie, the original article in Rolling Stone magazine that first revealed how things hadn't gone quite according to plan in the case that supposedly proved you could turn a boy into a girl:
<a class="break-all" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090331071817/www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20090331071817/www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm