DES Exposure in Males - Link to Transgenderism

[Yambabe]

I saw this alluded to on twitter quite recently, and I've also seen it mentioned on a couple of FB discussions this week so I decided to do a little investigation.

Most of the information seems to be summarised here and at first glance appears to show a massive correlation (150 out of a sample of 500):

diethylstilbestrol.co.uk/prenatal-diethylstilbestrol-exposure-in-males-and-gender-related-disorders/

However I'm not an academic, a medical specialist or a statistician so I have no idea how reliable or otherwise this paper may be. I'd be grateful for your collective dissection and discussion if you have time or inclination.

The other thing I noticed was that although there are known links to reproductive issues in the "DES daughters" there doesn't seem to be any suggestion that it could be a cause of FTM transition, which as we know is growing at a very fast rate.

Also this theory surely wouldn't cover pretty much anyone transitioning under about 35 as usage was discontinued worldwide by 1985. Is it a valid theory or not?

This was brought up towards the end of this thread a little while ago. This is what I posted there.

The link to gender identity does not seem very strong. I have only managed to find one study, not peer reviewed, by Scott Kerlin. Based on a self-selected sample of 300 men with confirmed prenatal DES exposure, 90 reported being transsexual/transgender/gender dysphoric. These are people who joined a support group because they had physical or psychological issues which they thought might be due to DES exposure before birth.

It is estimated that 3-5 million American women took this drug between 1948 and 1971 as well as being widely prescribed in Canada, Europe and Australia. Around half the babies born to these women would have been boys, so 300 is a very small sample to draw any conclusion. Especially as those who had no medical or gender identity issues would not have joined the support group.

There does seem to be a link between exposure in utero and cancer, particularly in women.

I haven't read the study but am popping up to annoy by pointing out that correlation is not causation.

Whenever anything is pointed out as correlating with 'gender identity' my thoughts are often 'what's the middle man'?

By which I mean, perhaps what X actually causes is for example a decrease in empathetic skills = a propensity to project onto others rather than to understand them.
Or perhaps X causes narcissism.
Or perhaps gullibility/suggestibility.
Or perhaps it influences sexuality.
Or decreases logical reasoning ability.
Or maybe correlates with autistic spectrum traits.

Any personality characteristic that might increase the stubborn tendency to cling to false beliefs or resist evidence could be a stepping stone to 'gender identity'.
I'd be looking for other correlations relating to personality traits too.

It's the whole 'shark attacks correlate with ice-cream sales' phenomenon.
You need to look for the middle man.

I’ve come across a couple of advocates of this theory and I don’t buy any of this. One, Dana Beyer, is transgender and talks about having periods. Face palm.

The second, a gentleman you’ll find on Twitter named Hugh Easton, claims a ‘female pattern of sexuality’ or something similar. Most of the claims he makes appear to me to be based on his own idea of women’s sexuality and I mentally connect this to similar ideas about such sexuality in those who claim to be ‘trans women’. There certainly are some parallels.

www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/des-fact-sheet#q5

There are some research links on this fact sheet to follow up.

It seems unlikely from reading the above.

A useless study in my brief analysis.

No attempt to exclude confounders, retrospective cohort analysis, so poor level of reliability at the very best.

I'd also ignore any paper that needs to create its own website in order to get published. There's a reason its not in a peer reviewed journal.

its a dreadful paper - small sample size, self selected for a belief that the exposure has caused the primary outcome. So as a piece of work it’s dire.

DES is documented to cause birth defects in both male and female foetuses. Females show an increase in a really rare reproductive tract cancer and males an increased risk of cryptorchidism and possibly hypospadias.

There are a few researchers who believe that exposure of males to DES could be a cause of being transgender. It’s definitely something that should be investigated more but the work done so far just isn’t very good so we can’t say one way or the other.

The problem with a lot of this is that it’s another manifestation of the ‘hormone washes in the womb’ thing which just hasn’t got any evidence at all to link it to Gender dysphoria.

So. We dont know. More research definitely should be done (especially since this was a very widely taken drug at one point, MILLIONS of women took it.) I’d like to see:

A proper retrospective analysis of those who took the drug and their children, Male and female. That’s a big job but it should be very doable through medical records and registries.

Animal work (sorry) to look at gene expression in exposed animals Male and female.

A decent study with a better design looking at individuals who were exposed. You’d need to look at time and level of exposure and you could link that in with the registry studies. It could actually be very interesting.

As I’ve said before I suspect that all the dysphorias share a common root with a number of genes creating a predisposition to dysphoric thinking and that the manifestation of the thinking depends on the zeitgeist.

Are the trans lobby calling this work transphobic btw? We saw the other day a piece by ‘fury’ (who declined to pronoun themselves so I shall call them ‘they’) saying that bringing research into it was transphobic.

Personally I think more research is a good thing - there likely IS a physical cause for gender dysphoria and more work could lead to treatments to help people.

I didn’t answer the actual question did I?

I Don’t think this has a link to trangenderism. Physical developmental defects and cancers yes, because we know how oestrogen like molecules actually work in the embryo and the adult. We have a mechanism.

But what you have to accept if you say that a drug can lead to someone being transgender is that it can change feelings and then you’re on much shakier ground.

If there is a physical cause for gender dysphoria (and there may be at least partially) then that will apply to those with gender dysphoria. For that subgroup a marker would be useful - it would show they had a condition and argue that they should receive treatment.
Will it apply to the tge rest of the umbrella? Nope. Do the rest of the umbrella want a set of markers or a test to clarify if one has gender dysphoria? Also, I suspect, nope.

Thank you all, especially Bowl for such a clear, concise post!

No when I've seen it it's not being decried as transphobic, quite the opposite in fact. It's being used as a gotcha to say that (in a similar way to hormone washing referenced above) there is an actual physical reason for transgenderism, that it's not a feeling at all, it's the outcome of exposure to this drug in the womb.

That sounded pretty dodgy to me but as I said I'm a desk-jockey in the financial sector so although I can take in a skilled analysis of something like this on reading (and can now refute a lot of it with valid reasons ) I just don't have the skillset to analyse it properly myself.

I agree that it would make an interesting research project for someone though. I wonder if they'd be allowed to do it?

There may be a physical (or more likely a combination of physical/environmental) root cause for dysphoria. I doubt there’s a physical root cause for what is now called transgenderism.

That of course is my opinion. I will change my mind if I see good quality research, which is well designed, has sufficient power and is replicated.

So far, I’ve not seen anything even approaching that.

I think the generation that was exposed to DES in utero is well known and well studied, and that if any outcomes are already known to the medical establishment.

Socialisation is underrated as a cause for behaviour in adults, despite all the evidence available.

No when I've seen it it's not being decried as transphobic, quite the opposite in fact. It's being used as a gotcha to say that (in a similar way to hormone washing referenced above) there is an actual physical reason for transgenderism, that it's not a feeling at all, it's the outcome of exposure to this drug in the womb.

But there were millions of babies exposed to the drug in utero. Up to 5 million in the USA alone, so around 2 million male babies. That gives 150 people who are trans out of about 2 million who were exposed, or 1 in about 13,000. And the drug was banned in the USA in 1971, so it won't apply to anyone under 47.

They are well studied. I’m not sure if anyone has specifically looked at this aspect?

It might have something to do with dysphoria, it might not, (I really don't know enough about the impact of hormones on the brain to be sure) but it certainly doesn't explain the overall increase in trans-identified kids.

I do lean towards the assumption that it more influences sexual orientation, though.

There is no evolutionary advantage to having an opinion on which sex your own body should be. You can't change that, anyway.
There is, however, a very clear evolutionary advantage in being attracted to the sex that isn't the same as your own.

If most brains are wired for heterosexuality, then an excess of female hormones or lack of male hormones in the womb is more likely to shift a male baby's sexual attraction to homosexuality (by mistakenly making the brain believe it resides in a female body) than the other way round.

And then social pressure on gay males sets in, and causes the boy to identify as transgender.

Is there any info about the sexual orientation of the people in that study?

I’m inclined to believe there’s an organic cause for a rare condition called ‘gender dysphoria’ - and it might well be a developmental disorder - but what we are seeing today with a massive increase that seems to be occurring in clusters is almost certainly a social phenomena, one of the many consequences of which is that it muddies the water for research into the real condition.