Can we talk about endocrine disrupters and transgenderism?

[hamstersarse]

I have been following the trans movement and all it's glory for many years, but something that has never quite settled with me is the cause of this explosion.

I know it is a multi-factorial question and there are certainly many factors involved here ( social contagion, post-modern politics, lack of religion/meaning etc.) but I do still wonder if there is some biological basis for this explosion, namely how our endocrine systems are being impacted by all the toxins in the environment.

Pesticides (atrazine) that are known to alter hormones in animals, literally turning them from male to female https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/, we have pthalates in plastic that none of us can avoid, we have diethylstilbestrol which is in contraceptive pills that are shown to masculinise the brains of female fetuses, we have the PBDEs that are the flame retardant chemicals used on our furniture.....you get the picture - all of these things are shown explicitly to disrupt the endocrine system and all of us are exposed to them.

Put this alongside our knowledge that sperm count has absolutely dive bombed over the past 50 years, we know that something is going on with our hormones and endocrine systems.

I just wonder about all of this and transgenderism - what do people think? Could this be driving the explosion?

If there is a biological basis to it, I sort of feel like it shifts the argument somewhat.

I would have been more interested in your post if you didn't talk about frogs as evidence- in the same way as the sex of crocodile's develop is somewhat irrelevant to mammals

But you talk about the feminisation of the brain

There is no female brain

I am not warped or weird or wrong or a man just because my brain is good at maths and bad at shopping

If there was a female brain we would have a ready simple test for transgender but we don't ... I think that's your clue

Despite people - mysogenistic people - searching for a way to sex a brain for decades

@kelsaycobbles
Ok, but we test for female hormones and male hormones - and these hormones have an impact on the brain and how we behave.

This is the weird thing about this argument.

On one hand, feminists react to transgenderism saying there is a biological difference between male and female, and in the next breath, there is no such thing.

The point about the frog study is if those chemicals can do that to frogs, what are they doing to humans? I don't think it is easy to say "nothing"

Agree with Kelsay. The fact that toxins damage the male (and presumably female?) system doesn't mean they change sex. No study has even tentatively identified a biological basis for this. And, if there were one, why on earth are teenage girls with autism, trauma, experience of sexual assault, experience of the care system and a sex offender parent grotesquely over-represented in the stats?

You might want to believe there's a physical, biological basis for this but to convince us you need to offer evidence in humans.

Sperms count has been dropping for 50 years as you say, exactly correlating with the increase on obesity from the 70s/80s and the complete proliferation of processed and fast food into the mainstream diet.

Obesity is not the only consequence of that massive lifestyle change the symptoms are different for everyone. Some get diabetes, some cancer, some dementia. All three of these conditions have risen massively despite medical progress and all are related to the same systems of the body, glucose management, insulin etc, the same systems that regulate fat storage. Our bodies are more or less still the ones we had as cavemen 10,000 years ago and simply are not suited to the modern diet (grains, transfats) and minute amounts of exercise we get now.

I think you will find the general changes in lifestyle is the cause here.

On one hand, feminists react to transgenderism saying there is a biological difference between male and female, and in the next breath, there is no such thing.

There is no difference IN BRAINS, there IS a difference in skeletons - which can be distinguished as male and female years after death, and in many other features including sex organs, which gametes are produced, size, strength, lung capacity etc.

It's not all or nothing.

The differences matter in things like sports and safe spaces, but not really in intellectual pursuits.

Hope that helps.

“On one hand, feminists react to transgenderism saying there is a biological difference between male and female, and in the next breath, there is no such thing.”

Perhaps you are mistaking what feminists actually say.

There IS biological differences. There are physical differences between the brains of the two sexes. These mainly, I believe, relate to the size of the skull and how brains fit into the skull.

Feminists acknowledge physical differences but our main message is that where those physical differences don’t matter, then women and girls shouldn’t be discriminated against for being female. For instance, a role requiring lifting should have accommodations made if possible so that women can lift safely such as lifting smaller items etc.

And there has been no real difference found in IQ between the sexes for instance.

Hormones - yes they impact is - so women are no longer women unless they stay on HRT ?

You suggest that people are transgender because of the hormones they have got?
So that would mean we would no longer need to treat children with hormones as they have the right hormones for being transgender?

I really don't care about what makes someone transgender until and unless it impacts women and children so what makes someone transgender is pretty irrelevant, people being transgender is fine

But they haven't changed sex and there is no evidence that their behaviour becomes that typical of the opposite sex

No. That is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.

There is a biological difference between men and women. Men are of the class that produce small mobile gametes. Women are of the class that produce large immobile gametes.

And frogs are amphibians, not humans.

According to a neuroscientist there are differences in female and male brains https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/male-and-female-brain-differences and that's why when you introduce artificial hormones, or block hormones it produces behavioral changes as well as physical.

Diethylstilbestrol has been banned in the U.K. since the 1970s and is commercially available in the US. It was intended to prevent miscarriage and has been widely studied because of its impact on developing foetuses.

As a woman who was exposed to DES in the womb, I find your post ignorant and tin foil hatty.

Is not commercially available in the US!

Perhaps you missed the data that show children with ASD or childhood trauma are being disproportionately affected by this social contagion? Where are the middle aged female transitioners? Cross dressing in men has been a kink for a long time. Now we are told they are, in fact, transgender. Is it in the water they drink, do you think? What about the Victorians and earlier? What caused men in those days to cross dress?

And read Professor Gina Rippon about the differences between women and men's brain: spoiler - it's nurture, not nature

www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/whats-on/the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-9086242/

Yes there are biological differences

And they mean that 99.99% of the time we can tell what sex a person is

But give a doctor a brain and it's pretty much a 50 50 guess based on size only

They can't sex a brain based on scans or structure - they can sometimes see things related to upbringing , trauma , but they can't sex a brain

And things that are brain dependent such as aptitude to science turn out to be sex markers only when you know the culture and time the person was raised

But nobody knows what is causing the explosion in autism either - unless you do?

There are hypotheses about our environment causing that too - so are the two more linked than we acknowledge?

I am mainly talking about young people yes, the MA man think seems much more psychological to me.

OK, we are on deletions now.

I'll back out

Clearly not a discussion worth having

I do worry about the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals but where has the scientific information in your post come from?
Not the atrazine part as you link to an article, but specifically the diethylstilboestrol and PBDE (mis)information.
Also none of the things you mention are toxins

OP are you saying that you think chemicals in food is causing men to get off on putting lingerie on?

I think the line can more easily be drawn from the explosion and availability of more and more extreme porn - males getting off on it and engaging females in their own porn film in their heads, and females wanting nothing to do with it.

It seems unlikely. You need to separate two different things - the cause of transition, and what happens after people decide to transition. After people decide to transition they take hormones which do change the body and some aspects of mental functioning. But before people decide to transition there's no clear difference hormonally or physically between people who want to transition and anyone else.

The authors of the published paper from 2017 do state a "working hypothesis exists with regards to possible association of endocrine disrupting chemicals and transgender identity or other gender-related issues". Well that's pretty vague. It's a line of enquiry not a proven fact. And if there haven't been any more publications in the last five years then then it's most likely because the evidence didn't the substantiate the hypothesis.

Having seen your explosion of autism post, I think that's a good idea. You've got a load of half baked theories based on limited scientific knowledge.

Good. You should back out.

we have diethylstilbestrol which is in contraceptive pills

Either you’re gullible or a liar. Which is it?

I suspect the explosion in transitioners is mainly sociologically driven.

I believe the vast majority of traditional transitioners, who were feminine and often gay men, were created through adverse treatment/abuse/bullying during early life at the point when the child was forming an understanding of sex and of how they fitted in. So my opinion is that “trans” is not a natural state of being, but is a disorder created through adversity.

However, it would follow that if there are more gay men as a result of such chemicals (as far as I know, unexplored and difficult to prove, but not impossible) then there may be more of that cohort who will undergo the same early adversity and go on to transition. It has not become more acceptable for men to be feminine.

But I don’t buy into the concept that there is a coherent group “trans people” who share a single characteristic. That supposed grouping now covers a multitude of different people with different backgrounds and reasons for considering themselves “trans”. Therefore any generalization regarding why there is an explosion of people claiming to be trans or wanting to transition is impossible.

Great post.

Give a scientist a brain = can't tell if it's male or female
Give a scientist a skeleton = can tell if it's male or female 100% of the time.

Sex matters, but not all the time in all areas.

However, sex very much matters in terms of risk of sexual offending, size, strength and so matters in terms of safeguarding and sports.

In terms of who is best suited to become a mathematician, ballet dancer or train driver? Sex doesn't matter at all.

If environmental factors are causing endocrine disruption, then

1. these factors should be identified and as far as possible got rid of
2. any treatments should surely be aimed at normalising the balance of hormones congruent with actual sex, not exacerbating the issue.