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 think it was a reasonable question, and worth exploring.

However other more knowledgeable people have proved that it's a dead end.

Unfortunately lots of people post on here with what adds up to apologetics for the genderist rise. Some of them are genuinely exploring possibilities, others are just trying to justify the TRA position- to make 'be kind' the logically acceptable position.

Unfortunately, because of the ferocious attacks anyone gets if they try to study anything these days, and science itself being captured, there would be no way of finding out anyway.

So true.

Wow this is a funny one.

Perhaps there is an environmental cause for more gay people as well?

The reality is simple. Trans people have always existed, they were simply underground and hidden like LGB people had to be.

As the world became more accepting (before the current moral panic) and information was more readily available, like the number of left handed people.... Suddenly it looks like there were more than there always was.

That is the reality. And most want to persecute trans people for it which is truly disgusting.

Well certainly your post gave me a laugh. Keep on with the theories. I'm sure next that it will be an alien plot or something...

Sigh.

Pot, meet kettle.

I think what we have now is a lot more labelling of difference, divergence from what is really a fairly old fashioned 'ideal' of normal.

To me some of that labelling - diagnoses eg of ASD is without doubt a good thing (just wish it was always backed up with something useful after diagnosis).

Some of the labelling is just pathologising of difference which is well within the bell curve of normal experience.

Pathologising a normal experience (being unhappy with gender stereotypes to which one doesn't conform) is dangerous as it can make people vulnerable to being taken advantage of by individuals and groups who have their own agenda.

It’s much simpler than all that. It’s mostly all about making £££££££ from drugs and surgeries and it’s being driven by big pharmaceutical companies. With the path being paved by big tech. Sprinkled on top with a big dollop of misogyny and homophobia.

💯 correct.

Ooh, sorry. Actually I don't think we are not adapted to eat grains, just not modern versions, especially when refined. Excess sugar and frankenfoods are the main culprits. And the snacking culture.

A problem with this theory stands out to me:

Show me a transwoman who actually seems like a woman? And by seems, I don't mean the following: tits, hair, lipstick, head tilt, facial expressions, voice, hand gestures, walk, shoes, dress. I mean the subtle stuff that is the complex result of inhabiting a female body in a patriarchal world, with all the history and present day struggles that entails.

Similarly, show me a young transboy who actually seems like a boy? And by seems, I don't mean: "passing", shirt, tie, braces, hair, flat chest, bum fluff tache. I mean the subtle stuff that comes from male socialisation in a patriarchal world; never having to confront female puberty and the instant objectification that comes along with it; never having had clips and hairbands inflicted on your scalp since toddlerhood; never having been sent to the party in restrictive clothes and shoes; entitlement, ease.

I'm sure humans are making our environment unhealthy....

But trans kids doesn't seem a mystery. You restrict children to 2 rigid "gender" boxes; fail to fully accept homosexuality, neurodiversity and difference in personality; fail to deal with bullying in schools; fail to deal with misogyny in society then tell kids - in schools, on CBBC, on social media - that there is a magic way out. Furthermore kids who take this magic way out are celebrated, get lots of adult attention, and suddenly have the power to get adults and their peers in trouble. They suddenly have the feeling of safety and control they were craving.

This.

OP, do you really see the 'explosion' of transwomen as feminine or 'like' women.

Because many people see it as a misogynistic sexual fetish that couldn't be more male and male centred.

Might I suggest you take a look at the transwidows threads to get an idea of how not like a woman these men behave.

Likewise how transmen don't behave like typical men.

I also thought it was a reasonable question and accepted it as more exploring possibilities than trying to justify.

Amongst the many different young people who are found to be more susceptible to the damaging message crafted by men eroding boundaries of female spaces, aided and abetted by big pharma, there may be some biological influences possibly endocrine or chromosome related (eg sex chromosome aneuploidies, which some 90% go undetected) along with other influences such as autism or trauma.

However, even if there are endocrine related factors accounting for susceptibility to the message, that doesn’t mean that people can change sex. And such factors wouldn’t account for the ‘explosion of cases’. It is the tragic failure of safeguarding and plain loss of logic of healthcare, psychologists, education providers, policy makers, and parents all jumping onboard the gender ideology bandwagon that accounts for the exponential rise in cases. Unfortunately, we can’t blame endocrine disrupters for any of that.

When you get told that transitioning is the answer to a multitude of different issues, more people are going to think it right for them.

It's a sexual fetish, it's a way of denying your sex for psychological reasons, it's because you're not comfortable being gay, it's because you feel like you don't fit in, it's because you feel you can't explore certain expression because of the limitations of your sex.

A million different reasons.

None of which are actually the thing that transitioning purports to be.

if you remove homophobia, sexism, sexual trauma and fetishism, you wouldn't have it. In my opinion, of course.

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.

I think some men have said they were affected by ‘sissy porn’ to become trans women. Who is the trans woman who write ‘Female’? I think they said that, for example.

Thanks OP for bringing up the effects of hormone contraception on the brain. I looked that up and saw there are effects. There is another thread about the pill but no one else had mentioned these specifically.

I thought these paragraphs from a BBC article were interesting, not because it shows pill hormones causing transgender feelings but because it shows how profoundly affected the female body body can be.
Generally speaking, the older, cheaper brands of pill tend to contain androgenic hormones, while newer, more expensive ones tend to contain anti-androgens. This may be one reason that just 17% of women on the combined pillin the US take the anti-androgenic versions.

There are androgen receptors all over the body, particularly in the sweat glands and hair follicles, which explains why androgenic progestins can make some women sweatier, hairier and spottier. But these powerful, gender-bending steroids also affect the brain.

In men, the androgens released at puberty are known to remodel the brain. This is also true in women, where relatively small quantities of testosterone can cause certain areas to shrink and others to grow.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180822-the-birth-control-pill-can-have-male-side-effects

Another horrible effect of the pill, on a female young woman’s brain, can be an increased risk of suicide.

What about the mood changes women report on the pill?
Being on the pill is associated with an increased risk of being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, though there are some women who report the pill stabilises their moods. The association was particulary high in young women aged 15-19 and their suicide risk is also more than twice that of non-pill takers.

A dysregulated stress response is likely part of the picture, but another driver seems to be low levels of the neurosteroid allopregnanolone – a breakdown product of progesterone that acts as a natural sedative. In pill-taking women, the research suggests, levels are significantly lower than in naturally cycling women.

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/19/dr-sarah-e-hill-how-pill-influences-womens-brains

I think endocrine disrupters are a serious problem, but not the cause of transgenderism.

It comes down to the explosion of Queer theory and other post modernistic teachings on /American university campuses in the late 1980's and 1990's. That's it! Nothing to do with anything in the water system.

That, and the emergence of on-line identities which are detached from the real world. Gaming culture and so on.

NotHavingIt · Today 14:55
That, and the emergence of on-line identities which are detached from the real world. Gaming culture and so on

That’s a good point.

Heavy internet porn use is detached from the real world too,

No, you’re not allowed to discuss the possible impacts of environmental endocrine disrupters on mn.

Let me re-phrase that for you:

People have always existed and sought to express themselves - but different generations have shaped their understanding of themselves based on different paradigms, available channels of expression and/or ideas which are in vogue or which are circulating at any specific time.

Many young people who now identify as trans would in oter decades have experimented with the alternative youth sub-cultures of their day - such as being an emo or a goth. Both of thse youth subcultures cretaed space for young people to express their developing non conformity - through music, clothing and make-up., as just one example.

We tend not to see many youth sub cultures which are based around music and clothing any more - as everyone is on-line instead - being influenced by 'personalities'.

I think you would have to compare the levels of pesticide and gender identities geographically.

Unfortunately, a quick google shows the highest use of atrazine in China, which is not recognised as paving the way for trans identities.

Social and cultural reasons make more sense when you look at what the countries have in common which are experiencing this explosion in identities.

As the world became more accepting (before the current moral panic) and information was more readily available, like the number of left handed people.... Suddenly it looks like there were more than there always was.

Lol have trans activists finally worked out that the argument that the 4000% increase in girls saying they’re boys is due to society being so much more accepting of trans people doesn’t quite make sense if you are also claiming there is currently a trans genocide under way?

No, but have you considered whether endocrine disrupters might be responsible for the explosion in confirmation bias?

Yes, the cognitive dissonance is always impressive.

Even if there were some physical cause, why draw the conclusion that such people are "really" the opposite sex, and not simply part of the wide range of possibilities in their own sex?

It's not like we ever used to see sex as a mental attribute, so it seems really incongruent to suddenly redefine sex as mental.

Yes there are people who claim their mind is at odds with their body, but the body is what it is regardless of the mind, and sex is just a feature of the body.

It's like seeing a purple carrot for the first time and instead of thinking "huh, looks like carrots can sometimes be purple not orange", concluding some carrots are actually plums.