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Very good interview, thank you Lisa! I just finished reading "Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height", and was astounded that I've never heard about this, and also at seeing the almost exact parallels with the current "trans-medicine" situation. I haven't read Bob's book yet, I wonder if he also mentions the history of the use of estrogen and other hormones in manipulating height for cosmetic and social reasons. I can't remember where I came across that book recommendation, perhaps in your writing... In any case, I highly recommend that everyone also read "Normal at all cost".

Here's an example: P.329, a doctor critical of the prescribing of growth hormones to short kids says: "Doctors are not trained to be critical, they're trained to help. But just because somebody comes in and says, 'I need an antibiotic,' you don't prescribe one." Likewise, "when a parent is saying, 'My kid's not doing well-- he's unhappy,' it's usually many things together," not simply short stature. "I'm saying we need to evaluate, determine what the problem is.".

Sub in "gender dysphoria" or even worse "being trans" for "short stature" and you get exactly what's happening today.

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Ah, Lisa, I would say to people not to read Bob’s chatty, gay-centric “history.” Read Deborah Rudacille’s “The Riddle of Gender” for a 20th century history of sex and gender.

He basically paints physicians and scientists as evil, promoting unknown potions and surgeries because of their god-like personalities. One example—Harry Benjamin was a godsend for many trans women in the 50s and 60s. The national trans medicine organization was initially named HBIGDA (Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association) and then renamed WPATH when it clearly became international and the decades had passed so few knew Harry personally. It wasn’t because he was a flawed endocrinologist. He coined the term “transsexualism.”

Yes, male crossdressers could be homophobic, like male heterosexuals everywhere in the 90s, and Virginia Prince was trying to separate the biologically trans from the psychosocially trans hobbyist back then. The movement switched from transsexual to transgender to desexualize the term, just as homosexuals had desexualized to “gay.” Turns out, with the advent of queer theory and the erasure of sex that was a mistake, opening the door to today’s chaos, but that’s another story.

One story he conveniently left out—most gay men, beginning in the 70s, recognized trans women (few trans men were out then, since they could pass more easily) as extremely gay men who underwent vaginoplasty so as not to be anally penetrated. This was promulgated by one of the gay movement’s leaders, Jim Fouratt, who apologized to me seven years ago for his ignorance. It’s just as fair to say gay men were transphobic as trans women were homophobic.

Also—trans persons (not queer) make up 0.6% of the population. There’s no market there for medical profits (educated and interested physicians, therapists and surgeons have always been hard to come by), nor for Big Pharma profits. Androgen sales took off in the 90s (remember the GNC supplement stores in every American mall, and the baseball PED scandal?), and the market for estrogens was the tens of millions of post-menopausal women, not trans women. Those are fundamentalist talking points.

Unlike Bob, an outsider in SF looking in, I lived this and was there, playing a role in the appending of the T to LGB in 2004. That’s an interesting story in itself.

I’ve also done work on endocrine disruptors (EDCs) which he briefly mentioned, starting with DES (which causes transsexualism and homosexuality) in developing fetuses. The earlier comments go into greater detail about the complexity of sex and growth hormones than I can now.

Dana Beyer, M.D.

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I appreciate his questioning of the use of these powerful hormones in affirming people's identities, but he's made some serious scientific errors in his discussion of estrogen and androgen. The two primary components that give rise to the two sexes are androgen and estrogen. They are in charge of determining the phenotype and genotype of man and woman. They are in charge of behavior, sexual drive, and body morphology. This begins around 6 weeks into pregnancy, when the gonads form and produce one of these substances, which causes the morphology of the fetus to follow a specific path, either male or female. This science of sex hormones is as fundamental as diabetes to insulin. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and the evolution of these hormones support this claim. These are not growth hormones, but rather sex hormones. When cross-sex hormones are used in adolescents and adults, a controversy arises. Especially when it comes to gender-affirming experimental care.

Androgen, he claims, was "on the shelf" until the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Furthermore, he falsely claims that these hormones are not used to treat diseases.

"It may not have been a coincidence, but a sign of heightened interest in the clinics of hypogonadism that at the same period when testosterone became available for clinical use, that is, when rational treatment became possible, that major syndromes of primary and secondary hypogonadism were first described, that is the Klinefelter syndrome in 1942 (40) and the Kallmann syndrome in 1944 (41). Pasqualini and Bur (42) described the fertile-eunuch syndrome, characterized by all symptoms of lack of testosterone, but with active spermatogenesis" https://eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/180/6/EJE-19-0071.xml#bib40

He also claims that bodybuilders have larger breasts and smaller testicles. This is used to call into question the testerone's relationship to masculinity. I'll set aside the hyperbole and explain how this works. It is insulting to people with medical conditions who are constantly battling prejudice due to maldeveloped or underdeveloped primary sex characteristics. Would you think that somebody who has a birth defect or is disabled is somehow less masculine or less feminine?

Bodybuilders abuse testosterone, causing the body to convert the excess androgen to estrogen, causing their breasts to swell. The testosterone causes the pituitary gland to go into hypogonadism, or a decrease in Gonadotrophin-releasing hormones (GnRH), resulting in low testosterone levels and a cessation of sperm production, causing the testicles to shrink. It has nothing to do with masculine or feminine unless you believe gender ideology.

Considering Androgen contains mostly testosterone, I could delve into its different components, but I don't want to rewrite his book. See my substack for more information suggest you read or interview Carole HoovenTestosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us

Thank you

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Thank you for the very interesting book recommendation!

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