Thread by @JillEscher

I just read Irreversible Damage by @AbigailShrier about the phenomenon of soaring rates of F to M transition in girls and young women. Bravo to her for highlighting this, it should be a subject of societal concern — why is it happening, what are the risks? (Thread)

I found it puzzling however that the book offered a purely sociological theory — that girls are choosing to transition due to social contagion, subtle pressures from professionals, and a desire to alleviate pains of anxiety, depression, isolation. To me, this is dubious.

Sadly, #IrreversibleDamage was strangely devoid of *any* discussion of biological development of gender identity. There are 4 decades of scientific literature showing how gender (the brain's sex) is shaped in early development, sometimes shaped by abnormal hormonal exposures.

For my 2 cents, I think the transition "craze" is probably only minimally sociological — more likely, it is in part the consequence of decades of human exposure to potent hormone-disrupting drugs (and chemicals too), that can dysregulate early brain development.

What drugs? For example, #diethylstilbestrol (#DES), progestins, all administered in vast quantities over many decades, to millions of pregnant women, a flood of hormone poisons into fetuses — and their germ cells, which create the next generation.

And there are many other hormone-warping toxicants (even general anesthesia is a potent hormone disruptor) that can shift fetal brain development, and affect the germline program. I found it regrettable that the book failed to address any underlying toxico-biological questions.

The unprecedented rates of #genderdysphoria among youth overlaps w unprecedented rates of #autism (@AbigailShrier address this). In my view, these phenomena are likely related, and induced, in part, by hormone-affective toxicant exposure to parental germline. #Heritability

I was exposed in utero to massive, continuous quantities of synthetic sex steroids thought at the time (the 1960s) to prevent miscarriage. They did not, but for exposed fetuses they gender-bent us to an extent, shaped our personalities, and did god-knows-what to our germline.

[It's now well established that exogenous hormone disruptors can tamper with germline during this period, when the #germcells are undergoing a delicate process of molecular reprogramming and sex-specific genomic #imprinting.]

Dr June Reinisch @kinseyinstitute, the pioneer in studying these effects (I was one of her study subjects as a child), called this the great "Hidden History" of medicine and toxicology. The evolutionarily unprecedented flood of fake gonadal hormones soaking human fetuses.

It's a crucial dimension of human biological history that warrants more attention, from researchers and journalists who write about gender bending subjects. Gender dysphoria is likely innate broadly speaking but in some cases not necessarily "natural."