Very little? They have normal hormone profiles for men, not excessive ones intended to enhance performance. Moreover, they only take hormones the body would naturally produce, not unusual “performance-enhancing drugs”.

It's hard to generalize because the East German doping program evolved over time and eventually included other compounds, but the levels of testosterone esters that were administered to the female athletes (typically 25mg/week) were actually lower than typical HRT regimes for trans men.

> the levels of testosterone esters that were administered to the female athletes (typically 25mg/week)

Comparing generic "testosterone esters" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_ester - from the fifties to "testosterone esters" from today, without knowing exactly which kind of medication was involved or how it was administered, doesn't seem like a good way to reach any kind of conclusion.

Also a lot of oral test was used at the time, which as we know now is danger. Hepatoconverted hormones turn your insides into granuloma pate'. Even these days people are taking stuff like Methyltest to the point of having liver pain, which they supplement with tudca, milk thistle, etc.

Often PEDs are just biological hormones. In particular testosterone, HGH, and estrogen (for off cycling). It is definitely not as clear cut as “PEDs bad”. I tend to agree the impact physically is not high (e: for mortality) but most trans people have mental illness in their lives and the hormones they take can play a role in that.

It might be normal for a biological man. Is it unreasonable to question that giving a woman male hormones could stress the body?

If you are just "questioning" it for the sake of questioning, throwing shower thoughts out without doing a iota of research into procedures which are a century old? Yes. It's unreasonable for people to ask others to do their homework.

> without doing a iota of research into procedures which are a century old?

Assuming you're referring to procedures around altering one's body to resemble the opposite sex, there're no long term studies on the effects of modern drug treatments, such as lupron, especially when given to children and adolescents.

The highly ideological activists surrounding this issue have made this field a wild-west, and I fully expect in the coming years, there will be more and more similar stories coming from women in particular, who have been damaged by inappropriate hormone treatments prescribed for what turn out to have been unrelated mental health issues.

This is a really good illustration of what sociologist call reification[1] - specifically of gender in this case. What the parent does is confuse their idiosyncratic views with an underlying essentialism in their conceptualization of the universe. It allows people to externalize their thoughts into concepts like reality, human nature, or 'just how things are'. The reason this is a good example is that the author shoots directly at the concept of a 'gender reality' without mincing words. Generally the tactic is to reword personal belief as grounded external knowledge using the copula, but it's an epistemological slight of hand. Like all magic tricks, once you know it it's hard not to unsee it.

1. Berger, Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality

Why just transmen?

Because people with XX chromosomes who use supplementary testosterone have a distinct medical profile, whether or not they chose it voluntarily.

It would be weird, in fact, to wonder about trans women, hormones aren't that fungible.

We could also compare the East German athletes with bodybuilders if we wanted, of both sexes and any gender. Turns out they die early as well.

Also, if you're going to go wading into these waters online: the spelling trans men is preferred over transmen.

Edit to add: Trans men includes Buck Angel, so let's not pretend there's an arbitrary limit on testosterone use there. Much like cis men, some trans men want muscles much larger than any normal amount of testosterone will produce.

People who dope with PEDs use a higher concentration of testosterone than is naturally present. That is what causes the issues

Men die earlier than women, even after you account for accident, and testosterone is the leading candidate for why.

There's no argument from nature to be made about medically boosting hormone levels.

I’d normally consider it to be a valid topic of discussion, but I’m really only in this thread to read about East German doping.

It's unnatural to eat burnt meat or take an aspirin. Flameframing a complex issue with dictionary pedantry for messageboard battle is exactly the sort of thing the GP is talking about.

> It's unnatural to eat burnt meat

Finally someone says it. Every time I see a well-done steak, my soul cries. Medium Rare is how The Lord intended it.

>It's unnatural to eat burnt meat or take an aspirin.

Agreed.

>Flameframing a complex issue with dictionary pedantry for messageboard battle is exactly the sort of thing the GP is talking about.

I'm unsure what "flameframing" is but I don't think it's pedantic to define a term that that is key to OP's account of what defines a bigot.

This entire thread started by someone trying to troll and pass off their prejudice as curiosity. It was righteously flagged and the right thing is to leave it at that rather than get into a discussion on the 'naturalness' of trans people which is almost as crappy.

The discussion was NOT about the "naturalness of trans people". The discussion was about whether we can dismiss people as bigoted for using 100% accurately defined adjectives as descriptors - such as "unnatural" or "unhealthy". There's a huge difference and if you can't see that distinction then you're probably better off staying out of the discussion yourself instead of trying to shame me for having it.

Testosterone is an immunosuppressant and leads to a shorter life. Simply cutting off the supply of T to a man can increase his lifespan enough to make up the general gap in lifespan between sexes. [1] There are even some theories about human mating preferences that suggest masculine faces are attractive as an indicator of good genetic quality because if you're able to be drenched in Testosterone and still survive you must otherwise have some above average qualities to make up the difference. [5] (Also recall how estrogen therapy or anti-androgens improved outcomes for male COVID-19 patients. [6])

The biggest risks that come from estrogen therapy are blood clots (estrogen thickens blood) and breast cancer. Blood clots are much less likely when injecting estrogen since it does not pass through the liver which would produce metabolites that complicate matters for your body. Further even though trans women have a much increased risk of breast cancer they are still 70% less likely to get breast cancer than cis women. [3] The risk of prostate cancer also drops by something like two orders of magnitude versus a cis man who has functioning gonads.

Taken all together it seems that if you account for things like the fact that trans women are one of the most impoverished groups globally and suffer from HIV at a rate of about 40% (as in 2/5 trans women have HIV probably because of doing survival sex work) you'd expect a well-off socially accepted trans woman on HRT to live longer than a genetically identical cis man. She has an improved immune system due to lower testosterone and her chances of prostate cancer have plummeted. [4]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-eunuchs/the-ultim...

[2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/12/in-men-high-t....

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8403717/#:~:tex....

[4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342512760_Prostate_...

[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/147470491301100508

[6] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/05/estrogen...

While this is certainly an interesting take, it seems like you're cherry-picking data to tell a story that ends in the following conclusion:

>you'd expect a well-off socially accepted trans woman on HRT to live longer than a genetically identical cis man. She has an improved immune system due to lower testosterone...

I don't think this is a very factual conclusion. When it comes to the long term physical and mental outcomes of transgender hormonal therapy, we simply don't know. If we don't know the long term implications of infusing our bodies with synthetic hormones, then I would consider that to be a health risk.

While I fully support adult's decisions to put whatever chemicals they want to into their bodies, hormonal therapy seems like a health risk and is certainly, by any definition of the term, unnatural. I don't believe I am a bigot because of this opinion, either.

I was curious about trans people and the health risks of HRT because I have some trans people in my life as of the past few years. When I looked into it I found that there is an association between testosterone levels and mortality along with vulnerability to illness. That did indeed lead me to a particular point of view on the subject and that point of view runs contrary to the common narrative that cross sex hormones are always bad. It's my counter-narrative I suppose.

Not that you asked but in matters of gender it seems like even the most reasonable people seem to fall back on gut feelings over facts. One of those "gut feelings" seems to be that taking cross sex hormones is always or obviously bad for your health. I think it's fascinating to note the fact that much of the literature on the topic only suggests that too much of any sex steroid is bad and in particular testosterone shortens lifespan possibly because it is a weak immunosuppressant. Maybe taking estrogen offsets some of the gains of having low testosterone concerning lifespan but considering that females tend to outlive intact males but not eunuchs it seems likely that the downsides of estrogen are gentler overall.

Insofar as long term consequences, trans women have now been taking HRT since the 1940s so I suspect we'll be seeing some cohorts showing up in published studies more and more. Anecdotally trans women like April Ashley who transitioned in the 1950s, and died this year in her late 80s, and Wendy Carlos who transitioned in the 1970s and is still alive seem to be doing fine. (April Ashley was a very fascinating person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjA9zdIYruU)

> When it comes to the long term physical and mental outcomes of transgender hormonal therapy, we simply don't know.

Correction: you don't know anything about the long-term physical and mental outcomes for patients on HRT HRT, because you did not do any kind of research into it - you wouldn't need to use adjectives as vague as "unnatural" or "synthetic" otherwise.

Correction: we don't know anything about the long-term physical and mental outcomes for patients on HRT. Modern therapies have only been in use since the early 2000's

I am sorry that this fact upsets you and puts you into a hyper-defensive mode but that does not make it any less of a fact. Here is just one of several real studies confirming this fact with regards to cardio health.

"Gender-affirming or cross-sex hormone therapy is integral to the management of transgender individuals yet our appreciation of the effects of such hormones on cardiovascular health is limited. Insights into vascular pathophysiology and outcomes in transgender people receiving sex steroids could be fundamental in providing better care for this population through the management of cardiovascular risk and more broadly advance our understanding of the role of sex and gender in vascular health and disease. In addition, there is a need to understand how gender-affirming hormone therapy impacts cardiovascular disease risk and events as transgender individuals age...Current research about vascular outcomes in adults receiving hormonal therapy is limited by the absence of large cohort studies, lack of appropriate control populations, and inadequate data acquisition from gender identity services. Existing epidemiological data suggest that the use of estrogens in transgender females confers an increased risk of myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke." [1]

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31656099/

Why are you being so antagonistic? You don't really know what this commenter has or hasn't researched on this topic. Please be more polite when expressing disagreement, and focus on the facts at hand, not an imagined adversary.

Some people are quite happy to have lower testosterone. If you aren't that's fine too. Higher testosterone is associated with shorter lifespan and greater vulnerability to some illnesses. It just is what it is. What I find interesting is how personally some people might take the idea that testosterone has negative health impacts. It has positives: it helps build and maintain muscle and increases energy levels, but that's not the whole story.

I think the term you are looking for is an "appeal to nature" which differs from the naturalistic fallacy. My comment was not appealing to nature, in that it made no judgement - good OR bad - in defining the synthesis and self-infusion of hormones as unnatural. It just is unnatural. By definition. In contrast with the OP's comment, I believe that's something we should all be able to accept without strife.

While it's true that everything we do is literally a part of nature (nature being the world around us), it makes sense to have a word to define biological substances or events that wouldn't otherwise occur without human intervention. E.g. artificial colors, artificial flavoring.

But why is it important to make the distinction

We don't have a distinction for when other animals do things, there's no logical reason to separate humans

We do have adjectives to distinguish things that other animals do. When a baby sucks on a teat it is mammalian. When turtle dives underwater then comes out on land to bathe, it is amphibious. When something takes flight it is avian.

Humans are unequivocally more advanced than other animals, so to represent those actions which wouldn't otherwise occur without human presence, we use the term "unnatural". It's a nice adjective - albeit in the context of transgender modification "unnatural" serves no scientific basis, it is just a descriptor, if that's what you're getting at.

> That seems like the definition of "unnatural" to me

Arguing with pseudonymous people on internet forums isn't particularly natural either, but here we are.

You are correct, that would be defined as unnatural as well.

Oh I know, I just prefer to make them say it rather than trade in ambiguities. You’ll notice when someone asks for a deeper explanation of ambiguous dehumanization they tend to not respond.

> You’ll notice when someone asks for a deeper explanation of ambiguous dehumanization they tend to not respond.

That sounds like a strange method of just confirming what you already believe.

it has nothing to do with me, it has to do with people saying what they mean so others can see it. Purposeful ambiguity is a constant effort by fascist groups to try and introduce ideas into discourse while simultaneously denying them trying to undermine critics.

c.f.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2017/08/14/clash-hig...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right...

If they never respond why assume it is "purposeful ambiguity"?

Like I said, that's a recipe of just confirming your own suspicions all the time ...

I often don't respond to folks who greatly misunderstand or take my meaning to be something it is very much not.

I don't find that it is worth engaging with folks who assume the worst of people / are policing internet discussions for any distant hint of "fascist groups" or whatever they're looking for.

Also sometimes people ask a question, but its not really a question, its a veiled invite to spar verbally. Indulging those remarks are aiding in your own abuse.

Indeed.

Thus all the "no I'm saying X, not Y, I don't agree with Y" and the folks just want to go on about how I said Y.

I’m going to get blasted for this.

But the various chronic illness support forums I follow have a lot of trans people with tons of serious issues.

Sounds like sampling bias to me.

Should it be ignored until it's confirmed to be sampling bias?

It’s something I have noticed. Not a scientific survey.

Maybe trans people are more likely to seek help online. Maybe I don’t count well enough.

I keep an eye out for issues I can offer advise for. I do notice trends after awhile.

The biggest is probably people that refuse to change to try a healthy diet.

Some groups just want to complain about how bad life is. Other groups are trying hard to get better. They take a very methodical approach to treatments and tests.

Lots of people simply need help to know what kind of specialist to see next. Or advice when doctors give really bad advice. (Happens all the time)

The really confusing ones are often taking lots of hormones.

I don't hang out in chronic illness support groups, but I have lots of transgender friends. I know quite a few people with chronic illness, and only one of them is transgender. Yes, transgender people frequently feel more safe accessing support online than in person. Sounds like sample bias to me.

Yes, given the likely outcome of raising the issue, including more discrimination against and negative rumors about trans people.

Or rather, no, like most things, it should be ignored until it's confirmed to have data. That is, things are not (true until fault is found), things are (non-true until factual support is provided).

If everyone is ignoring it then who is going to bother confirming it?

It should be ignored until sampling bias is found to be unlikely. Vague suspicions based on anecdotal experience with chronic illness forums are worthless.

Like long covid?

Like "I can't be arsed to engage, on your terms, with culture war bullshit".