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