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This is probably nonsense, but it is a theory I had not heard about trans folk. This is about the effect of pollution on gender.
Recent evidence indicates that phthalates from plastic and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are one of many factors predicting gender dysphoria, particularly in the case of male-to-female transgenders.
Polluted groundwater yields ambiguous genitalia for vulnerable species. The modern human environment is replete with substances that mimic sex hormones. Could these chemicals play a role in contemporary gender fluidity?
Such issues were highlighted by research showing that polluted ponds could turn male frogs into females. Interestingly, some of the affected frogs were capable of reproducing but produced all male offspring that had the effect of crashing the population,
The culprits are products, such as cosmetics, that are not ordinarily considered dangerous, or polluting. One example concerns pthalates present in packaging plastics.
Another candidate is pharmaceuticals. This phenomenon emerged in connection with the contraceptive drug diethylstilbesterol. Mothers who were unaware of their pregnancy continued to take the drug. It was found to have masculinizing effects on the brains of female fetuses. The limited evidence available indicated that when they matured, such females were less interested in caring for children and more interested in female romantic partners.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-human-beast/20...
Comments
Intersex, not trans
This stuff could make people intersex. I don't see it making endosex people trans, though.
(Do I need to mention that intersex is not trans and vice versa, though of course intersex people can also be trans.)
I'm a bit cynical
Of all this. I have smoked more than a pack a day for over fifty years. Despite all the stupid ads on television , I do not have heart disease, strokes, nor lung cancer. But the scare people managed to inflate the cost of cigarettes enough that I had to smoke some pretty rough stuff to avoid poverty. The medical profession complained so I avoided listening to them.
Instead of looking for something to blame, you might be better off just embracing your uniqueness and enjoy it.
Ron
Rather than claim that
Rather than claim that tobacco isn't linked to any kind of cancer, you should say that you personally do not appear to have any of the issues that have been listed. As for the price of tobacco? Roll your own. Pipe tobacco is cheaper than cigarette tobacco, and you can get filters. Just dry the tobacco a bit more before crushing it.
I have two family members that DID smoke heavily and developed the primary linked lung cancer. Another three in that same family line never smoked, and have developed no cancer. I had another member that smoked heavily, unfiltered cigarettes, for 30-40 some years, and never developed cancer - but died of heart failure due to not taking care of himself. I've known lots of people with lip and mouth cancer - who dipped. Never run across anyone else with that _other_ than tobacco users.
It's like medication. Morphine derivatives work fantastically as pain killers for most people. Codine (a morphine derivative) does nothing to me other than making me sleep longer. Do I then claim that it's a placebo for everyone else? Nope, I just have strange body chemistry.
In line with the topic, I'm a result of fetal alcohol syndrome, but lucky enough to _not_ have the mental retardation. Just the hyperactivity and lots of allergy problems.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Trend
That you yourself have no tobacco health problems makes you a data point, not a trend. I myself have done meth (not currently, but heavily over a period of years. My source died of lung cancer. He was a multipack a day smoker. No souce? Quit taking it, cold turkey. No withdrawal, nothing. Been over 15 years and never went back. Obviously meth is non-addictive, because I didn't get addicted.
A data point, not a statistical trend.
Your mileage may vary.
No deposit, no return.
Objects in mirror may be larger than they appear.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
“Smoking is protective? WTF?”
Saw this in a social media comment by a MD,MPH medical prof early in the pandemic. It was a mystery then. Turns out, people who stepped outside for a smoke didn’t catch Covid around the office coffee pot. The early evidence of airborne transmission was there, but establishment medicine didn’t pay it heed.
Nicotine is antidepressant. My family in NC consisted mostly of two types: smokers, and depressives. Smokers sometimes succumbed mostly to heart disease, some cancer, and some seemed unaffected. Those of us depressives who made it through our 50’s without ending our own lives, tend to live longer.
I once was trapped all day in an auto service department waiting room full of smokers, TV blaring, and I had mathematical logic homework due. I was focused and fast and completed it all. “This is why so many mathematicians smoke” I realized.
If you want indictments of medicine, find the books How We Do Harm and The Origin of AIDS. Recombinant evolution of the virus via shared-needle inoculations in the Belgian Congo: nasty outcome.
Note that AIDS is a syndrome,
Note that AIDS is a syndrome, not a disease. The disease causing most cases of AIDS is HIV, which they believe is descended from SIV (Simian). That's much like coronaviruses in humans coming predominately from horseshoe bats. (This is historical, not from the various SARS outbreaks)
HIV has a LOT of theories about how it ended up in human population, including Salk's live vaccine tests, incubating the virus in rhesus macaques (colloquially monkey), a natural reservoir for SIV.
We just don't know. It moved so slowly through populations, then was concentrated due to behaviours in certain groups, that we don't know which was cause, and which was effect.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Correct
There’s evidence HIV entered the human population multiple times. Based on RNA mutation analysis, the best matching hypothesis was that the worst variant spilled over at the time of the Congo laborer mass vaccinations.
There's no question that (external) hormones and similar ...
... affect humans.
The natural, internally produced hormones, of course, for what the text-books would call "typical" development of girls into women (estrogen), and boys into men (testosterone).
The 'external' hormones, no doubt well known here, are the testosterone (etc.) blockers and estrogen "helpers".
(My opinion: Looks like a nightmare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstilbestrol)
Apart from therapeutic hormones and similar, our major controllable source of external hormones are first:
Dairy: https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/he..., There is no need for the dairy industry to add hormones, except rBGH. 3/4ths of the cows are >pregnant< and they flooded with their own pregnancy and growth hormones.
Then: Dairy and Meat: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/hormones/
---
These last two sources focus entirely on general health. "Sexual preference", "Trans" and "Gender Dysphoria" are simply "not on their radar".
NutritionFacts.org has 2,000+ topic searchable videos, about 3-8 minutes long. Dr Greger is a hoot to listen to,
---
I'll guess that people here taking therapeutic hormones might prefer to >not< have random external hormones "messing with their systems".
Diethystilboestrol
Diethystilboestrol (DES) was not a contraceptive. It was widely prescribed from the 1940’s to 1970’s to pregnant women considered at risk of miscarriage in the belief that it would help reduce that risk. It is a very strong synthetic oestrogen.
Unfortunately, like thalidomide, the consequences were felt by the children who were exposed to the drug in utero.
Female children have a high rate of fertility problems as a result of damage to the uterus.
Male children have a high incidence of transsexualism. I believe that I am one of them. I’ve never been able to absolutely confirm that my mother took this drug, but facts around my birth and the later stages of my mother’s pregnancy with me in the 1950’s suggest a very strong likelihood that she would have been given DES.
An Australian researcher, Stuart Kerlin, has a list of several hundred trans women who, like me, were either definitely or probably exposed to DES. Proof? Not enough to convince all of the medical establishment, but quite a few do believe it. And that’s an awful lot of coincidences if it’s not true. I believe it.
Diethylstilbestrol was a
Diethylstilbestrol was a common medication administered by doctors in North America, Europe, and Australia for more than 40 years. Aggressive marketing pushed DES (spelled diethylstilboestrol in the UK) to also be used for more than one hundred additional medical conditions.
Leeanna
You betcha!
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/85439/adventures-obst... A whimsical fantastic reimagining of my beginnings...
Love, Andrea Lena
Well Drea, it sounds as if becoming Trans might have been...
your DES-tiny.
Or not, we'll never know; and I'm not too concerned with causes
or justifying my existence thru science, philosophy or religion.
Altho' recently I watched a fascinating TED Talk by a lady warlock
who hypothesizes there is a bored minor goddess sitting next to the
conveyor belt our souls travel down on their way to being popped into
our assigned zygote, indifferently waving her magic wand at us + arbitrarily
deciding: "Cis/het, cis/het, cis/het, trans, gay, cis/het, intersex,
mermaid, Matt Walsh..." etc. It seems as good a theory as any.
~hugs, Veronica
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Epigenetic factors
Given that the brain is chemical as well as electrical, it makes a lot of sense that new substances could have an effect on people. Mothers’ bodies must be awash with traces of drugs, polymers and pollutants that simply didn’t exist before the industrial revolution. Even something as simple and commonplace as lead is now known to have been causing problems as long ago as the time of the Roman Empire – and that’s just one chemical element.
If you think society is more stupid, paranoid, violent or sickly that it ought to be... it probably is. In the west, we’ve finally stopped putting lead in paint and petrol/gasoline, so the 200+ times more lead in our bodies than a pre-industrial revolution citizen might begin to come back down. Perhaps there’s a brighter future ahead, although the remains of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (plasticisers and flame retardants) are virtually indestructible and they bioaccumulate, so I wish future generations good luck with that.
Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh
Lead
Ah yes, lead. If I recall, once required for water pipes by plumbing code in some major city, Chicago maybe?
“Stupid” may be a kind way to say it.
"Mothers who were unaware of their pregnancy continued to take"
"Mothers who were unaware of their pregnancy continued to take the drug." Actually, the opposite was true. DES was prescribed to pregnant women in an attempt to treat some problems with the pregnancy. My mother was given DES while pregnant with my sister (1945) for spotting, and again when pregnant with me (1948), also for spotting. Fortunately, neither of us has identified any negative health outcomes. It has been proposed that DES children have reduced fertility, but since neither my sister nor I ever reproduced (entirely voluntarily), we just don't know about that.
I do wonder why trans people
keep looking for causes, do they want a cure or prevent younger generations becoming dysphoric? or are they looking for an excuse, so they are absolved of blame and guilt? I've got to the age where I don't care what caused it, I just accept it and get on with my female life.
Angharad
Option C
Option C: "or are they looking for an excuse, so they are absolved of blame and guilt?". Shit happens. There is no imaginary sky fairy to attribute it to or blame it on. Take a good look at the world around us. If some god is responsible for it then he or she is a pretty sorry sack of shit. Certainly not somebody I wish to worship or venerate.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Just my life, not blaming
Ok, this is just my life so far; I do not need to blame anyone or make excuses.
I was born in 1962 in Chicago. For a few years before my birth my father worked as a commercial (hard-hat) diver who worked primarily in the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. He did welding on bridge and cassion structures, underwater repairs on ships, etc.
Back in those days the Chicago river was essentially an open sewer. There was less biological waste but still tremendous amounts of industrial waste that was dumped in to the river. It had high levels of PCB's and other chemicals. Additionally, earlier than that my father was a US Marine who was involved in the eradication of malaria in Puerto Rico..Through the large spraying of DDT over vast areas for a few years.
The house where my parents lived was the upstairs apartment of my maternal grandparents home. It was one of those row-houses that was squished between two industrial buildings. The building on one side was a garments factory where they made fire-retardant baby clothing. Cloth scraps were incinerated (it is retardant but it still will burn, just not easy). The metal smokestack came out the side of the building and there was an ash-flapper door that dumped whatever was trapped in the chimney in our back yard. In the 1970's this was identified as Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate that was found to be a mutagen. It was banned back then but for the years before my birth and up until I was seven years old that was our back yard. I would play in that ash pile with my little brothers and make mud pies and other things that little kids do.
I knew that I was different, even in kindergarten I knew that I was not a boy.
Well, we grew up, in 1969 we moved out of the city and in to the suburbs down by Joliet.
My gender dysphoria got really bad; To the point that I was seeing a school therapist when I was in third grade. When my secret was betrayed and my parents were told that I thought I was a girl I was threatened with being locked up in a mental institute. That drove me deep underground mentally. I still under-dressed throughout school and middle school. My parents decided that one of their versions of "therapy" was to make me watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to drive home the point of what a lobotomy was and that the Tinley Park mental institute was only twenty minutes away.
At some point in my infancy I had surgery "down below". I still carry two long scars up the inner folds of my groin, in a V shape. A few years ago I asked my mom what was done to me as a child and that put an immediate chill on our pleasant mother-daughter time together. I never did get an answer and now it is too late, she died of COVID.
I got LOTS of childhood vaccinations, every few months my mom would drive me back in to the city to get another shot. That went on in to my teen years when I just refused to go any more. My brothers never got as many vaccinations as me; They never had to come along.
Well, I ended up abandoning everything, transitioning, post-op now for the last 35 years.
----
Interesting thing that I found out after my long (self-imposed) isolation from family. My brothers revealed to me that they were born sterile, non functioning gonads. I had always figured that I was too, the 'stuff' was always clear from me (no swimmers). I knew (from porn) what guys stuff should look like.
Another interesting thing, my surgeon (University of Texas, I went through "The Rosenburg Clinic" program in Galveston during my transition and had Dr. Huang as my surgeon. The day after surgery Dr Huang and Dr Emory came in and asked me if they could share my DNA profile to be part of a research program. The pathologist said that what they removed was not testes and not ovaries but was more like a streak gonad. A few months later my endocrinologist said it was a variant on 46,XY mosaicism.
I guess my brothers have it too, to some lesser degree. Being a few years older maybe the endocrine disruption was more of a factor for me than for them. My brother nearest in age to me confidentially revealed that he had through that he was transgender as a teen but just decided to marry.
For me, the saddest part is that none of them could ever be fathers of their own children. My brothers are all great guys and would of been excellent dads.
I just make do with what I have in my life; No matter if it was DDT, or PCB's or industrial waste,Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate, something else or nothing at all. It just doesn't matter any more. I live my life the best I can, I try to be a good aunt to my (adopted by my brothers and their wives) nieces and nephews and refuse to brood on it.