"DES Sons" and Gender Dysphoria

[susiej]

Ladies,

We've had numerous posts here about "why am I the way I am", and most often, the bottom line is, "don't know, why fret over it?"

That's been my attitude for decades -- look forward, not backward, and enjoy being "gender-agile" -- but yesterday I stumbled on an article that might actually offer a concrete reason why some of us older girls are TG.

During the 1940's and early '50s, some women took a drug called DES to prevent miscarriages and other pregnancy problems. This drug has since been identified as statistically correlated with a number of problems in the children. One of these is a very high incidence of Gender Dysphoria (i.e. some form of transgender manifestation) in males.

From the study:

One of the most significant findings from this study is the high prevalence of individuals with confirmed or strongly suspected prenatal DES exposure who self-identify as transsexual, transgender, intersex, or who have identified serious difficulties with gender dysphoria.

The paper states that between 1/4 and 1/3 of the "DES Sons" surveyed experience some form of transgender manifestation.

Wow.

Here's a link to the full article:

http://www.antijen.org/transadvocate/id33.html

Hugs,
Susie

[deja true]

Wow! This looks very interesting from the first couple of para's. Will read it later when time available....

Personally, I'm one of those who don't care how I got this way, but I do have a need to know all the theories...

Thanks Susie!