In the 1960s, diethyl stilbestrol was widely administered to pregnant women who were believed at risk of miscarriage in the belief that it would help prevent it. As it turned out it was not only ineffective for that purpose but produced a wide range of mainly undesirable effects in the children born to such mothers, ranging from proneness to various forms of cancer of the reproductive system through differing degrees of infertility to GID. Some doctors including the then doctor of my wife-to-be in her first marriage were very slow to get the message, and my stepson born in 1973 must have been one of the last DES kids.
Your own comments seem to make good sense to me, and particularly your point on self esteem. I'm not so certain about becoming a different person; it seems to me more a case of one's basic personality being modulated, sometimes profoundly, by hormonal and environmental circumstances. Having been brought up very much in the 'stiff upper lip' tradition, I used to be embarrassed by unpredictable surges of emotion amongst many other things. These emotional episodes have become more intense, how much as a result of low T and how much as a result of higher T I don't know. Although I think that I've become a more relaxed person and less inclined to fight against 'letting it all hang out', I still found myself struggling to hide my tears from the vet when we had to have our fifteen year old dog put down on Monday, although I have largely given up on worrying about hiding my breast development - which represents a major character shift for me. I know this sounds muddled, but while I continue to surprise myself on this journey, I am still me.
Your own comments seem to make good sense to me, and particularly your point on self esteem. I'm not so certain about becoming a different person; it seems to me more a case of one's basic personality being modulated, sometimes profoundly, by hormonal and environmental circumstances. Having been brought up very much in the 'stiff upper lip' tradition, I used to be embarrassed by unpredictable surges of emotion amongst many other things. These emotional episodes have become more intense, how much as a result of low T and how much as a result of higher T I don't know. Although I think that I've become a more relaxed person and less inclined to fight against 'letting it all hang out', I still found myself struggling to hide my tears from the vet when we had to have our fifteen year old dog put down on Monday, although I have largely given up on worrying about hiding my breast development - which represents a major character shift for me. I know this sounds muddled, but while I continue to surprise myself on this journey, I am still me.