Does Testosterone Maketh the Man? (A Riff on Shakespeare)

Um, nope sorry, it just wrecks your female body

The GDR women's team sets the year record in the 4x100m final of the European Cup in Gateshead, UK, 5 August 1989. (Bundesarchiv) The GDR doping program ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989.

In April last year (2024), a new study was published about the effects of testosterone on the pelvic floor health of trans “men” (who are women choosing to present as a male identity), called Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Transgender Men on Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study. 

It got off to a rocky start with me with this sentence, “Gender-affirming hormone therapy is safe and effective…”. This sentence is printed right under the abstract which concludes that, “Transgender men on hormone therapy have a high incidence of PFD (94.1%) and experience a greater occurrence of urinary symptoms (86.7%).” PFD is Pelvic Floor Dysfunction.

Elaine Miller, a Scottish pelvic health physiotherapist and member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “A lot of women are absolutely fine until the menopause and then they start to get leaky.” She is working with young detransitioners who have the same (or even worse) problems with urinary and/or bowel incontinence and loss of sexual function that would not be happening but for the inappropriate use of testosterone for “gender affirming care”. Because their bodies have undergone menopause, decades earlier than they would be in the absence of excessive doses of testosterone.

Excessive levels of testosterone in women also cause cardiac and liver problems, infertility, weight gains, osteoporosis, blood sugar and cholesterol disruptions, mood disorders and depression. This should not come as a surprise to anyone because in the same way that every cell in our bodies is sexed to be either female or male, every substance we eat, sniff, inject, infuse or apply affects every cell of our bodies.

What other therapy, treatment or procedure would pass muster as “safe and effective” by taking healthy bodies and turning them into unwell simulacrums of the opposite sex?

There are absolutely no surprises here; the East Germans built a sporting powerhouse out of androgens

Following the German defeat of WWII, the East Germans were looking for a way to rebuild their self-esteem and their place on the world stage. They decided to do this via the international sporting arena, including the Olympics. Starting in the 1950s, they systematically embarked on a program to produce the athletic results they needed to consistently win medal after medal, while simultaneously using the same labs that produced massive quantities of testosterone to constantly refine these to avoid detection as the anti-doping movement grew.

The tell all book Faust’s Gold details exactly how this happened, who was responsible and the effects on women who, living under a totalitarian system, were forced to comply, beginning as prepubescent children, to submit to a drug regimen that enabled them to win gold medals galore, but at the cost of their bodily integrity, their health and in some cases, the health of their children.

The author, Dr. Steven Ungerleider, starts his book with a timeline of humanity’s attempts to achieve sporting wins at any cost that commences with the ancient Greeks using opium and ends in 2011 with his book’s publication. For those who consider elite sports to be some sort of “pure” pursuit, this is a very discouraging lineup of human cheating. (Of course, today, men can just claim they are women to win, no actual doping is required.)

Valuable background information about life in socialist East Germany (the German Democratic Republic or GDR) is essential to understand how this widespread program was so accepted, pervasive and even encouraged.

Your lifestyle, opportunities and comfort level of life in the GDR was totally at the whim of the state. If you were selected for a future life as an elite athlete while still a child, you didn’t say no thanks (and neither did your parents). Your family’s housing status and the job opportunities of your parents were dependent on total compliance with the regime.

The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, which was the ministry for the secret police and state security known as the Stasi, was totally pervasive throughout every single aspect of life. There were literally no secrets allowed as everyone was encouraged and rewarded for informing on others in every aspect of life, down to the smallest detail.

To successfully accomplish their sporting goals, they ran human engineering experiments by taking children as young as 10 or 11 away from their families, housing them together in special facilities where every aspect of their lives was run according to the master plan of athletic success. This required the cooperation of trainers, doctors, government officials, scientists and laboratories, many of which existed for the sole purpose of creating these young ‘can’t lose’ athletic performances.

Although both boys and girls were given massive doses of testosterone and its derivatives, from early on the doctors knew that girls and women were more vulnerable to the effects of their doping program. In fact, testosterone was used more in the female athletes because it gave more ‘bang for the buck’; girls’ times markedly improved more than boys who were doped. The adults who ran this athletic machine also realized that athletic successes were a prerequisite for financial bonuses, promotions, awards, and other preferential treatment in the GDR system. And without that preferential treatment, the progress of their lives would come to a stop.

Starting in the 1950s with the “State Planning Scheme 14.25”, the blueprint for sporting success was outlined. It adapted as time progressed, particularly in the face of more sophisticated drug testing. There was always a way around this, and it was helped along by the fact that GDR doctors were behind both the publicly global anti-doping campaigns and the labs working on ways around detection. As an extra bit of self-protection, these men were also agents of the Stasi.

When finally brought to trial in the late 1990s, the chief physician behind the doping of hundreds of female swimmers (who between the years of 1973 and 1989 had brought home at least 20 Olympic medals and 30 world records) stated that at the time he had no idea that there would be any medical problems with these women.

Disinformation is a polite way of telling lies

Athletes under the age of 18 were told they were being given “vitamins” and over age 18 were told they were taking “performance enhancement supplements” and were verbally pledged to silence. An entire system was created to avoid athletes seeing any packaging or labels or to find out what the real pharmaceuticals were that they were compelled to take. Regular administration of oral and injected drugs was an integral element in the harsh training process (that only worked because of the effect of testosterone on stamina). If their parents expressed concern about the tremendous bodily changes in their children, they were told it was just “training”. And parents knew that this was code for ‘don’t ask’.

The increasing complexity of pumping athletes full of drugs, while at the same time avoiding doping penalties became so convoluted that occasional accidents did occur. If it was realized that the administration timing had been a bit off and an athlete was not going to pass the drugs test, she just wouldn’t be sent to the competition at all; several strings of athletes were prepared for the same events so that at least one competitor was ready. The stereotyped German efficiency in record keeping was available for public scrutiny after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and many Stasi records were opened by others.

The side effects of Oral Turinabol (the German steroid of choice) were well known by German scientists in 1964 and virilization effects were noted then, including deepening of the voice, widespread acne, growth of facial and excess body hair, clitoral hypertrophy, changes in menstruation and “masculine habits”, which included a huge increase in libido, that coaches were trained to deal with.

Some of the defendants in the court cases defended the use of anabolic steroids as “protection” against training injuries, without acknowledging that a training regime that could consist of hours long pool sessions were not humanly possible to achieve without the use of drugs. Ten-year-olds cannot train for nine hours a day without chemical support.

Much higher rates than expected of deformed babies were born to these women from the GDR and their children have had to cope with disabilities because of the drugs their mothers were forced to take when they were only children themselves.

This article from the New York Times published in 2000 outlines the issues that Dr. Ungerleider has detailed.

“Gender-affirming hormone therapy is safe and effective…”.

It makes no difference to girls and women what the treatment aims are. Creating super athletes or faux men by means of administering sometimes lethal doses of some analog or other of testosterone (because some GDR athletes died, just as some trans “men” die now) is about as far from “safe and effective” as one can get. Today’s “gender affirming” doctors are no better than those Stasi members who used the bodies of girls and women to gain personal preference and privileges they had no legitimate right to have.

And groups that used to be women-centered who promote and celebrate the deliberate mutilation of the bodies of girls and women, which compromises their healthy functioning should take note that their day in court will come to pass, just as it did for the officials of the Stasi.