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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

No. Testosterone in men has drastically declined. It used to be ~50% higher than today.

https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-levels-100-year...

> As you can see, average testosterone in the USA was something like 625 ng/dl in the 70’s, until the early 80’s. This is reasonably high testosterone. But since then it has been falling steadily.

> For the average American man in the period of 2013 – 2016, testosterone was 420 ng/dl. (source)

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The reason trans people suffer with their natal puberty and hormones is not because they aren't receiving enough hormone, but because they're receiving the wrong hormones which disrupt the brain and/or cause undesired sexual characteristics (including bodily proportions and bone/fat distribution) which cause existential mental distress. Giving extra testosterone to men with low testosterone may help, but giving extra testosterone to trans women forced through a male puberty is psychological and physical abuse.

But giving hormones to children (who may not recognise the future repercussions of their childhood decisions) to prevent puberty etc is not psychological or physical abuse? How is that not active, literal abuse?

The suggestion I'm making is therapeutic - it is supportive of the biology of the person who is suffering with a unbalanced hormones. At the end of the treatment I propose, it remains a possibility that the person can live a normal life, being able to reproduce etc - as opposed to becoming sterilised.

You're wrong. Trans people don't have unbalanced hormones, they have normal amounts of the wrong hormones, both as teens and adults. Puberty causes irreversible physical effects with lifelong psychological harms, and forcing more of the wrong hormones is even more harmful. And in the vast majority of cases, people during and after puberty who are harmed by natal hormones, continue to be harmed by them throughout their adulthood, and regret going through natal puberty (not hormone replacement therapy). You don't know better than trans people what their needs are, and you demonstrably don't even know what trans people are (given that you think they need extra hormones to be fertile), so stop trying to convince people to poison them by overdosing them on hormones which will cause bodily changes (skeletal changes, voice dysphoria, hair loss) that traumatize them for the rest of their life.

As for whether preserving fertility (banking sperm or eggs) before starting hormones (as teens or adults) is a worthwhile tradeoff on an individual level, that's a choice for an individual to make. In no circumstances is it not abuse to force more of natal hormones into a trans person already harmed by them.

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