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Diagnostics and therapeutics
Published in Lois N. Magner, Oliver J. Kim, A History of Medicine, 2017
Critics of the “over medicalization of modern life” warn about the dangers of treating normal phases of the female life cycle, including menopause, as pathological states. Like DES for pregnant women, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was enthusiastically prescribed before its long-term effects were understood. In 1963, while American women were having their consciousness raised by reading Betty Freidan's Feminine Mystique, gynecologist Robert A. Wilson published a paper in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that called menopause an estrogen-deficiency disease. Therefore, estrogen replacement therapy was needed to prevent defeminization, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, arthritis, and serious emotional disturbances. In his popular book Feminine Forever (1966), Wilson asserted that menopause was not a normal stage of life, but rather a degenerative disease of mind and body that could be prevented or cured by hormone therapy. Only HRT could save women from progressive decay, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, arthritis, and emotional instability. The cure for the end of femininity, according to Wilson, was Premarin, an estrogen preparation derived from the urine of pregnant mares, that had been approved by the FDA in 1942.
Structural Sex Differences in the Mammalian Brain: Reconsidering the Male/Female Dichotomy
Published in Akira Matsumoto, Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, 2017
James C. Woodson, Roger A. Gorski
In mammals, certain brain functions such as the ability to support ovulation are irrefutably defeminized following exposure to gonadal steroids.1–3 In this example, defeminization is demonstrated by a permanent loss of a female-specific function. However, the concept of defeminization may not apply equally well to complex behaviors that are expressed to a variable extent by both sexes. The considerable behavioral bipotential expressed by males and females of numerous species presents several conceptual and semantic challenges to theories of sexual differentiation of the brain. In this chapter, we challenge the dichotic categorization of the brain as globally “male” or “female.” Retention of the potential for sex-atypical behavior by developmentally normal animals is best explained by the regionally and perhaps temporally independent sexual differentiation of separate brain regions. Differences in the onset, termination, and duration of critical periods may be major factors underlying the independent sexual differentiation of separate nuclei within the brain. Applying the concept of developmental independence to known structural sex differences in the human brain improves the explanatory power of current theories regarding the ontogeny of sexual orientation. We caution that conceiving of the brain as globally “male” or “female” may promote a false dichotomy in human studies, when male homosexual orientation is assumed to presuppose the global demasculinization of the brain or, conversely, when female homosexual orientation is assumed to presuppose a globally masculinized brain.
Perinatal Sex Steroid Exposure, Brain Morphology, and Neuroendocrine and Behavioral Functions
Published in Takao Mori, Hiroshi Nagasawa, Toxicity of Hormones in Perinatal Life, 2020
Y. Arai, A. Matsumoto, K. Yamanouchi, M. Nishizuka
The process of brain masculinization or defeminization is not always a physiological phenomenon because the functional and morphological alterations in the neuroendocrine mechanisms of gonadotropin secretion and behavioral functions vary in degrees according to the dosage, the time, and the duration of hormonal injection.40 Treatment of newborn female rats with androgen or estrogen from the day of birth to day 30 has been reported to cause a permanent severe suppression of secretion and synthesis of not only luteinizing hormone (LH) but also follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), resulting in persistent anovulatory diestrous syndrome.41, 42 In these cases, it is apparent that the degree of hypothalamic masculinization or defeminization goes far beyond the normal level. In the MAN, the synaptic number of females treated with large doses of estrogen from days 1 to 30 is significantly greater than that of normal males. A similar excessive stimulation of the synaptogenesis by a long-term estrogen treatment has been reported in the developing ARCN, resulting in disturbances of the regulatory mechanisms of gonadotropin secretion.7, 43 Since the neuronal environment of the neuroendocrine brain is quite easily accessible to available sex steroids during perinatal days, the excess or insufficient steroid levels during these days may cause excessive neuronal survival or death and may cause overproduction or underproduction of synapses. Consequently, these may bring about a less standard or abnormal neural circuit pattern in the neuroendocrine brain. A possible outcome would be some defective morphological and/or functional development of the neuroendocrine brain. Thus, abnormal concentration of gonadal steroids during perinatal development of the neuroendocrine brain can be considered as one of the important etiogenetic factors of the permanent developmental disorders in the neuroendocrine regulatory system.
To What Extent are Prenatal Androgens Involved in the Development of Male Homosexuality in Humans?
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2022
As default mammalian sexual behavior is female, males go through both defeminization (removal of female sexual behavior) and masculinization (promotion of male sexual behavior) via direct or indirect effects of testosterone. In mouse models, females are attracted to males and exhibit lordosis when engaging in intercourse, while males are attracted to females and exhibit mounting behavior when masculinized. Similar differences in sexual behavior have been observed in other species, including primates, but the extent to which these translate to humans is debatable; sex hormones in non-primates have a more “on-off” function (Baum, 2006; Gooren, 2006) and readily influence sexual behavior in experimental settings, while humans may exhibit smaller and more complex effects of androgens on different tissues.
Gender Expression and Its Correlates in a Nationally Representative Sample of the U.S. Adult Population: Findings from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2021
Theo G. M. Sandfort, Henny M. W. Bos, Tsung-Chieh (Jane) Fu, Debby Herbenick, Brian Dodge
Even though it seems reasonable to expect some continuity in gender expression across the lifespan, research suggests that there is variability in this continuity between persons. Harry (1983, 1985) demonstrated a reduction in gender nonconformity in gay men during development, which he labeled “defeminization,” in association with social class. He observed a “selective defeminization by social class between childhood and adulthood” (p. 1) with a greater persistence of “cross-gendering” among “cross-gendered gays raised in blue-collar households” compared to gays in white-collar households. He interpreted this finding as a consequence of the more gender-conservative environment in blue-collar households. It is unclear how changes in gender expression from childhood to adulthood play out in the general population. Exploring this, we expect a development toward more conformity in gender expression from childhood to adulthood to be more likely among persons with lower levels of education, lower income, and of nonwhite race/ethnicity.