Academia Slaying: Your honor, trans women are biologically women.

Another biological sciences study has found more ways that transsexual women become sexed as female as it pertains to medicine and biology.

By Artemis T. Douglas

It feels like every time biology studies the bodies of transsexuals, they discover some new way in which we have changed our sex.

On Oct. 20, the top medical journal Nature Medicine published a peer reviewed scientific article evaluating transsexual women’s biological baseline on feminizing HRT. In other words, they looked at specific ways the body maintains itself along sexed lines and found new ways that transsexual women are biologically women.

The journal focuses on “originality, timeliness, and impact on improving human health by addressing unmet clinical needs.” 

The study reports HRT-driven alignment of health profiles in immune response, blood pressure, blood composition, fat and breast development, asthma, and phobias- moving transsexual women more towards the biological and medical profile of cissexual women.

Interestingly, this study tested two different feminizing hormone regimens- estrogen plus cyproterone acetate (cypro) versus estrogen plus spironolactone (spiro). 

They found that the cypro regimen was more effective at lowering testosterone levels and in creating changes in levels in proteins that govern “various traits, as well as in the risk of cardiovascular, metabolic and immunological conditions.”

“Testosterone levels dropped markedly in the cyproterone group, but less so in those receiving spironolactone.”

The researchers also found that the cypro regimen changed more of the most sex-associated proteins than the spiro regimen, but that both changed a significant number of such proteins. 

“We show that feminizing GAHT remodels the proteome toward a cis-female profile, altering 36 (cyproterone) and 22 (spironolactone) of the top 100 sex-associated proteins in UK Biobank adult data.”

In other words, the proteins changed, changing a transgender woman’s sex to female via feminizing transsexual medicine (HRT).

What is buried further down in the study’s results section, is that the remainder of the top 100 highly “sex-associated proteins” all also changed along the lines of making a transsexual woman’s body more biologically female in the ways a cissexual woman is female.

The difference is that 19 of those proteins are directly impacted by testosterone levels. 

Because spiro was less effective at lowering those levels, there was less effective “remodeling” of those specific protein profiles to that of a cissexual woman.

They also found that transsexual women on spiro are more phenotypically aligned with cissexual women in the following categories: “body fat and water mass, serum glucose and urea in both CPA and SPIRO groups, as well as phobias and panic disorders”.

Across both spiro and cypro groups, phenotypes changed in terms of blood pressure and blood composition. 

Another interesting finding is that disease profiles changed, and more significantly in the cypro group.

Phobias, allergic asthma, and any autoimmune disease categories were shown to converge between transsexual women on cypro or spiro and cissexual women, with a stronger effect for those women on cypro. 

Taken in context, this is a really interesting piece of medical science.

Unfortunately, the authors’ discussion section seems to repeat past studies about bone density loss and other negative health effects without, for example, critically engaging with how too low levels of estrogen will cause bone loss in any woman. 

Cypro being much more effective at blocking testosterone may not be a surprise- anecdotally many trans women already knew this.

The study’s data backs up that experience-based community knowledge. Cypro is a commonly used testosterone blocker in Europe, but far less common in North America because cypro isn’t approved by the FDA which means it can’t be prescribed in the United States.

In short, this study is more evidence that transsexual women are biologically women like cissexual women are.