Monday, August 11, 2008

CNN: Steroids Lead to Sex Change in Athlete

And I thought it just made your skull grow four sizes. Nope.

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1 comment:

Samuel John Klein said...

Well, that and the sex change.

I'll admit that steroids mess you up, but I can't help but I think that the changes in Andreas had just as much to do with other facets of his physical and mental makeup as anything else.

Having known several gender-dysphoric and SRS friends, my experience (which is hardly as creditable as medical advice, I know) suggests to me that it's probably nature, not nurture. Perhaps the high-pressure of the twised East German Olympic sports machine and the presence of performance-enhancing drugs may have brought issues to the surface that Heidi, at her young age, didn't realize she had or had the capacity to understand.

Of course, if Andreas wants to hang this on the steroid peg, more power to him. If it helps him straighten out his feelings about himself and order his life positively, more power to him. People shouldn't be using steroids like that anyway.

I have a feeling the real forces at work behind the sex change are quite a bit more complex than that though.

Of course, I could be wrong.