“This is where I probably come from”: potential link between taking Distilbene and trans identity helps Sarah “understand herself”

"I didn't understand what was happening to me"

"In 1965, my mother had a miscarriage. The doctor recommended a medication that would allow her to have several children… First success in 1966 with the birth of my sister, then me in 1969. For years, she advised her pregnant friends to have synthetic hormones prescribed to give you peace of mind… My sister had gynecological cancer and a brain tumor as a teenager, she died in 1978 at the age of 12. At the time the doctor said that there was a good chance that it was exposure to Distilbene. The drug had just been banned in France. My mother felt guilty for years, Sarah testifies.

"It''s came back over and over again in the 2000s, my mother only talked about the fact that she had killed her daughter. I ended up asking myself the question about myself. All my life I have felt something called gender dysphoria, I didn't know the term at the time. At the age of 2, 3 years old, in my first memories, I lived in silence with this feeling of not being a boy. I didn't understand what was happening to me. It was while doing research that I came across studies by Scott Kerlin who reported a high proportion of trans people among boys exposed in utero to DES in the United States. I contacted Marie-Odile Soyer-Gobillard in 2015 and I lent myself to all the analyses, the questions. The same year, she made her gender transition.

Witness at a congress of the Hhorages association, a few years ago, she had difficulty finding her place: "Families experience tragedies, lifelong injuries, women will not be able to have children… For transidentity, we do a long work to learn to accept ourselves, that goes against an approach which consists of accusing a laboratory".

"Before birth"

For her, there is no doubt, things "come from before, before birth, it's not something that I invented it, I understood that it came from elsewhere…". 

"On the one hand, it helped me understand myself but at the same time, I say to myself "This is where I come from, probably, and society doesn't understand. I would like us to talk a lot more about this path of Distilbene in the manifestation of transidentity, that we continue the research, that would perhaps help us. If I had known this around the age of 16 or 17, my life probably would have been different, continues Sarah, who is "long been in denial" : "I didn't know what transidentity was… I placed it between Ladybug and transvestites. When I did my transformation, that's what I was told, “you'll be able to buy underwear, high heels, fishnet stockings …" I just wanted to be a woman. And my first act was to buy ski clothes!" 

When this track opens for Sarah, her relationship has already broken up. Family relationships were complicated: "Things happened too quickly". His story &amp ;quot;complex" locks him in "a great solitude". She left the United Kingdom for Scotland: "Here, people only knew Sarah, it's simpler&quot ;. 

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