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The largest study involving transgender people is providing long-sought insights about their health

The research examines once taboo questions about the impacts of gender transition.
  1. Sara Reardon
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Benita Arren wishes that the human body came with instructions. “We have a manual with every little thing we buy, in eight languages, but not for myself,” she says. About a decade ago, Arren was struggling with inner conflict. Designated male at birth, she had secretly dressed up in her mother’s clothes as a child, but she suppressed her feelings for decades. Then in her forties, married with two children and busy with a job in Antwerp, Belgium, she found them resurfacing. The masculine persona in her head — how she had long known herself to be — was falling away, leaving her feeling as though she had no personality at all. “Your consciousness is not fast enough to understand all those emotions,” she says.

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Nature 568, 446-449 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01237-z

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