>Forcing a person who is past the age of legal responsibility to take massive doses of sex/gender hormones against their will is not the same as giving kids ritalin, and it is mildly offensive to say so.
You're speaking from the moral outrage position of today. At the time, this was thought of as a way to "correct" the issue just as various drugs we force on kids is now. Personally I find it at least as bad that these drugs are forced on kids who have no way to defend themselves or even know what's being done to them.
The last time I was in the US I ended up having lunch with a friend and that friend's grown up daughter. The daughter, sadly, had a 4 year old son. During the coarse of lunch the loud, obnoxious daughter explained about all the disorders her kid had (ADD, OCD, etc.) and all the drugs she gave him to deal with it. My wife asked what would happen if she just skipped giving him all this medication. "Oh, you just can't deal with him if he's not on it.".
She then went on to talk about her life. It was pretty clear that she had no time for the kid; he had to either be with baby sitters or sitting in front of the TV nearly 24/7. I can't help but think/hope that in 50 years this kind of lazy, inconsiderate behavior will be considered criminal (since it's the child who bears the long term affects of it, not the decision maker). That kid sounded like a normal 4 year old boy to me but he's being drugged into shape so he can serve a role closer to that of a cat than of a child.
It's been speculated that if Mozart, Beethoven, etc. were born in the US today they would probably never amount to anything because their parents would probably drug away their creativity.