Skip to content

Testosterone is widely, and sometimes wildly, misunderstood

Testosterone is widely, and sometimes wildly, misunderstood

September 4, 2020 (Posted by) Don Pelton

By Matthew Guttman

We place unreasonable trust in biological explanations of male behaviour. Nowhere is this truer than with testosterone. Contemporary pundits invoke the hormone nicknamed ‘T’ to prove points about maleness and masculinity, to show how different men and women are, and to explain why some men (presumably those with more T) have greater libidos. Yet, despite the mythic properties popularly associated with T, in every rigorous scientific study to date there is no significant correlation in healthy men between levels of T and sexual desire.

Beginning in the 1990s and really picking up steam in the 2000s, sales of testosterone replacement therapies (TRTs) went from practically zero to over $5 billion annually in 2018. This was either because there was a sudden outbreak of ‘Low T’ when a major medical epidemic was finally recognised, or because T became marketed as a wonder drug for men thrown into a panic when they learned that their T levels declined 1 per cent annually after they hit 30.

The answer is not that men’s bodies changed or that Low T was horribly underdiagnosed before but that, in the minds of many, T became nothing short of a magic male molecule that could cure men of declining energy and sexual desire as they aged.

What’s more, many have been taught that, if you want to know what causes some men to be aggressive, you just test their T levels, right? Actually, wrong: the science doesn’t support this conclusion either. Some of the famous early studies linking T and aggression were conducted on prison populations and were used effectively to ‘prove’ that higher levels of T were found in some men (read: darker-skinned men), which explained why they were more violent, which explained why they had to be imprisoned in disproportionate numbers. The methodological flaws in these studies took decades to unravel, and new rigorous research showing little relation between T and aggression (except at very high or very low levels) is just now reaching the general public.

What’s more, it turns out that T is not just one thing (a sex hormone) with one purpose (male reproduction). T is also essential in the development of embryos, muscles, female as well as male brains, and red blood cells. Depending on a range of biological, environmental and social factors, its influence is varied – or negligible.

Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, compiled a table showing that there were only 24 scientific articles on T and aggression 1970-80, but there were more than 1,000 in the decade of the 2010s. New discoveries about aggression and T? No, actually, although there were new findings in this period showing the importance of T in promoting ovulation. There is also a difference between correlation and cause (T levels and aggression, for example, provide a classic chicken-egg challenge). As leading experts on hormones have shown us for years, for the vast majority of men, it’s impossible to predict who will be aggressive based on their T level, just as if you find an aggressive man (or woman, for that matter), you can’t predict their T level.

Testosterone is a molecule that was mislabelled almost 100 years ago as a ‘sex hormone’, because (some things never change) scientists were looking for definitive biological differences between men and women, and T was supposed to unlock the mysteries of innate masculinity. T is important for men’s brains, biceps and … that other word for testicles, and it is essential to female bodies. And, for the record, (T level) size doesn’t necessarily mean anything: sometimes, the mere presence of T is more important than the quantity of the hormone. Sort of like starting a car, you just need fuel, whether it’s two gallons or 200. T doesn’t always create differences between men and women, or between men. To top it all off, there is even evidence that men who report changes after taking T supplements are just as likely reporting placebo effects as anything else.

Still, we continue to imbue T with supernatural powers. In 2018, a US Supreme Court seat hung in the balance. The issues at the confirmation hearings came to focus on male sexual violence against women. Thorough description and analysis were needed. Writers pro and con casually dropped in the T-word to describe, denounce or defend the past behaviour of Justice Brett Kavanaugh: one commentator in Forbes wrote about ‘testosterone-induced gang rapes’; another, interviewed on CNN, asked: ‘But we’re talking about a 17-year-old boy in high school with testosterone running high. Tell me, what boy hasn’t done this in high school?’; and a third, in a column in The New York Times, wrote: ‘That’s him riding a wave of testosterone and booze…’

And it is unlikely that many readers questioned the hormonal logic of Christine Lagarde, then chair of the International Monetary Fund, when she asserted that the economic collapse in 2008 was due in part to too many males in charge of the financial sector: ‘I honestly think that there should never be too much testosterone in one room.’

You can find T employed as a biomarker to explain (and sometimes excuse) male behaviour in articles and speeches every day. Poetic licence, one might say. Just a punchy way to talk about leaving males in charge. Yet when we raise T as significant in any way to explain male behaviour, we can inadvertently excuse male behaviour as somehow beyond the ability of actual men to control. Casual appeals to biological masculinity imply that patriarchal relationships are rooted in nature.

When we normalise the idea that T runs through all high-school boys, and that this explains why rape occurs, we have crossed from euphemism to offering men impunity to sexually assault women by offering them the defence ‘not guilty, by reason of hormones’.

Invoking men’s biology to explain their behaviour too often ends up absolving their actions. When we bandy about terms such as T or Y chromosomes, it helps to spread the idea that men are controlled by their bodies. Thinking that hormones and genes can explain why boys will be boys lets men off the hook for all manner of sins. If you believe that T says something meaningful about how men act and think, you’re fooling yourself. Men behave the way they do because culture allows it, not because biology requires it.

No one could seriously argue that biology is solely responsible for determining what it means to be a man. But words such as testosterone and Y chromosomes slip into our descriptions of men’s activities, as if they explain more than they actually do. T doesn’t govern men’s aggression and sexuality. And it’s a shame we don’t hear as much about the research showing that higher levels of T in men just as easily correlate with generosity as with aggression. But generosity is less a stereotypically male virtue, and this would spoil the story about men’s inherent aggressiveness, especially manly men’s aggressiveness. And this has a profound impact on what men and women think about men’s natural inclinations.

We need to keep talking about toxic masculinity and the patriarchy. They’re real and they’re pernicious. And we also need new ways of talking about men, maleness and masculinity that get us out of the trap of thinking that men’s biology is their destiny. As it turns out, when we sift through the placebo effects and biobabble, T is not a magic male molecule at all but rather – as the researchers Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis argue in their excellent new book Testosterone (2019) – a social molecule.

Regardless of what you call it, testosterone is too often used as an excuse for letting men off the hook and justifying male privilege.Aeon counter – do not remove


Matthew Gutmann is professor of anthropology and faculty fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His latest book is Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (2019).

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Articles, Gender, Health Care, Men, Science

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Herd immunity won’t solve America’s COVID-19 problem
NEXT
If You Are Offered a Trump Virus Vaccine by November 1st, Don’t Take It

Join Our Mailing List

Comments are closed.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

“Everlasting Arms”

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Recent Posts

  • Where to get abortion pills and how to use them
  • In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out
  • Why Am I Obsessed With Ukraine?
  • Is “Ukraine Losing Badly” ?
  • Bill Clinton Makes a Pathetic Attempt to Retroactively Justify His Decision to Expand NATO

Recent Comments

  • Putin in Media Myth and Reality: Which is Which? on Ukraine War: A Bonanza for the Arms Industry
  • SVadmin on Countdown to World War III?
  • Pratima Basu on Scenes From Our Weekend at Lake Tahoe
  • IN PRAISE OF WARRIORS, NOT WAR on Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us
  • SVadmin on How Suzanne Simard changed our relationship to trees

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Abortion
  • Afghanistan
  • Aging
  • American Empire
  • Anti-Depressant
  • Arms Sales
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Budget
  • Buskers
  • Capitalism
  • Carbon Offsets
  • Cartoon
  • China
  • Climate Change
  • Compassion
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Cosmology
  • Coup
  • COVID-19
  • Democracy
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Drought
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Empire
  • Environment
  • Extinction
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Filibuster
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Ecology
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Gardening
  • Gender
  • GOP
  • Great Movies
  • Groundwater
  • Halloween
  • Health Care
  • High Country News
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Ignorance
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous Peoples' Day
  • Insects
  • Israel
  • Labor
  • Lobbying
  • Local
  • Lunar Influence
  • Marijuana
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Men's Issues
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Moral Obligations
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • NATO
  • Neoliberalism
  • New Cold War
  • Nuclear War
  • Nutrition
  • Oligarchy
  • Palestine
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Peace
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Physics
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Republican Derangement
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rights of Nature
  • Rise Gold
  • Rivers
  • Romance
  • Russia
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Slavery
  • Sleep
  • Smoke Inhalation
  • Student Debt
  • Summer
  • Technology
  • The Hartmann Report
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Tyranny
  • Ukraine
  • Uncategorized
  • Unipolar vs. Multipolar
  • Vaccine Refusal
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wells
  • Wildfires
  • Winter
  • Women's Issues
  • Work
  • Yemen

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2022   All Rights Reserved.