“Testosterone skeptics” are what Carole Hooven calls people who deny testosterone is critical in explaining why men think and act differently from women and have big advantages over women in sports. In other words, T skeptics downplay ‘nature’ among the causes of sex/gender differences and rely too much on ‘nurture’.
In this blog post, we present ten passages from Dr. Hooven’s book where she calls out false claims about testosterone and sex differences made by academics, athletes, psychologists, and journalists. (The excerpts don’t always include Dr. Hooven’s full explanations for why the claims are false; those can be found in her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us.) The ten erroneous assertions fall under three themes:
- Males don’t actually have that much more testosterone than females. In other words, the supposed huge testosterone gap between the sexes is a myth. FALSE
- Testosterone isn’t very consequential for athletic performance. FALSE
- Testosterone does little to influence how males think and behave. FALSE
As stated in our earlier article about this book, which is recommended reading to complement this blog post (see: “20 Facts About Testosterone To BOOST Your Understanding of Men and Boys“) we have reasons for our confidence in Dr. Hooven’s credibility and the reliability of her claims.
“If we want to understand what it means to be a male human, and the ways in which boys and men are different from girls and women, we need to understand testosterone.”
– Carole Hooven, Harvard professor of human evolutionary biology
Subsequent to this blog post, we published a third and final piece containing important information from Carole Hooven’s book: Even MORE Interesting Facts About Testosterone from Harvard Professor Carole Hooven.
Do men and boys really have way more testosterone than women and girls?
1. Testosterone levels overlap considerably between men and women. FALSE
Sari van Anders is a professor of psychology, gender studies, and neuroscience at Queen’s University in Canada. She specializes in “social neuroendocrinology, sexuality, gender/sex & sexual diversity, and feminist and queer science.” She has claimed in her scholarly work that “in reality, testosterone levels overlap considerably between women and men.” (She is not the only scholar to say this.)
Interviewed recently for Discover magazine, van Anders reiterated the claim that there is no gender “binary” in T levels and asked, “What would be the goal of making that binary? For science, there isn’t one. Usually, [the binary] is there for political reasons.”
The evidence is not in her favor… Testosterone in adults has a strikingly non-overlapping bimodal distribution with wide and complete separation between men and women… Men’s T levels are ten to twenty times higher than those of women. (p. 111-114)
Is greater testosterone in males important in explaining their superior peak athletic performance?
2. Testosterone doesn’t explain differences between the sexes in athletic ability. FALSE
One sort of argument used by T skeptics can seem persuasive because it’s backed up by high-quality research in endocrinology. Here’s an example from a 2019 article in the Washington Post by Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, “Five Myths About Testosterone.” One myth, they say, is ‘the more testosterone, the better the athlete’:
“No study has ever concluded that you can predict the outcome of speed or strength events by knowing competitors’ T levels. And while T does affect parameters related to athleticism, including muscle size and oxygen uptake, the relationships don’t translate into better sports performance in a clear-cut way.”
The authors then go on to describe findings from two studies, one based on an Olympic weight-lifting competition, and one on elite track-and-field athletes. Each study showed that those with the highest T levels didn’t always win… These kinds of findings, Jordan-Young and Karkazis say, “cast doubt on the thesis that T is a master key to performance differences in sports.”
They are right in one way — T is not the master key to performance differences within each sex… But the conclusion that T levels don’t explain differences between sexes is the result of a subtle bait and switch. The scientifically backed claim that T doesn’t always predict sporting success among males or among females has been replaced by a similar-sounding but unsupported claim that T doesn’t explain sporting differences between males and females.
As I will show, all the evidence points to the same conclusion: a male level of T in puberty and adulthood (with possible contributions from prenatal T) is the master key for superior performance in most sports. (p. 108-109)
3. The gap between men’s and women’s peak athletic achievements is closing. FALSE
The sex gap in athletic performance means that in many events thousands of male athletes are ahead of the very best female. In 2019, about twenty-five hundred men — almost one-third of the total number of men competing worldwide in the IAAF 100-meter event — beat the fastest women’s time. Without segregation, it’s not just that men would win — women would never even qualify for the competitions in the first place.
Veronica Ivy, a Masters world champion cyclist in the women’s division, is more optimistic:
“We’ve seen that the gap in performance between elite men and women is closing in every sport. As the men are improving and new records are being set, the women’s records are being set faster. The gap is closing. It’s misleading to take the current gap and say that will always be the case.”
Ivy is mistaken: whatever the cause of the gap, it is not closing. (p. 107)
4. Why isn’t women’s peak athletic performance the same as men’s? It’s psychological. FALSE
Some testosterone skeptics appear to think that women do not perform as well because they don’t try hard enough. In 2018, the BBC radio program Woman’s Hour aired a segment on transgender participation in athletics. The issue under consideration was whether transgender women (people born male who identify as women) should have the right to compete in women’s sports. One of the guests, a psychologist named Beth Jones, was dubious that testosterone was a factor: “There is no robust scientific evidence to say…testosterone impacts directly on athletic performance.”
She suggested that “in years to come” it might be feasible to abolish sex categories in sport. When the interviewer objected that this would mean the end of women’s participation at the elite level, Jones speculated that “women cap their capability psychologically because they are competing against other women. If they feel they’re then competing against men—perhaps they would up their performance and be competing on more of that level.” (p. 108)
5. Testosterone isn’t that important for muscle growth. FALSE
Some T skeptics have found ingenious ways to avoid inevitable conclusions. Here’s an example from Jordan-Young and Karkazis’s book Testosterone. They describe one of the most influential studies ever conducted on testosterone and its effects on muscle in men, by the endocrinologist Shalender Bhasin and his colleagues:
“That classic study is the go-to citation for evidence that T builds muscle. But it’s also a great study to look at to understand some of the limitations of that claim. First, to find the effects of T on muscle, Bhasin and colleagues had to give huge doses of T, six times more than had been studied in previous research on the effect of T on muscle. Second, even at these high levels of T, the significant increase in muscle size, and especially in strength, was mostly confined to the group that exercised regularly in addition to receiving T. T alone didn’t do much.“
There’s only one problem: both of those bolded claims (bolding is mine) are unwarranted.
The Bhasin lab has produced several studies on testosterone’s effect on muscle growth, and the one that Jordan-Young and Karkazis chose to discuss (from 1996) was designed specifically to evaluate the effects of very high doses of T on muscle growth, not to determine the level of T required to increase muscle. But even in that study, the researchers found that T increases muscle and strength in men who don’t exercise. Here’s a shocker: among the men who were on T (rather than placebo injections), those who exercised gained more muscle than those who didn’t. Of course exercise plus testosterone adds up to more muscle. But “T alone” did plenty.
…When science is distorted and studies are cherry-picked, consumers of science are left confused or misled, and we lose our ability to rely on one of the most powerful tools available to understand ourselves and the world around us. Bhasin’s studies are among the most rigorous and well designed in the field of endocrinology. Let’s allow that kind of strong science to stand, and use the results to inform our thinking, discussions, and policies. Testosterone builds muscle, men have more of it, and it gives them a strong advantage over women in sports. (p. 122-125)
6. Track athlete Caster Semenya has high testosterone levels for a woman, but otherwise she is a typical female. FALSE
Some athletes who compete and live as women have XY sex chromosomes and testosterone-producing testicles. They are not simply women who are being forced to reduce their naturally high T, as is usually reported.
Here’s the opening paragraph from a 2019 article in the New York Times, reporting on the recent decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on testosterone limits in athletes like Caster Semenya:
“Female track athletes with naturally elevated levels of testosterone must decrease the hormone to participate in certain races at major competitions like the Olympics, the highest court in international sports said Wednesday in a landmark ruling amid the pitched debate over who can compete in women’s events.”
This is, of course, a sensitive issue because athletes like Semenya live and identify as female, and people want to respect their gender identity and privacy. However, the Times piece obscures the dramatic physical effects wrought by male-typical levels of T during crucial stages of development, and into adulthood.
A more neutral opening paragraph by the New York Times would instead have begun: “Track athletes who identify as female, who also have internal testes that produce levels of testosterone in the male range, must decrease their testosterone levels to participate in certain races…” (p. 126-127)
Does all that testosterone in men and boys explain why they think and act differently from women and girls?
7. Men behave the way they do simply because culture allows it. FALSE
Matthew Gutmann, professor of anthropology at Brown University and the author of the 2019 book Are Men Animals?, agrees [that gendered behavior patterns are socially constructed]. He says that new research that is “just now reaching the general public” shows there is “little relation between T and aggression (except at very high or very low levels).” This, along with his interpretations of other scientific literature, has convinced him that biology, and testosterone in particular, is not where explanations of male violence are to be found: “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.” (p. 156-157)
8. Testosterone doesn’t influence boys’ brains to cause them to behave in typically masculine ways. FALSE
Feminist scholars and scientists are not fans of the idea that T masculinizes the brain as well as the body. In her 2010 award-winning book Brain Storm, Rebecca Jordan-Young argues that the idea T masculinizes the brain is…
“little more than an elaboration of long-standing folk tales about antagonistic male and female essences and how they connect to antagonistic male and female natures. As a folktale, it’s a pat answer, a curiosity killer. And the data don’t fit into tidy male-female brain patterns, anyway. […] Why keep trying to fit the data into a story about sex?”
I could multiply these sorts of quotations numerous times.
Gina Rippon describes the central message of her 2018 book The Gendered Brain succinctly: “A gendered world will produce a gendered brain.” To think otherwise, says a glowing review in the leading science journal Nature, is “neurosexism.” (p. 74)
9. The theory that testosterone plays a central role in masculine behavior is extinct. FALSE
The idea that the gendered structure of human bodies, behavior, and institutions floats almost completely free from biology (and in particular from testosterone) is as popular now as ever.
One leader of this movement is Cordelia Fine, a psychologist and the author of the 2017 book Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society. Fine thinks that the theory that testosterone plays a central role in masculine behavior is extinct, crushed to death by the weight of the evidence. Resurrecting this dinosaur, Fine says, is both fruitless and dangerous, and such thinking “squashes the hopes for sex equality.” And if you believe that “biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development,” you’re falling for an “overly familiar story” in which “differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures—women are more cautious and parenting focused, while men seek status to attract more mates.”
Feminist scholars and scientists are not fans of the idea that T masculinizes the brain as well as the body.
Carole Hooven (p. 73)
Testosterone Rex was awarded the prestigious Royal Society Science Book Prize, with one of the judges writing, “This book brilliantly explains how every baby, male or female, is born equipped to grow up into any sort of life.” If we buy into that sexist story about evolution and hormones—the “Testosterone Rex” view—we will set severe limits on what we can accomplish. Removing those limits, Fine and others seem to believe, requires disproving the “ingrained myths” about biological differences between the sexes, especially those about testosterone. (p. 23-24)
10. There are few psychological differences between the sexes, and the differences seen are heavily shaped by culture, not biology. FALSE
A carefully curated reading list of books like Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, Testosterone Rex, and many popular magazine and newspaper articles would lead someone with little prior knowledge to wonder what all the fuss is about. If the science is so flawed, how did the myth of testosterone as the “male sex hormone” even arise?
The journalist Angela Saini answers this question in her popular book Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story. It is the clear and very real sexism in the history of science that has led us astray. In her view, only by exposing the bias and sexism in science can we see the real evidence.
At the start of the book she asks: “Does the balance of sex hormones have an effect beyond the sexual organs and deeper into our minds and behavior, leading to pronounced differences between women and men?” And her answer is clear: “There are few psychological differences between the sexes, and the differences seen are heavily shaped by culture, not biology.”
I agree with Saini that sexist assumptions can sometimes affect research. But I disagree on the answer to her question. Science shows that the answer is unequivocally “yes.” In a number of important ways, testosterone pushes the psychology and behavior of the sexes apart. (p. 24-25)
Read more: 20 Facts About Testosterone To BOOST Your Understanding of Men and Boys
Also view more articles under the category Empathy for Boys and Men