A recently-published book on scientific findings about testosterone is a fantastic resource for improving our understanding of men and boys. Although its title makes the male sex hormone sound malevolent, Dr. Carole Hooven’s book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us sticks faithfully to the science and comes from a place of genuine desire to understand — and even empathize with — men.
The author during an interview:
“I love the topic of testosterone. It helps me understand men. I’m not a man. I don’t really understand men or how they work. But understanding this hormone really has helped me a lot…It’s empowering for my students and empowering for me.”
Dr. Hooven is a lecturer in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Her book essentially covers three things:
- What we know and do not know, from scientific observation and experimentation, about testosterone’s affects on animals and humans
- Implications for what we know and do not know
- An explanation for the hostility surrounding the subject of testosterone’s powerful effects
The consensus of experts is that testosterone’s main job is to support the anatomy, physiology, and behavior that increases a male’s reproductive output—at least in nonhuman animals. And men are no exception—T helps them reproduce, and directs energy to be used in ways that support competition for mates. How that works is the subject of this book. (p. 10-11)
Why the hostility? Why the fear?
Elaborating on point #3 above, a significant contribution of this book is Dr. Hooven’s explanation for the hostility against people like her who talk about the effects of T on male traits and behavior. With patience and compassion, she breaks down the worries held by “T skeptics”. Critically, though, she also explains why those worries need not compel us to censor or distort scientific truths about sex hormones and male-female differences.
Solving problems requires understanding their causes. If we consistently downplay one set of potential causes (say, biological) in favor of another (say, social), then we have failed to do our best to get to the truth. (p. 240)
Why the almost visceral hostility to those of us who talk about the powerful and important effects of T on male traits and behavior? It appears to have its source in three main worries. First, people think we’re suggesting that testosterone is destiny. Second, they think we’re saying that male behavior is natural, and thus good or acceptable. And, third, they think we’re suggesting that men aren’t to blame—their T gets them off the hook. (p. 251)
Is Carole Hooven credible?
Given that many intelligent people seem to disagree about matters of sex and gender, we compiled a collection of passages that underpin our confidence in Carole Hooven’s credibility and her book’s truthfulness.
Also, here is one illustration that Dr. Hooven wrote the book from a place of concern and care for men and boys, not hostility:
Lots of books these days are aimed at inspiring young girls to shoot for the stars, to be fierce, tough, smart, and strong, and describe the accomplishments of women who embody those characteristics. And encouraging girls to aim high is a good thing. At the same time, men are blamed for simply existing, for their inherent toxicity. It’s true that men are different—being scholarly, I should add “on average.” But let’s also not forget about the virtues that nature seems to have preferentially handed out to men. They might sometimes feel the need to confidently explain the obvious, but they also put their lives on the line for others and are massively overrepresented in the most dangerous occupations. The Ugandan men with whom I trekked through the jungle for eight months while studying chimpanzees protected me and educated me. Without them, this book would not exist. (p. 257-258)
Update: This article is 1 of 3
Update 10/23/22: We have now published three blog posts presenting fascinating information from Carole Hooven’s book on testosterone:
- 20 Facts About Testosterone To BOOST Your Understanding of Men and Boys (the one you are reading now) (published 7/7/22)
- 10 False Claims about Testosterone and Sex Differences Refuted by Harvard’s Carole Hooven (published 8/15/22)
- Even MORE Interesting Facts About Testosterone from Harvard Professor Carole Hooven (published 10/23/22)
FACTS ABOUT BOYS
How big is the testosterone gap, really?
Before getting to Fact #1, it’s important to make clear just how large the gap in testosterone production is between males and females. Dr. Hooven writes, “T levels in healthy men and women do not come close to overlapping: men’s are 10 to 20 times those of women’s. In puberty, the gap is even wider — boys have about 30 times as much T as girls.” (emphasis added) This is in contrast to claims by some feminist scholars that testosterone levels overlap considerably between women and men. (We will publish a subsequent article that highlights several feminist claims about testosterone and sex differences that Dr. Hooven refutes.)
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. (p. 34)
1. Puberty is not boys’ first testosterone spike — it’s their third.
- Womb. A boy has a big boost in T in the womb, which masculinizes his reproductive system and brain.
- After birth. He also enjoys a large elevation in T levels shortly after birth (the purpose of this “mini puberty,” as it’s called, is not well understood). His T soon drops to the same low levels as a girl, until…
- Puberty. During this critical period for physical development, a boy’s T level increases by twenty to thirty times, while a girl’s testosterone budges up slightly.
- Remainder of his life. And then there’s the rest of a man’s life — T levels peak at around age twenty, plateau for a few years, and then slowly decline. (p. 116)
2. Efforts to condition a boy’s play away from battle are unlikely to succeed.
Kids’ play is inspired by toys, and toys are brought in as part of fantasy play. The sex differences in toy preferences can be quite large and are as the stereotypes suggest. Boys are eager to play with toys having to do with transportation—like trucks and airplanes—and those that can be incorporated into battle—especially guns. The scientific literature on sex differences in toy choices is full of examples of boys, forbidden to play with guns, who become quite resourceful. I found one amusing description of a preschooler boy who picked up a Barbie doll and began to “shoot bullets” out of its head. Boys, it seems, are resistant to efforts to condition them away from battle and weaponry. Girls, rather than battling, like to party. Specifically, they enjoy tea parties and tea sets, play furniture, stuffed animals, and dolls. (pp. 71-72)
3. While playing boys do far more pushing and hitting (usually with smiles and laughter) than girls — and that’s evolutionarily adaptive.
The biggest difference in play between boys and girls is the amount of physical contact with other kids. Boys do far more pushing, shoving, and hitting (usually with smiles and laughter) and delight in tackling friends and rolling around on the ground while they vie for victory in contests over who can pin the other down. Boys tend to prefer this “rough-and-tumble” play—which requires cooperation and competition—across a diverse range of cultures, from industrial populations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, to hunter-gatherers. (p. 72)
See related: Brilliant Bob Children’s Books Teach Boys Positive Masculinity
Study after study has found that boys are far more likely to compete physically to get what they want. (p. 94)
When male animals are experimentally prevented from “rough-and-tumble” play, they grow up to be evolutionary losers. They are poor fighters who readily submit to intruders, have a lowly dominance status, and do not do well in the mating arena. (p. 88)
4. Boys have more to lose from playing with girls than vice versa.
As children develop and social relationships start to become more salient, it’s mostly the boys who discriminate. Girls remain open to playing with boys who want to play their kinds of games, but boys tighten up their gender boundaries and rarely allow girls into their social groups. Evidently, boys have more to lose from socializing with the opposite sex than girls do. (p. 94)
Girls’ gender-indicating behavior is generally policed more leniently, including in peer groups, where they have more flexibility with whom and how they play than boys. Boys’ greater intolerance of other boys who have cross-sex interests might stem from the loss of status in the group that goes along with associating with girls. (p. 98)
FACTS ABOUT MEN
5. Testosterone allows for men’s heroic physical risk-taking.
Sex differences are largest at the extremes, and taking risks to help others is no exception. The stereotype of men as more likely to perform dangerous acts of heroism is accurate… Since 1904, in the U.S. and Canada, about 10,000 people have been awarded the Carnegie Hero Medal, which goes to a civilian “who voluntarily risks his or her life to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person.” About 90% have gone to men. Recipients have saved people from drowning, house fires, animal attacks, and so on… The fact is that men from diverse cultures seek out thrilling, intense, novel, and adventurous activities and take more physical risks than women. Testosterone is likely implicated. (p. 242-243)
6. Physical aggression pays an evolutionary dividend for males.
For males more than females, reproductive success is limited by access to mates. That means that primarily in males, the solution, sculpted through the forces of sexual selection, is to develop traits that enhance fighting ability, like weaponry and the motivation to fight rivals. (p. 157-158)
If males can use aggression to win mating opportunities and exclude other males from accessing them, then the force of sexual selection will favor genes that promote this behavior. Is there evidence that men are adapted for potentially violent mate competition with other men? Yes—quite a lot of it. (p. 166)
7. Seeking to obtain and preserve high social status is evolutionarily adaptive for men.
For men, high social status is more reproductively advantageous than it is for women. Direct forms of competition help men to reach higher on the totem pole. (p. 248)
Whether playing hockey, playing a video game, arguing, or even throwing punches, men can feel that their status or reputation is on the line, driving them to do what it takes to be victorious. (p. 174)
Commenting on a story of a man named Mark who confronted a drunk man acting badly on a train: They were fighting over something that is both intangible and immensely important: social status. The more respect and deference we pay to an individual, the higher his or her social status. The drunk man flaunted the rules that high-status middle-class individuals like Mark abide by—no yelling and swearing, no scaring the other passengers. And no coming anywhere near my wife while doing so. (p. 169-170)
8. Testosterone is emotionally numbing and raises one’s threshold for crying.
Testimony from a female-to-male transgender person: “Before going on testosterone, I cried what I think is a normal amount for a girl — relatively easily. Now, I might have the emotion, but it doesn’t come out in tears, even if I’d like to cry. I can have even more of that sad or moved emotion than would have led to tears before, but I still won’t cry. It is usually years between episodes of crying. It can happen, but it takes a lot. The threshold is just much, much higher.” (pp. 234-235)
Testimony from a female who went on testosterone and then went off: “I could feel myself emotionally numb after T, but it felt normal after a while, just a part of me. I cried a total of three times during the whole three years I was on T, whereas I used to cry every day. I get happy and excited for things again now that I’m off T. I didn’t realize I missed that on T, because the dullness in my emotions was so normal.” (p. 235)
I asked [transgender interview subjects] specifically about crying, probably because I have my own issues with tearing up and I’m curious about it. They all experienced profound changes, in the predicted direction. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, Linden Crawford (a natal female) described the emotional result of being on testosterone for a year. Crawford still had a desire to cry, but it was an impulse that “peters out before it reaches my tear ducts. There seems to be a thicker layer of insulation between my emotional core and my surface.” Perhaps men and women feel similar emotions, but while women tend to let them bubble to the surface, men tend to let them stay put. (p. 236)
9. Testosterone largely explains males’ athletic advantages over females.
Higher testosterone levels lead to these four advantages:
- Muscles: larger and stronger
- Bones: longer, larger, and stronger
- Fat: less of it
- Hemoglobin: higher levels, resulting in greater aerobic power
The most basic categorization in almost every elite sport is sex. Until recently, the reason for that separation was obvious and uncontroversial. Women’s world records are consistently about 10% lower than men’s. For example, the marathon world record for women is about 12 minutes slower than the record for men. This sex gap in performance means that in many events, thousands of males athletes are ahead of the very best female. For example, in 2019 about 2,500 men worldwide were faster than the fastest woman in the 100-meter dash. Without segregation it’s not just that men would win — women would never even qualify for the competitions in the first place. (p. 106)
10. Proper T regulation helps men fight when they should fight and retreat when they should retreat.
If T levels are elevated, then motivation and reward are increased, and fear and the perception of pain are decreased, allowing animals to escalate fighting. Reducing T reverses these effects, suggesting that those whose T is lower or falling are nudged by pain and fear to do what’s adaptive for them, and run or bail out. (p. 177)
Elevations in T provide incentives, because T increases a male’s sensitivity to reward. For example, when mice are given a choice of which side of a cage to hang out in, they will choose the side in which they previously received a dose of testosterone. The parts of the brain that are rich in the neurotransmitter dopamine, and which influence motivation, are dense with androgen receptors. We tend to get a rush of dopamine when we do something adaptive (or that was adaptive in our evolutionary past), like eating something sweet, having sex, or intimidating a competitor. The dopamine helps reinforce that behavior: since it feels good, we are motivated to do it again. (p. 176-177)
11. Although men produce vastly more T, and although T is in some ways related to physical aggression, women and men are approximately equally likely to use violence within heterosexual relationships (at least in Western countries).
As Helen Gavin and Theresa Porter report in their book Female Aggression, in a study of sixty-two hundred physical assaults between married partners living in Detroit, the wives were more often the perpetrators of physical assault, injuring husbands through the use of weapons such as knives and guns. Another group of researchers reported on the frequency and characteristics of intimate-partner violence in six European cities: London, Budapest, Stuttgart, Athens, Porto, and Östersund. The researchers did not find that women assaulted their partners more often than men did, but they did find that “within each city, men and women presented equivalent rates of victimization and perpetration.” (p. 158)
See also: 343 scholarly investigations demonstrate that in relationships women are as physically aggressive as men; also: Mothers of Sons Group Kicks Off Global #MenToo Campaign Addressing Plight of Male Victims of Domestic Violence
12. Unique among mammals, dads’ involvement in caring for children makes a big difference for the survival of their young.
Human males are unusual mammals in that they provide for their young. (p. 87)
Concealed ovulation is one important difference between ourselves and chimps—and 95 percent of mammals. And there’s another: in humans, children are more likely to survive and thrive when their fathers provide care, which helps to explain why many men invest time and energy in their children. (p. 169)
Human babies can see and keep themselves warm, but they can’t get around on two legs for about a year, and it takes even longer than that for them to be able to find their own food. They can, of course, survive without dad, but in many societies today, and over evolutionary history, a human baby’s chances are much better if he stays to help out. (p. 191)
13. More men than women are ‘reproductive losers’.
With men being evolutionarily adapted to compete with one other, we should expect that some men would be reproductive winners and others would be losers. Women’s reproductive outcomes, in contrast, should cluster more tightly together. And in fact, across a diverse range of human societies (with a few exceptions), this is what we see. There is more variance among men than women in the number of offspring they leave behind. In modern Western societies this sex difference in reproductive variance can be relatively small, but in more traditional societies like the Aché hunter-gatherers of Paraguay or the Kipsigis agro-pastoralists of Kenya, it can be great. And in polygynous societies, in which a small number of men can have two or more wives, the distance between the evolutionary winners and losers is even greater. (p. 166-167)
The primary evolutionary function of testosterone is to coordinate a male’s body and behavior in the service of reproduction. (p. 245)
14. Testosterone is implicated in males’ lower frequency of empathy-related behaviors.
Empathy is our ability to understand how others are feeling, and men are less able to do this than women, across cultures. This is a widely replicated and consistent finding, and it’s not true just of human males and females. In chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, elephants, dogs, and wolves, researchers have observed that males engage in lower rates of behaviors related to empathy, like caregiving, cooperating, helping, and comforting. (p. 159)
FACTS ABOUT SEX
15. Men’s desire for many sexual partners is evolutionarily adaptive.
Not only is the stereotype accurate that men are more eager than women for new sexual partners, but T has lots to do with it. (p. 186)
Exhibiting the Coolidge effect [i.e. that males exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever a new female is introduced] seems to be an adaptive trait in males of many species, meaning that the trait increases reproductive success. If more sex with the same female won’t increase the chances of pregnancy, the male loses nothing by stopping. But if another fertile female comes around, that’s another opportunity to leave offspring that may be too good to pass up. (p. 186)
Although humans are not held captive by evolutionary forces, genes, or hormones, we still experience their profound influences. — (p. 182)
Once it is granted that men’s greater sex drive and preference for novelty are an adaptation, there is little doubt that testosterone is part of the mechanism. Whatever the mechanism is, it of course has to differ between males and females. And high testosterone, a product of male sperm-producing testicles, clearly promotes physical and behavioral features designed to increase mating success. There is every reason to think that the mechanisms that explain the greater male libido and preference for sexual novelty likewise involve testosterone. (p. 197)
16. Transgender people who drastically alter their T levels are in a unique position to help us empathize with men’s preoccupation with sex.
Recounting a story told by Griffin Hansbury, a female-to-male transitioner, about walking down the street past a girl wearing a skirt: “My feminist, female background kept saying, don’t you dare, you pig. Don’t turn around. And I fought myself for a whole block, and then I turned around and checked her out.” (p. 210)
Testimony from a male-to-female transitioner: “I would not want to go through that first, testosterone-fueled puberty again, for any reason. It was a lot. It was years before I had any control over my sexual response. I’d be in math class, kind of zoning out, and find that I had an erection! What? It was very distracting. T seems like a heady drug, and the cliché is true—it really is like thinking with your dick. But when I began my hormonal transition [blocking T and increasing estrogen], my patterns of sexual attraction changed, and I became much more interested in men… And the experience of my sexuality changed dramatically. I wasn’t consumed with thoughts of sex like I was before. The loss of that intense libido wasn’t something I minded.” (pp. 232-233)
Testimony from a female who went on testosterone and then went off of it: As far as sex drive goes, I knew that it would go up, but it was like night and day. And after being on T for a few months, I went sexually crazy for guys, even though I still liked women. I spent more time thinking about who was looking at me, and wondering whether I liked them. If they appealed to me, it felt like a need that I needed to satisfy, like, right now. (p. 233)
Male-to-female transitioners report feeling relieved to experience a more feminine brand of sexuality, one that feels more consistent with how they identify; they don’t seem to mind being freed from a preoccupation with sex. And for female-to-male transitioners, the same feeling is there, of experiencing a sexuality that feels more authentic. But for them, the manly version is often an eye-opener, as it was for Griffin Hansbury. (p. 234)
17. Gay men having more sexual partners is a “man” thing not a “gay” thing.
Although the relationship between testosterone and male sexual orientation is still up for debate, gay men have something to teach us about male sexual behavior — and in particular the preference for sexual novelty… Gay men have, on average, many more sexual partners than straight men. Lesbians do not, and are much more likely to be sexual within committed monogamous relationships… The obvious explanation is that men are more motivated to have sex and have a stronger preference for a variety of partners. Gay men have more sex simply because they can: it’s not a “gay” thing, it’s a “man” thing. (p. 207-209)
18. Men’s testicles hang outside their bodies (so vulnerably) to optimize fertility.
Those precious, delicate organs, those sperm and testosterone factories, seem bizarrely vulnerable, suspended in thin-skinned sacs. As a woman, I can only look on helplessly when an enjoyable game of touch football suddenly turns agonizing as one of the players throws himself to the ground, curled into the fetal position, writhing and groaning. Getting kicked, hit, or just banged in the balls appears to be excruciatingly painful. Next time that happens, it might provide some comfort to know that evolution put the pain there for a reason: if it hurts like hell, you will try harder to avoid a similar situation in the future. But just as you’d have to come up with a compelling explanation for choosing to keep all your cash in a paper bag on your front porch, evolution also needs to answer for letting that precious cargo hang out so vulnerably in the first place. Why aren’t the testes always stashed away inside the body, like the heart and brain? (p. 26)
The scrotum acts as a climate control system, keeping the testes at a temperature that optimizes sperm production — about four degrees lower than the temperature inside the body. (p. 27)
19. Name a form of systematic oppression that has specifically victimized males? How about castration?
A “eunuch,” from two Greek words meaning “bed” and “to guard over,” can refer to any man who has been castrated, or more specifically to those who also act as a servant or protector of a harem. Whether to punish enemies or rapists, prevent the “mentally unfit” from having children, retain the high-pitched voice of a prepubertal boy, embody the identity of a woman, or to create a less lustful servant, castration has been common practice across cultures and ages. (p. 29)
In spite of a Vatican decree prohibiting castration, by the mid-eighteenth century as many as four thousand Italian boys were subjected every year to the gruesome, dangerous, and painful procedure. (Anesthetics were still a hundred years away.)… Most castrati were doomed to live their lives as social outcasts and were treated as freaks. An eighteenth-century Italian boy wasn’t usually consulted about the traumatic loss of his balls. After all, surely no sane man or boy would choose such agony! (p. 31)
Some eunuchs were men who chose to trade their testicles, along with any hope of romantic love and a family, for the chance to escape poverty and be cared for in old age. But more commonly, young boys were coerced into surrendering their testicles and were often sold into servitude. The heyday of Chinese eunuchs coincided with the growing land shortages and famine that characterized the first part of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), when the country’s population began to surge and resources, including land for raising crops, were scarce. Citizens grew desperate as they struggled to feed their families. Just as it did for young male singers in Italy, castration offered Chinese men hope for a better life for themselves and their families. (p. 32)
With few exceptions, throughout the long reach of history, the ultimate purpose of removing the testicles of men (and other male animals) has been to deprive them of their some of their most quintessentially masculine features, such as physical strength, a deep voice, strong libido, or aggressive tendencies. Castration and its effects, while painful for the castrated, generated income and empowered animal breeders, politicians, and royalty. (p. 34)
20. We need not castrate males to bring about pro-social changes in their behavior.
As I have emphasized throughout this book, to bring about changes in male behavior it is not necessary to depress testosterone. Changes in attitudes and culture can do it. (p. 244)
Learning about how the intertwined forces of genes and environment interact can help us understand the causes of behavior and make beneficial psychological and social change easier, not harder. (p. 252)
Frank talk about T will help us appreciate how changes in the environment can rein in problematic male behavior. It is within our power to close or widen sex differences in aggression—but the underlying tendencies producing those differences precede culture, and they exist because of testosterone. No good can come from denying that. (p. 182)
As I have explained throughout this book, the effects of T are deep and wide-ranging. Boys’ preference for rough-and-tumble play and men’s motivation to compete with other men, their greater libido and preference for sexual novelty, and their athletic advantage over women are all testosterone derived. (p. 246)
CONCLUSION
One promising ingredient for improving the relations between men and women (and for improving males’ understanding of themselves) is to propagate awareness about how men’s hormones affect their motivations and behaviors. Scientists, academics, and journalists do us no favors when they are too concerned about offending people to investigate certain lines of inquiry and to purvey certain ‘controversial’ scientific findings.
We highly recommend Dr. Carole Hooven’s book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us.
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