Pete Hegseth doesn't understand hormones

In case you missed it, yesterday the “High-T Department of War,” as Pete Hegseth is now calling it, announced that the military would perform mandatory annual testosterone screenings on all service members. The goal is to flag “warfighters” with substandard T so, presumably, they can get some prime male androgens flooding through their veins. Hegseth framed this new “screening program for testosterone deficiency” in terms of equipping soldiers with “the biological foundation required to sustain the fight” and “the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best.”

Considering that we’re still mired in an ill-advised, costly war overseas, this move is oddly timed. It also reflects a poor understanding of how testosterone works, and how it changes naturally along with men’s reproductive transitions. What if the soldiers are brand-new dads? Plenty of research finds that a drop in testosterone is adaptive in early fatherhood. I just posted a piece last week about how the current political fascination with men’s T ignores the most important function of our hormones: to fluctuate in response to our context and needs. High testosterone is adaptive when we must accomplish certain goals (like engage in high-stakes athletic competition or pursue mating opportunities). Lower testosterone is adaptive when we need to accomplish other goals (like care for our offspring or make more thoughtful, less impulsive decisions). True health means that we have hormone systems that are flexible and dynamic, not fixed at a perpetually high or low level.

Imagine that a female-dominated government agency (let’s say the Department of Education) suddenly announced that all its employers had to undergo annual testing of their estrogen levels to make sure they were sufficiently compassionate…we would consider that to be pretty weird! That’s because, unless our job is ‘gestational carrier,’ our job performance does not really map onto our hormones. I’m willing to buy that testosterone is correlated with physical fitness, but if that’s Hegseth’s concern, why not measure physical fitness directly? The emphasis on testosterone alone suggests a not-so-subtle desire to make “military might” synonymous with “male secondary sex characteristics.” Hegseth is the same guy firing female generals and blocking the promotions of women in leadership, so this testosterone move is just the latest salvo in an undermining of female authority in favor of a cult-like devotion to anabolic steroids.

In nature vs nature debates about education, gender, and class, the left is often (correctly) accused of putting too much faith into nurture, assuming that we can engineer social outcomes through culture and socialization while ignoring biological realities. But the right is equally apt to err on the side of nature, forgetting that people are flexible, oversimplifying why groups differ, and confusing general descriptive trends with prescriptive mandates. There’s no better example of stupid gender essentialism than trying to boil our complex behavioral phenotypes into a simple hormone measure.

To be fair, it’s reasonable to test and boost testosterone when its medically low and causing health problems for men. But if the goal is really to promote health, why not announce a comprehensive hormone screening that also includes women’s reproductive hormones? Older men with symptoms of low testosterone can already ask their physician to test their T levels; instituting a mandatory annual screening is pure political theater. When the political theater is focused on a hormone that is dramatically higher in men, you might as well nail a giant “No Girls Allowed” sign to your clubhouse wall.

Initiatives like Hegseth’s send young, healthy men the message that T will make them manlier and testosterone-maxxing is an unalloyed good, not a decision that comes with health and behavioral trade-offs. Getting our soldiers into the T-replacement pipeline might compromise their health and fertility. Taking too much T will shrink your testicles and decrease your sperm count. Pronatalists should be railing against TRT over-prescription! Testosterone boosters might even have downstream effects on families: my lab has found that when men have relatively higher T in the first year after the birth of a child, they report greater parenting stress and their partners report more intimate partner aggression. Other work has linked high basal testosterone levels with men’s domestic violence propensity.

Our modern military is a complex, technologically sophisticated operation. Military success doesn’t come from brute strength or untrammeled aggression; it requires the ability to manage teams and coordinate across multiple channels of information. Instead of fixating on testosterone levels, we should be elevating military leaders with qualities like empathy, good communication skills, critical thinking abilities, and careful decision-making - say, the kind of careful decision-making that might have prevented the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Ultimately, masculinity is about how men behave, not about their androgen levels. “Low T” is a state, not a character trait.

IN OTHER NEWS

To be honest, I’ve been a little depressed lately. I think it’s a post-book-slump. After working on my book for two years and stressing out about its publication, I’m now lacking the motor that kept me going this spring. I vacillate between wishing I had a new project to focus on, to craving rest, to feeling guilty that I’m not catching up on all the life stuff I neglected over the last few months. As a result I’m flitting around aimlessly not accomplishing much of anything and watching my book’s Amazon sales rank track steadily downward (womp womp). A few things have been cheering me up, though. First of all, my sister and I have not lived in the same country in over 15 years (I’ve been here in the USA, while she has done international mental health work that has taken her from Italy to Russia to Senegal to Egypt). But a few weeks ago she moved to Pasadena and her house is 15 minutes from mine! Here’s a picture of her cat making friends with a raccoon at Dollywood a few weeks ago.

I had two really fun Substack Live conversations in the last two days, both with men that I interviewed for my Dad Brain book.

Yesterday, I talked with the super-smart and charmingly British Richard V Reeves, who runs the American Institute for Boys and Men and authored the excellent 2024 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. We talked about the evolutionary biology of fatherhood and how men’s parenting roles are shifting in contemporary societies.

On Tuesday, I chatted with Gary Barker, who runs the amazing organization Equimundo. Equimundo works with boys and men in order to reduce gender-based violence and built a more just and equal world by elevating positive masculinity. Lately, they’ve been focused on elevating men and care. We talked about prosocial masculinity, why misandry is counterproductive, and the bright spots that make us hopeful for the future.

I went to Austin, Texas last week for 29 hours to tape a podcast and eat tacos. It was hot and humid and cactusy there and the tacos hit the spot.

My podcast interview with Dr. Becky went live last week, too. I enjoyed this conversation and, if you followed my Godmother’s saga, you’ll remember that I was stressing about an important podcast in between frantically scrubbing tar out of their shower. This was the podcast and I’m quite pleased by how well the Godmother’s wallpaper harmonized with the Dr Becky studio backdrop.

Speaking of Oakland, I’m gearing up to go to the Bay Area next week for not one but two events: on the morning of Tuesday, July 21, I’ll be chatting with Patricia Zaballos, who runs the excellent Welcome to the Wonder Farm Substack, which seeks to elevate ‘90s style parenting - the kind of free-range, intuitive parenting that used to be normal before the online parenting advice industry metastasized and influencers started popping up in your feed to scare you about what you were doing wrong. She hosts a monthly Storytime for Caregivers event at Local Economy in Oakland. Attendees can bring their babies and toddlers along, and, as a person who always wants more vitamin baby, I’m excited to hang with some little people (and their parents). Come say hi, and if you want me to sign a book, you can order one from East Bay Booksellers right next door.

That very same evening, I’ll be in downtown SF for a reading organized by the Litquake Festival, in KALW Public Radio’s studio space. I’ll be in conversation with Ben Trefny, Executive Producer at KALW. Apparently there will be wine. I’d love to see folks there, too!

MUSIC RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Past recs (Playlist link!): Broncho // Alvvays // Capitol Years // The Cairo Gang and Hard Quartet // The Beths // Ballerina Black // James Mercer // Playboy Carti & Car Seat Headrest // Weyes Blood // Matthew Sweet // Fontaines D.C. // Elvis Costello Spanish Model // Lily Allen // Geese // Olivia Tremor Control // Beulah // Rosalia // A$AP Rocky // Dirty Projectors // Mitski // Foxygen // Teenage Fanclub //Aimee Mann // Nick Lowe // Mary Timony // The Pretty Flowers // Night Moves // Guided by Voices // Beach Bunny // Archers of Loaf // Dolly Parton

KELLEY STOLTZ

Since I’m going up to San Francisco, it’s a good time to talk about Stoltz, who has been making inventive, wildly eclectic DIY indie pop music up there for a couple of decades. I first saw Stoltz opening up for Pavement in Los Angeles in 2022 or thereabouts, but he’s been releasing records since the early aughts; here he is in 2006, channeling Pet Sounds vibes.

And here he is singing about fusion tacos in 2013:

And here’s a track from his latest record, the compellingly titled If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now.