The Masculine Mystique of T
The Masculine Mystique of T
We live in a time of testosterone. Although the US Food and Drug Administration has approved testosterone products only for men with low levels resulting from a handful of medical conditions—and despite no observed increase in this population—prescriptions for “T” (as the hormone is colloquially known) rose over three-fold in the US (and a staggering twelve-fold globally) from 2000 to 2011, prompting a federal warning about potential abuses of the hormone and the risk of cardiac events it could cause. The $2 billion worldwide industry represents a fraction of T’s total market, however, as an untold number of other users acquire it from sources outside conventional medical channels and institutions. T’s powers—actual or ascribed—are in unprecedented demand.
Testosterone has been culturally endowed with aspirational, almost magical, qualities since before the hormone was first synthesized in 1935. Scientists told the first and most important stories about this hormone. One of the earliest came from a sensational speech delivered by the eminent physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard at a meeting of the Société de Biologie of Paris in 1889. He reported the miraculous effects derived from an elixir of blood, semen, and “juice extracted from a testicle, crushed immediately after it has been taken from a dog or a guinea-pig,” which he self-injected, eager to reverse “the most troublesome miseries of advanced life.” The first injection, he told the crowd, produced “a radical change,” including increased physical stamina, “facility of intellectual labour,” and a markedly longer “jet of urine.” The greatest effect by far was on his “expulsion of fecal matters.”
Despite what appeared to be great promise, editors writing in what would become The New England Journal of Medicine quickly cautioned against the “silly season” that might ensue, warning that “the sooner the general public, and especially septuagenarian readers of the latest sensation understand that for the physically used up and worn out there is no secret of rejuvenation, no elixir of youth, the better.”
…
In the more than eight decades since the hormone’s isolation, testosterone’s appeal has expanded for reasons that go far beyond its supposed powers of rejuvenation. The universe of people using T, and the reasons for which it is used, transcend the categories “men” and “low testosterone,” respectively, by such magnitude that it is mind-bending even to list, let alone sort, them. Men, women, teenagers, the elderly, the healthy, and the sick all take T; and they do so to mitigate symptoms (lack of energy, depression), to boost attributes (muscle mass, vocal pitch, confidence), or to halt decline (brain fog, diminished sex drive).
T is used to intervene not only in the “diseased” body, but also to optimize a desired state of being. People likewise take T to affirm their gender identity or to be read differently by others—menopausal women, flaccid men, and “gender hackers” included. Bodies are sculpted, and psyches are, too. T has become a powerful technology for the production of subjectivity, the most consequential of which is gender.
As a synecdoche and a vehicle for masculinity—its very nickname conveys a punchy charisma—T embodies longings of all possible dimensions and gravity. But the shared wellspring of those desires almost always involves a quest for masculinity and its signifiers, offering hope for what it might enact and enable.
A magical substance with a padded résumé, T also remains a potent steroid with occasionally unpredictable effects that only sometimes align with these aspirations. Thus the transformations that testosterone effects, whether intended or not, can also elicit fear and disappointment. T has its own agency.
…
As the variety of people using T continues to expand, so do new possibilities for bodies, experiences, and subjectivities. In other words, even as T is used to shore up traditional ideas of sexual difference, it also destabilizes such difference. What if everyone had access to this “masculinity”? What could this chemical accomplish? What would masculinity even be?
Preciado posits that T has the potential to smash the gender binary because it enables the expression of masculinity in bodies assigned female at birth. But as Hansbury also told me about his days as a butch dyke: “Female masculinity does not give you male privilege in our heteronormative, gender-conforming society. It doesn’t lead to a pay raise. Store clerks didn’t want to help me; they avoided me.”
The Masculine Mystique of T
We live in a time of testosterone. Although the US Food and Drug Administration has approved testosterone products only for men with low levels resulting from a handful of medical conditions—and despite no observed increase in this population—prescriptions for “T” (as the hormone is colloquially known) rose over three-fold in the US (and a staggering twelve-fold globally) from 2000 to 2011, prompting a federal warning about potential abuses of the hormone and the risk of cardiac events it could cause. The $2 billion worldwide industry represents a fraction of T’s total market, however, as an untold number of other users acquire it from sources outside conventional medical channels and institutions. T’s powers—actual or ascribed—are in unprecedented demand.
Testosterone has been culturally endowed with aspirational, almost magical, qualities since before the hormone was first synthesized in 1935. Scientists told the first and most important stories about this hormone. One of the earliest came from a sensational speech delivered by the eminent physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard at a meeting of the Société de Biologie of Paris in 1889. He reported the miraculous effects derived from an elixir of blood, semen, and “juice extracted from a testicle, crushed immediately after it has been taken from a dog or a guinea-pig,” which he self-injected, eager to reverse “the most troublesome miseries of advanced life.” The first injection, he told the crowd, produced “a radical change,” including increased physical stamina, “facility of intellectual labour,” and a markedly longer “jet of urine.” The greatest effect by far was on his “expulsion of fecal matters.”
Despite what appeared to be great promise, editors writing in what would become The New England Journal of Medicine quickly cautioned against the “silly season” that might ensue, warning that “the sooner the general public, and especially septuagenarian readers of the latest sensation understand that for the physically used up and worn out there is no secret of rejuvenation, no elixir of youth, the better.”
…
In the more than eight decades since the hormone’s isolation, testosterone’s appeal has expanded for reasons that go far beyond its supposed powers of rejuvenation. The universe of people using T, and the reasons for which it is used, transcend the categories “men” and “low testosterone,” respectively, by such magnitude that it is mind-bending even to list, let alone sort, them. Men, women, teenagers, the elderly, the healthy, and the sick all take T; and they do so to mitigate symptoms (lack of energy, depression), to boost attributes (muscle mass, vocal pitch, confidence), or to halt decline (brain fog, diminished sex drive).
T is used to intervene not only in the “diseased” body, but also to optimize a desired state of being. People likewise take T to affirm their gender identity or to be read differently by others—menopausal women, flaccid men, and “gender hackers” included. Bodies are sculpted, and psyches are, too. T has become a powerful technology for the production of subjectivity, the most consequential of which is gender.
As a synecdoche and a vehicle for masculinity—its very nickname conveys a punchy charisma—T embodies longings of all possible dimensions and gravity. But the shared wellspring of those desires almost always involves a quest for masculinity and its signifiers, offering hope for what it might enact and enable.
A magical substance with a padded résumé, T also remains a potent steroid with occasionally unpredictable effects that only sometimes align with these aspirations. Thus the transformations that testosterone effects, whether intended or not, can also elicit fear and disappointment. T has its own agency.
…
As the variety of people using T continues to expand, so do new possibilities for bodies, experiences, and subjectivities. In other words, even as T is used to shore up traditional ideas of sexual difference, it also destabilizes such difference. What if everyone had access to this “masculinity”? What could this chemical accomplish? What would masculinity even be?
Preciado posits that T has the potential to smash the gender binary because it enables the expression of masculinity in bodies assigned female at birth. But as Hansbury also told me about his days as a butch dyke: “Female masculinity does not give you male privilege in our heteronormative, gender-conforming society. It doesn’t lead to a pay raise. Store clerks didn’t want to help me; they avoided me.”
