Basic Books
Harvard University Press
OVER the past few years, gender gaps have become part of our cultural conversation. Women still earn less than men, shoulder more of the burden of domestic chores and are much more likely to experience sexual assault. All of this should be unacceptable, yet plenty of people still justify it with a single word: testosterone.
The hormone is routinely used to account for bad behaviour by men. Some even blamed the 2008 global financial crisis on raging testosterone in male bankers. Others reason that US President is just locker-room talk fuelled by the high levels of testosterone that might have endowed him with the power and aggression needed to secure beneficial business deals.
This is possible partly because testosterone is seen as a male hormone, linked to stereotypically masculine characteristics: strength, power, aggression, high libido, success. Except that it isn’t and they aren’t. Researchers are starting to rewrite the story of testosterone, but changing its public image will take some work.
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This can’t happen fast enough for anthropologist Matthew Gutmann, whose book Are Men Animals? takes a broad look at how we understand masculinity. Gutmann argues that our ideas about masculinity “sell men short”. Our assumptions about maleness are not only based on flawed evidence and reasoning, but are also harmful to men.
Part of the problem, he argues, is that we anthropomorphise animal behaviour. Claims that male mallard ducks “gang rape” females or that swans exhibit “infidelity” obscure why the birds behave as they do and normalise those behaviours in humans. By so doing, he says, we inadvertently create a biological excuse for human rape. “Human rape is a choice, not an accident or a hardwired compulsion,” he writes.
The entrenched idea that there is something about maleness that generates violence and sexual aggression, and that “boys will be boys”, can also lead policy-makers astray. Keeping women out of the army isn’t a solution to rape in the military, just as sex-segregated train carriages on public transport won’t prevent assault. Such policies, says Gutmann, treat men as children who can’t control themselves, and ultimately fail to stop sexual harassment or assault.
Gutmann makes interesting points, drawing on commentary from some academics and offering valid criticisms of the views of others. But he can take a long time to get there. His book is filled with personal anecdotes, sometimes offering colour, but often feeling like an unnecessary diversion.
Sociomedical scientist Rebecca Jordan-Young and cultural anthropologist Katrina Karkazis take a more direct approach in their “unauthorised” biography of testosterone. The authors dissect the evidence – or lack of – behind testosterone’s role in violence, power, risk-taking, parenting, athleticism and even ovulation.
Jordan-Young and Karkazis tear through influential studies, ripping apart notions such as that high levels of testosterone help businessmen make the risky deals that win fortunes. The truth is that hormones are complicated – they can have different effects in different settings. A chapter describing testosterone’s role in female fertility makes clear that it isn’t just a male hormone.
Simplistic assumptions about testosterone don’t just entrench stereotypes about what it means to be a man. They can also set the scene for research with racist and classist undertones, as Jordan-Young and Karkazis argue.
For example, when researchers study testosterone’s role in beneficial risk-taking, they tend to recruit financial traders and business people – often white men. But research looking at risk-taking in the context of dangerous or antisocial behaviours is more likely to feature poor, low-status and more ethnically diverse people. It is also foolish to generalise as different people will take different risks in a lab task.
Some researchers have used differences in testosterone levels to argue that black men in the US are less invested fathers. Nonsense, of course. In fact, a report by the US Centers for Disease Control found that than white and Hispanic fathers.
All three authors agree that social factors such as structural racism and sexism say much more about why some men are more likely to take home bigger pay cheques or take financial risks.
Jordan-Young and Karkazis’s Testosterone is a fascinating, if slightly academic, read. There are plenty of curious case studies, and the authors make well researched arguments directly and elegantly.
It’s not all bad news. While both books refer to flimsy studies, worn stereotypes and how research can perpetuate harmful assumptions about maleness, they do indicate a shift. As scientists overturn old assumptions about testosterone driving “male behaviours”, we can hope to see an improvement in the way we do research. Future studies may reveal the hormone’s intricate effects, with implications for women’s health as well.
Even so, changing the public image of testosterone is difficult. Worldwide, there are cultural variants of the refrain “boys will be boys”, notes Gutmann. As we make progress outing sexual harassment and wage disparities, let’s ditch this thinking, too.
