Testosterone: What Even Is It and How Did It All Get So Silly?
1,397#Testosterone #hormones #TransAthletes
CW: Medical imagery including needles and brief discussion of mental health and suicidality
Thousands of years before testosterone was identified, a farmer discovered castration made it easier to domesticate livestock and inadvertently wrote the first chapter in our collective love story with testosterone. Testosterone is simultaneously both an actual hormone that can be synthesized, known and studied as well as an essentially magical explanation for every difference within and between people from aggression all the way to crypto currency. These two stories constantly feed into each other making it impossible to truly separate the fact from fiction. What people want testosterone to be influences the kinds of questions researchers ask, how they interpret their data and how the public ultimately reads those studies. It can seem like everyone has internalized at least some amount of misinformation about testosterone because it feels true.
So let's talk T about some of the misconceptions around T, what the science says and just why some of these ideas are just so dang stubborn.
Works cited: https://rickihirsch.neocities.org/posts/2025-03-10-TestosteroneWorksCited
Transcript: https://rickihirsch.neocities.org/posts/2025-03-10-TestosteroneTranscript
Tested:
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/1256998293/tested-the-choice
When They Win via Nancy: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/nancy/episodes/nancy-podcast-when-they-win
0:00 Introduction
0:21 Getting Serious about Humors
4:05 A Tale of Two T’s
17:41 What’s the T?
26:54 Highs and Lows
35:12 Testosterone and Aggression
47:40 Risky Business
56:42 Sports (Not the Album)
1:14:55 T-tests but not the Statistical Kind
1:26:43 What Even is an Advantage?
1:32:55 Trans Participation in Sport
1:48:22 Wrapping It Up
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