Testosterone poisoning

Testosterone poisoning is a neologism referring to those aspects of male behavior regarded as harmful or humorous and allegedly caused by an excess of the androgen testosterone. The phrase has won broader and more serious acceptance than typical slang. Several readers submitted "testosterone poisoning" to a 2001 Atlantic Monthly competition to find a male equivalent for hysteria (which was originally regarded as a female-only condition).

Origins

The earliest printed reference appears to be the 1985 book A Feminist Dictionary. It is unclear whether this refers to existing slang or is the editors' humorous neologism.

'Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."'

The famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan gave the phrase more publicity when he praised Daniela Gioseffi's American Book Award winner Women on War:

'A book of searing analyses and cries from the heart on the madness of war. Why is the half of humanity with a special sensitivity to the preciousness of life, the half untainted by testosterone poisoning, almost wholly unrepresented in defense establishments and peace negotiations ability to offend a worldwide?'

Some took offense at this phrase. Soon afterward a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece referred to Professor Sagan's use directly. The term misandrosy that the Los Angeles Times essay attempts to propagate has not gained acceptance as a term to describe bias against men. A similar concept, misandry, achieved modest success.

Carl Sagan even pompously informs us that the whole planet is imminently endangered by "testosterone poisoning."

Other men have accepted the term as self-deprecating humor. Sometimes this carries a lingering suspicion that the concept may be all too true. Bruce Tremper, another early user, writes with this tone about avalanches in 1991.

'Testosterone poisoning: The accident statistics show that most avalanche victims are between the ages of 20 and 35 and are male. Very few females get killed in avalanches and those who do are usually following a male at the time. In a number of cases the men involved in avalanche accidents did not listen to the advice of sensible women. But a man has got to be a MAN! And no better way to prove it than in a stupendously violent death.'

The phrase also achieved a certain amount of fame when it was uttered by the character Susan Ivanova during a 1994 episode A Voice in the Wilderness, part 2 of the popular television series Babylon 5. She said about Captain Ellis Pierce of the EAS Hyperion after Pierce had exchanged ultimatums with an alien ship: "Worst case of testosterone poisoning I have ever seen."

Psychological Analysis

Testosterone poisoning is not an actual medical or psychological condition, yet the phrase has appeared in settings that suggest it may have some validity. A 1996 Psychology Today article uses the phrase in connection to a summary of several studies about testosterone and male employment. Football players and actors have higher than average testosterone levels. However, the job success or failure of nine new employees at a southern oil firm corresponded perfectly to their testosterone levels. All of the ones with high levels either quit or were terminated within nine months of hiring. Robert Josephs, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, explains testosterone poisoning this way:

'To date, the outcomes that we have shown to bear strong relationships to testosterone include: cortisol reactivity under competitive loss, reactions to rejection by someone of the opposite sex, affective and physiological arousal when testosterone and status are at odds, cognitive functioning under conditions of status threat, and leader-follower dynamics in small group decision making.'

Shifting from researchers who actually use the phrase in their printed work to the role of testosterone in general, a different picture comes into focus. In the words of one prominent researcher in the field, "Identifying testosterone with aggression is an idea whose time has come and gone" (Dabbs, 1998). While males with higher testosterone levels do tend to be slightly more aggressive, this appears to be due to the way acting aggressively raises testosterone levels rather than the reverse (Mazur & Booth, 1998). Testosterone levels rise upon witnessing (Bernhardt et al 1998) or anticipating (Neave & Wolfson, 2003) aggression, even in as subtle a form as team sports. The experience of losing a match is enough to depress circulating testosterone levels in competitive chess players (Mazur et al 1992). The difficulty in convincing students of the direction of the relationship between testosterone and aggression is humourously explained by the endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky in the title essay of his 1997 book The Trouble with Testosterone.

The ideas expressed in the phrase testosterone poisoning may hold more validity when the tesosterone exposure occurs during the development of the central nervous system. Exposure to high levels of androgens in utero are associated with higher levels of adult aggression (Reinisch, 1981; Berenbaum & Reinisch, 1997).

Usage

References to testosterone poisoning are used as a convenient way to criticize men. Magazine editor Tina Brown uses the phrase thematically in a 2005 Washington Post essay about the downfall of Harvard University president Larry Summers and the problems of Disney's former embattled CEO Michael Eisner. Beth Gallagher's Salon.com essay "Road Sows" about the drawbacks of sports utility vehicles describes those vehicles' growing popularity as having spread beyond testosterone poisoned men to soccer moms. Dr. Karl Albrecht makes testosterone poisoning a synonym for old fashioned male chauvinism in his 2002 book The Power of Minds at Work: Organizational Intelligence in Action where he describes it as one of 17 basic syndromes of dysfunction.

Occasionally this perceived moral decadence of men turns against women, as in Kay S. Hymowitz's sarcastic reference to Western feminists in a 2003 Wall Street Journal essay chiding them for neglecting the rights of Third World women in Muslim countries:

'There is no need, in their minds, to distinguish between Osama, Saddam, and Bush: They're all suffering from testosterone poisoning.'

More often, however, men use the phrase about themselves and each other with gentle self-deprecating humor. However, the word has also been a cause of offense. Antonia Feitz protests against it in a 1999 essay in the Australian Daily Issues Paper, calling it the equivalent of hate speech. The expression "testosterone poisoning" is also used by male-to-female transsexuals to describe the virilisation of the body during puberty. This is always used with a negative connotation as a young woman would want her body to feminise and not virilise.

Conclusion

Despite its continued ability to offend, the expression "testosterone poisoning" appears to have established itself in a mere twenty years. Its acceptance may result from how, unlike previous terms for men originating from the feminist movement, references to testosterone poisoning concern not the battle of the sexes but the ways men defeat themselves. The above examples are only some of the more notable uses. The phrase has gained currency in academia and prominent periodicals. This is highly unusual for a term still regarded as slang.

Notes

^*.

A Feminist Dictionary, ed. Kramarae and Treichler, Pandora Press, 1985.

^*.

^*. "In Academe, Misogyny Meets Its Match: Misandrosy," by Father Patrick M. Arnold, SJ, assistant professor of theology at the University of San Diego, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1990.

^*.

^* "The Trouble with Testosterone," by Peter Doskotch, Psychology Today, Dec. 1996.

^*. "Why Can't a Man Be More Like a Woman?" by Tina Brown, The Washington Post, Feb. 24, 2005.

^*.

^*. "The Women Feminists Forgot," by Kay S. Hymowitz, The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 7, 2003.

^*.

^*. "Demonizing Men," by Antonia Feitz, The Australian Daily View, Feb. 9, 1999.

References

Archer, J. (1991) The influence of testosterone on human aggression. British Journal of Psychology 82: 1-28.
Berenbaum, S.A. & Reinisch, J.M. (1997) Early androgen effects on aggression in children and adults with congenital adrenal hyperplasia Psychoneuroendocrinology 22:505--515.
Bernhardt, P.C., Dabbs, J.M. Jr., Fielden, J.A. & Lutter, C.D. (1998) Testosterone changes during vicarious experiences of winning and losing among fans at sporting events. Physiology & Behavior 65:59-62.
Dabbs, J.M. Jr. (1998) Testosterone and the concept of dominance. Behavioral & Brain Sciences 21:370--371.
Mazur, A. & Booth, A. (1998) Testosterone and dominance in men. Behavioral & Brain Sciences 21:353--397.
Mazur, A. & Booth, A. & Dabbs, Jr., J.M. (1992) Testosterone and chess competition. Social Psychology Quarterly 55:70--77.
Neave, N. & Wolfson, S. (2003) Testosterone, territoriality and the "home advantage". Physiology & Behavior 78:269--275.
Reinisch, J.M (1981) Prenatal exposure to synthetic progestins increases potential for aggression in humans. Science 211:1171--1173.
Sapolsky, R. (1997) The Trouble With Testosterone' and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament. Scribner.