Testosterone poisoning
Encyclopedia
Testosterone poisoning is a pejorative neologism that refers not to actual poisoning, but to a negative perception of stereotypical
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

 aspects of male behavior. This speculative and controversial expression is based on a belief that men and boys with more masculine
Masculine
Masculine or masculinity, normally refer to qualities positively associated with men.Masculine may also refer to:*Masculine , a grammatical gender*Masculine cadence, a final chord occurring on a strong beat in music...

 traits have more negative traits than they would otherwise. The term capitalizes on the perception that masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...

 is controlled by the androgen
Androgen
Androgen, also called androgenic hormone or testoid, is the generic term for any natural or synthetic compound, usually a steroid hormone, that stimulates or controls the development and maintenance of male characteristics in vertebrates by binding to androgen receptors...

 testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...

.

Origins

An early printed reference to "testosterone poisoning" came from actor Alan Alda's
Alan Alda
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo , better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H...

 article, "What Every Woman Should Know About Men", published in Ms. Magazine
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...

 in 1975. In it he said,

"Everyone knows that testosterone, the so-called male hormone
Hormone
A hormone is a chemical released by a cell or a gland in one part of the body that sends out messages that affect cells in other parts of the organism. Only a small amount of hormone is required to alter cell metabolism. In essence, it is a chemical messenger that transports a signal from one...

, is found in both men and women. What is not so well known, is that men have an overdose... Until recently 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."


Ten years later, that same sentence from Alda's article was quoted in the 1985 book A Feminist Dictionary.

Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...

 gave the phrase more publicity when he praised Moondance magazine
Moondance magazine
Moondance Magazine is an online international women's literary, culture and art journal.The magazine began in 1996 as one of the first publications to appear online in the early days of the "World Wide Web", only three years after the first web developers from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland announced...

 writer Daniela Gioseffi
Daniela Gioseffi
Daniela Gioseffi is a poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present...

's American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

 winner Women on War:


A book of searing analysis 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 worldwide?


Some took offense at this phrase. A Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 piece referred to Professor Sagan's use directly:

Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...

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


Bruce Tremper used the term in The Avalanche Review, stating that being "a man" is best proven by dying "a stupendously violent death."

Psychological analysis

Testosterone poisoning is not an actual medical or psychological condition. A 1996 Psychology Today
Psychology Today
Psychology Today is a bi-monthly magazine published in the United States. It is a psychology-based magazine about relationships, health, and related topics written for a mass audience of non-psychologists. Psychology Today was founded in 1967 and features articles on such topics as love,...

 article refers to the phrase as "only a joke," but notes, in reference to several studies about testosterone and male employment
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...

, that testosterone levels were lower for successful new male employees at a southern U.S. oil firm.

Mazur et al. (1998) stated that males with higher testosterone levels tend to be slightly more aggressive, and argue that this appears to be due to the way acting aggressively raises testosterone levels rather than the reverse.

Berenbaum et al. (1997) stated that exposure to high levels of androgens in utero
Gestation
Gestation is the carrying of an embryo or fetus inside a female viviparous animal. Mammals during pregnancy can have one or more gestations at the same time ....

 are associated with higher levels of adult aggression (Reinisch, 1981; Berenbaum & Reinisch, 1997).

McDermott (2007) found a significant positive relationship between levels of testosterone and aggression.

Usage

References to testosterone poisoning are often used to criticize men. Magazine editor Tina Brown
Tina Brown
Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...

 uses the phrase thematically in a 2005 Washington Post essay about the downfall of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 president Larry Summers and the problems of Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

's former embattled CEO Michael Eisner
Michael Eisner
Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

. Beth Gallagher's Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

 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
Karl Albrecht
Karl Hans Albrecht is a German entrepreneur who founded the discount supermarket chain Aldi with his brother Theo. He is among the richest men in the world, with an estimated net worth in 2011 of $25.5 billion according to Forbes, which ranks him 12th in its 2011 list of billionaires - making him...

 makes testosterone poisoning a synonym for 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
Dysfunction
Dysfunction can refer to:* Abnormality * Dysfunctional family* Sexual dysfunction* Dysfunction , an album by the rock band Staind...

.

Occasionally this perceived moral decadence of men turns against women, as in Kay S. Hymowitz
Kay S. Hymowitz
Kay Hymowitz is an American author. Born in Philadelphia, she earned her B.A. at Brandeis University, and her M.A. in English literature from Tufts University. She taught English literature and composition at Brooklyn College and at the Parsons School of Design. As of 2010 she was the William E....

's sarcastic reference to Western feminists
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 in a 2003 Wall Street Journal essay chiding them for neglecting the rights of Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

 women in Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 countries:


There is no need, in their minds, to distinguish between Osama
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

, Saddam
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

, and Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

: They're all suffering from testosterone poisoning.


Several readers submitted "testosterone poisoning" to a 2001 Atlantic Monthly competition to find a male equivalent for hysteria
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...

 (which was originally regarded as a female-only condition).

National Public Radio's popular show "Car Talk
Car Talk
Car Talk is a radio talk show broadcast weekly on National Public Radio stations throughout the United States and elsewhere. Its subjects are automobiles and repair, and it often takes humorous turns...

" has used the term repeatedly.

Criticism

Antonia Feitz has protested against the use of the expression in a 1999 essay in the Australian Daily Issues Paper, calling it hate speech
Hate speech
Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....

.
Neuroscientist Christoph Eisenegger at the University of Zurich
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

has conducted a study and concludes that the evidence debunks the myth that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric behaviour, suggesting instead that the sex hormone can encourage fair play, particularly if it improves a person's status. According to a study published in Nature, "a single dose of testosterone in women causes a substantial increase in fair bargaining behaviour, thereby reducing bargaining conflicts and increasing the efficiency of social interactions. However, subjects who believed that they received testosterone—regardless of whether they actually received it or not—behaved much more unfairly than those who believed that they were treated with placebo."
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