THE LAST MEN: Liberalism and Death of Masculinity, pt.2

In preparation for my new book, read the second of three parts of a never-before-seen 10,000 word piece I wrote back in the autumn

Welcome back, my friends, to this exclusive long essay developing some of the themes of my new book. We’ve had the first part, the introduction, yesterday, which you can read here. Today we’ve got the second part, in which I discuss “spermageddon.” On Monday, we’ll have the third and final part, in which I examine how and why male-bonding is disparaged by the liberal mainstream.

Like I said yesterday, please let me know in the comments what you think. I’ll be settling down to write the new book this autumn, with a scheduled release in early 2025.

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As I said, I’ve decided to substitute testosterone for thymos in my analysis of why so many men are now men without chests, both literally and metaphorically. I’ve decided to do this for one simple reason: because it’s testosterone that makes men men. Or rather, it’s testosterone, in the right ratio to estrogen, that makes men men, and not women. (A deficiency in estrogen can have dreadful effects in men, as dreadful as a testosterone deficiency in fact, affecting everything from bone development and erectile function, to body-fat storage and brain health. Conversely, women also need testosterone to be healthy, though in far lower quantities than men.) We can measure testosterone levels in men quite nicely, in a way that simply isn’t possible with an abstract concept like thymos, and the kinds of behaviours that are associated with thymos, and with being a man more broadly, are clearly linked to levels of testosterone in the body.

The hormone testosterone governs the masculinisation process that first occurs in boys in the womb and then resumes during adolescence. Processes directed and shaped by testosterone include the development of the penis and testes, deepening of the voice, the growth of facial and pubic hair, muscular and bone development, and libido and sperm production. The production of testosterone in men is regulated via the brain’s pituitary gland, which sends signals to the testes to produce the hormone. Levels of the hormone, and of all hormones, are closely regulated within feedback loops. If testosterone levels are too high, the brain sends signals to the pituitary gland to reduce production, or the opposite if levels are low.

As well as governing physical processes that are essential to the full expression of male sex, testosterone is involved in the regulation of mood and the expression of male behaviour. Now, you can be forgiven for believing that, in this regard, testosterone is simply the “aggressive” hormone, the hormone that makes men fight and kill and rape and do all the nasty retrograde things that need to be eliminated from society once and for all. We don’t live in the Stone Age anymore, right? That’s certainly how testosterone and its effects are portrayed in the media and pop-science. The truth, unsurprisingly, is far more complicated and nuanced. Testosterone is not simply an “aggressive” or “anti-social” hormone. Increased levels of testosterone do not make a man reliably more dangerous. They might make him more formidable, a far worthier opponent for his fellow man and for life itself, but that’s not the same thing, and we ought to know the difference.

Estrogen, the “female” hormone that supposedly makes women the angelic nurturing creatures we all need and love, actually has a very important role to play in the modulation of aggression. This is demonstrated in a wonderful study I like to talk about as much as I can: “Increased aggressive behaviour and decreased affiliative behaviour in adult male monkeys after long-term consumption of diets rich in soy protein and isoflavones”, in the journal Hormones and Behaviour, from 2004. By feeding male macaques a diet rich in soy compounds that mimic the hormone estrogen, scientists were able to make them simultaneously more aggressive and also more introverted and submissive. I like to say that these feminised male monkeys became passive-aggressive “incel monkeys”, an analogy that bears up surprisingly well in the human case when it comes to the effects of testosterone decline and feminisation, as we’ll see.

What we know scientifically about testosterone’s effects on male behaviour comes from both human and animal studies, in a wide variety of different settings, from laboratories to zoos and the jungles of Africa. Many human studies involve administration of testosterone gel and a placebo to groups of men who are then asked to perform a simple game or perceptual test to see how the hormone affects their behaviour and particularly traits like honesty, generosity and the sense for fair play.

For instance, in a 2023 study in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, 120 young men were either given testosterone gel or a placebo and then asked to play a “dictator game” where they could choose to allocate resources to others exactly as they pleased. According to the researchers,

“the testosterone group showed significantly reduced aversion to advantageous inequality. These findings suggest that testosterone facilitates decisions that prioritize selfish economic motives over fairness concerns, which in turn may boost status-enhancing behaviours.”

“May boost status-enhancing behaviours”? That sounds an awful lot like megalothymia, doesn’t it? Only in a totally isothymic society, where absolute equality is the goal, could inequality be coded as bad per se, but that’s the society we live in, and that’s why scientists, consciously or otherwise, frame such findings in the way they do.

In truth, these little games generally don’t tell us a huge amount about testosterone. A better place to look is more complicated situations involving animals. Consider the following animal study, published in August 2022 by researchers of Emory University. “Testosterone promotes ‘cuddling’, not just aggression, animal study finds”, was the headline reporting the findings in a media release. The research was carried out on Mongolian gerbils, and showed that, according to context, testosterone could either promote pro-social friendly behaviour (cuddling) or aggressive behaviour in the face of external threats.

Male gerbils were allowed to bond with female gerbils and get them pregnant. The male gerbils were then given an injection of testosterone. Although the researchers expected that the hormone would make the males less interested in their partners, the opposite happened: the male gerbils became “super partners”, spending even more time than normal cuddling with the pregnant females. The males were then separated from their mates and placed in cages with unknown males. Normally, this would result in a serious bust-up between the two males, but again, the opposite happened. This friendly behaviour changed immediately, however, when the original males were given another shot of testosterone. Now they chased the intruders or hid away from them. “It was like they suddenly woke up and realized they weren’t supposed to be friendly in that context,” explained one of the researchers. Testosterone, then, appears to function as a kind of context-specific switch, now favouring nurturing behaviour, now favouring aggression, depending on which is appropriate.

Studies reveal that testosterone has wide a variety of beneficial physical and mental effects, but what’s even more interesting is the way that it produces a kind of behavioural circuit, reinforcing itself. Testosterone makes you do things that further increase your testosterone. Testosterone will make you more likely to approach a woman, and talking to women increases testosterone. Testosterone makes you more likely to take part in competition, and winning competitions increases your testosterone. Testosterone makes working out more rewarding, and working out increases testosterone. The same goes for your brain too: more testosterone equals better cognition, and success in demanding mental tasks means more testosterone. Pretty cool, eh?

The best way, I think, to understand testosterone’s crucial role in being a man is to look at what happens to men who don’t have enough of it. And where better to go to find out than the online forum Reddit, which hosts a variety of communities (“subreddits”) dedicated to the problems that arise from having low testosterone as a man? My favourite subreddit in this regard is r/lowT, which features detailed testimonials from men who have suffered with low testosterone, corroboration and advice from fellow sufferers, and also accounts from men who have sorted out their testosterone, usually as a result of testosterone-replacement therapy (i.e. taking testosterone, whether in pill, injection or gel form). Here’s one short testimony, verbatim:

So I've dealt with a fairly large amount of depression, fatigue, weight gain, lack of sex drive, etc for a fairly long time since I was at least 16. I've always been sceptical/worried about some underlying reason to all of this, but every GP I've visited always told me "eat better, exercise, generic healthy lifestyle" as a fix-all for me. I've never had a doctor who would take the initiative to at least do a simple blood test for me.

This past year, I started visiting a new doctor for regular check-ups and he agreed that I needed a in-depth analysis at my hormone levels to check for any possible underlying issues I may be having.

After analyzing my blood work, it came to be that I have a testosterone level in the low 300s, and he decided it would be best for me to immediately begin Low-T therapy.

Another user, a 25-year-old man with a low-testosterone diagnosis, describes how he is suicidal; has low self-esteem; has no energy; feels passive and can’t make decisions; can’t summon any drive to compete and deliberately avoids conflicts; has zero interest in sex; never sleeps well; and has absolutely no ambition or motivation for life in general. These are all classic symptoms associated with having low testosterone, and, as you can imagine, they blight the lives of all men, of any age, who are unfortunate enough to suffer from them. It’s not just impossible for men with low T to do the higher things we associate with being a man: even basic human functions like going to sleep or making decisions are impossible in the worst cases.

Among users of these subreddits who manage to sort out their testosterone, the language is almost uniformly the language of joy, of transformation and of rebirth. A pretty typical title for a post might be “Fairly young, hypogonadal [i.e. low-testosterone] male, around 2 weeks into TRT. All I can say is… WOW!” or “TRT has changed my life at a young age”. For some, the effects are literally immediate. One user describes how waking up the day after his first testosterone injection “felt like a miracle”. “Confidence is coming back and I just feel like my old self.” “TRT was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself”, comments another user underneath yet another miraculous story.

Now try to imagine what an entire society of men with low testosterone would look like. Not good, right? Well, that’s exactly what we’re on our way towards.

The simple truth is, men today have considerably less testosterone than men of the same age even a single generation ago, and levels just keep on falling. As part of the Massachusetts Male Aging Study (MMAS), data were gathered on 1500 randomly selected men in the Boston area, across three separate periods spanning a total of 17 years (1987-1989, 1995-1997, and 2002-2004). A number of different biomarkers were measured, including levels of total testosterone and bioavailable or free testosterone (testosterone the body can actually use). A 2007 study of the testosterone data showed that total and free testosterone declined by 12% and 13% respectively each year across the length of the study, amounting to a 20.4% and 22.1% decrease in total.

These results are not a one-off. Population-level declines of the same magnitude, or worse, have been demonstrated across the Western world. For example, a group of Finnish researchers believed Finnish men would be better off than Americans, because Finnish men generally scored higher than American men in a number of different reproductive-health parameters, such as semen quality, instances of undescended testicles and testicular cancer. Instead, the study the Finns published in 2012 showed a generational decline in testosterone levels that was even worse than the MMAS.

The decline in testosterone levels we’ve seen in recent decades is part of a broader decline in fertility parameters among men. It shouldn’t be a surprise that, if men’s testicles aren’t working as they should be to produce enough testosterone, they’re probably not going to be producing enough sperm either. And this is absolutely the case. Between 1973 and 2011, there was a 59% decrease in the sperm counts of the average Western man. This headlong dive in quantity has also been accompanied by a no less drastic reduction in sperm quality, meaning the number of viable sperm that can actually fertilise a female egg.

These extremely worrying trends have led to shocking predictions of a “spermageddon” scenario, where in the very near future humans may not be able to reproduce by natural means at all. Such a prediction was made last year by Professor Shanna Swan, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, in her new book, Count Down, which received a significant amount of media exposure. If we simply extrapolate current trends, by 2045, Professor Swan claims, the media man will have a sperm count of zero. What this means is that one half of all men will produce no sperm whatsoever, and the other half will produce so few, and of such poor quality, that they might as well produce none anyway, because they’re not going to get a woman pregnant no matter how hard they try. Since the publication of the book, additional research by Professor Swan and others on trends in male fertility, using newer data and data from outside the West, from Latin America, Africa and Asia, has revealed that the trends seen in the West are being mirrored in men everywhere else, and that they’ve started to accelerate since the turn of the new millennium. We may now have even less than 20 years to avert a species-ending catastrophe.