Testosterone Nation

Testosterone.

You know, when I was a twenty-something university feminist, most of what I heard about testosterone was bad. Testosterone, after all, is maleness. It makes men what they are. And at the time, most of what men are seemed like a bad thing.

According to that logic, testosterone is behind male aggression. Therefore, testosterone causes wars. Testosterone causes rape. Testosterone causes domestic violence. Testosterone is the reason why women are afraid to go out alone at night.

More trivially, testosterone causes other irritating male habits like hogging the TV remote, and sweating copiously all over the equipment at the gymn and not wiping it off. Testosterone is the reason why meetings at work go on way too long, as the men feel compelled to make a dominance display of other male secondary sex characteristics like enormous briefcases, excessive use of managerial gobbledygook, and pontificating on subjects they know nothing about. As the meeting ends, the women depart to finally get some real work done, muttering under their breaths about having to fight their way out through the testosterone fog.

Also, for many Australian women, it feels like we live in Testosterone Nation. Australia is very, very blokey. Our national heroes are mostly from male sports. Our big national day is Anzac Day, a commemoration of war, focusing on a military parade. Our big national monument is the Anzac memorial. Our emotional life is still expressed mainly in terms of mateship - between blokes. Our work-force is one of the most sex-segregated in the world. Aside from sport (and everyone knows that female sport is inferior and boring, except for the swimming), our most characteristically Australian leisure activity is barbecues, where men preside over the barbie arguing with each other about the best technique for setting fire to enormous lumps of red meat. Usually to the sound of music from male pub bands in the background. No barbie would be complete without songs like:

I come from the land down under
Where women glow and men chunder
Can you hear, can you hear the thunder
You better run, you better take cover

(especially if they follow through with that plan to live things up by pouring on the gasolene)

And this carries through to our language and politics. The politics that is relevant in Australia is hard (politics) and dry (economics). The politics that is irrelevant is soft and wet. A more dirty-minded woman than me might think that political discussions were really about another subject entirely....

Sometimes it feels like testosterone rules Australia.

Now, I will not deny that the relationship between female behaviour and our hormones can be spectacular. Plus, I read Foolish Mutterings, so it would be foolish to deny that women on the rag can be very hard work.

But, you know, anyone who thinks its just women who are ruled by their hormones has never lived with a man whose hormones are out of whack.

I'm living with a man who has, among other issues, low testosterone. The fancy term is hypogonadism. You only have to look at that word to realize its not going to be good news for your sex life.

And low testosterone is not just bad for your sex life. Low testosterone causes other bad things, such as reduced muscle mass, thinning of bones, lowered sperm count and reduced fertility, general reduced feelings of well-being, irritability, inability to concentrate, fatigue and depression.

As a twenty-something feminist, I would never have believed I'd say this, but I wish we had a bit more testosterone around here.