Hormones and Self-Love

In a recent conversation with my partner, the subject drifted to Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). I mentioned that I’d thought about trying supplemental testosterone in the past. My partner asked why I’d thought of it.I see adds for it online (seeing one, after the conversation about it prompted this writing), and have seen it mentioned in podcasts and articles. I didn’t have an answer in the moment.

I’ve thought about it since then, and I think why I personally have been concerned about testosterone (despite my physician running a lab to humor me, and telling me it’s fine), is that men’s culture, like most reactionary spheres, is governed by anxiety about Not Being Enough. Not smart, tall, strong, handsome, handy, angry or stoic enough. Not bench pressing enough, not having the coolest truck or the burliest beard. It takes on many flavors-from the prepper magazine saying you’ll be “Alpha” (which is not a thing) if you buy the right home defense shotgun, to the more genteel men’s magazine saying you’re too old to wear a t-shirt in public, you have the wrong watch, you should type “haha” instead of “lol,” because it’s more manly, that fried leeks are “the thinking man’s onion ring.”

These outward signifiers are, of course, harmful bullshit. They are a base manifestation of toxic masculinity, which is always just misogyny with extra steps, augmented at times by the usual suspects: queerphobia, ableism, classism, and racism. It’s aggressively gendered and heteronormative. It’s patriarchy, but with the Sissyphaen struggle of never attaining the arch.

The counters to this are self-acceptance and self-love. They are seeing representations of men being vulnerable and emotionally mature, and being accepted for modeling these behaviors, not derided as a sissy, a weak beta, a cuckold, or worst of all, a woman.

You are enough. I am enough. Your testosterone is probably fine.