Testosterone Rex, Again
What makes men act the way they do?
In our original this week, Featured Author Holly Lawford-Smith and Kate Phelan review Carole Hooven’s T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. They argue that Hooven fails to seriously engage feminist arguments about the role that socialization plays in shaping male behavior patterns.
Testosterone Rex, Again
Holly Lawford-Smith and Kate Phelan
As a work of popular science making parts of endocrinology and evolutionary theory accessible, Hooven’s T makes a solid contribution. As a political intervention against increasing pseudo-science about biological sex, reasserting that there are two sexes, male and female, and explaining what the existence of intersex conditions does and doesn’t mean, it is commendable. But as a defence of testosterone as a better or more central explanation of men’s behaviour than socialisation, it is utterly inadequate.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: The Age of Abandonment, the Maternal Experience, and Valuing Mothers and Children
This week: Freya India on why Zoomers are so relationship-averse, Victoria Smith on how the embodied experience of motherhood means something, and Nadya Williams on the low value our culture places on mothers and children. Plus: dangerous egg donations, maternal healthcare deserts, censorship in the trans debate—and more!
From the Archives:
In one of our most-read pieces of all time, Featured Author Eliza Mondegreen tells the stories of different victims of the transgender craze: the parents of children who come out as trans.
What Happens to Parents When Kids Come Out as Trans
Eliza Mondegreen
As soon as I started writing about gender, I started hearing from parents. Every parent I’ve spoken to fears losing their child—to suicide, estrangement, or mutual incomprehension.