Winner of the 2020 Gold Medal in Science, Independent Publisher Book Awards
Testosterone is not what you think it is, and it is decidedly not a βmale sex hormone.β Here is the debunking life story of a molecule we thought we all knew.
Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready explanation for innumerable social phenomena, from the stock market crash and the overrepresentation of men in prisons to male dominance in business and politics. Itβs a lot to pin on a simple molecule.
Yet your testosterone level doesnβt in fact predict your competitive drive or tendency for violence, your appetite for risk or sex, or your strength or athletic prowess. Itβs neither the biological essence of manliness nor even βthe male sex hormone.β This unauthorized biography pries T, as itβs known, loose from over a century of misconceptions that undermine science even as they make urban legends about this hormone seem scientific.
Tβs story didnβt spring from nature: it is a tale that began long before the hormone was even isolated, when nineteenth-century scientists went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. And so this moleculeβs outmoded, authorized life story persisted, providing a handy rationale for countless behaviorsβfrom the boorish and the belligerent to the exemplary and enviable. What we think we know about T has stood in the way of an accurate understanding of its surprising and diverse functions and effects. Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis focus on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting. At once arresting and deeply informed, Testosterone allows us to see the real T for the first time.