Testosterone poisoning - Brief Article

In recent weeks several writers have argued that when it comes to understanding men and women, biology matters more than culture. These writers interpret bits of disconnected data to reassert the old dichotomies of men versus women, of biology versus culture. From Andrew Sullivan to Christina "I am not a feminist, but I make my money attacking them" Hoff Summers to scientists who theorize rape as evolutionary adaptation, the new wave avers that it is men who are the ones stigmatized, not women. So the 21st century starts where the 19th century left off: with a whole industry of revisionists trying to save the males from the apparently destabilizing idea that men are equal to women.

Men are addicted to and somehow produced by testosterone--which makes them at once more exciting, excellent at politics, dominant at sports, and tragically misunderstood, says Andrew Sullivan, arguing, as he often does, that men are more interesting than women because he is one. Male rape (of women or men) is "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage," say biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig Palmer in a new book that argues that male rapists are merely genes seeking survival, not the monstrous expression of centuries of misogyny.

To speculate that rape is inevitable and even necessary is to carry male defensiveness to new heights of absurdity. And to see revelation in the truism that testosterone and estrogen produce differences in men and women is like seeing the Virgin Mary in a New Jersey backyard: It reveals more about the faith of the beholder than about the vision beheld.

It seems to me that these writers and thinkers resort to biology because they are threatened by the power of culture and the evidence of history. The history of most civilizations teaches us that biology has always been used as a rationalization to limit women's freedom--and that until the past three decades women's options have been grossly constricted. Male hormones might be a factor in the dominance of men in politics, but, gosh, could it also derive from the fact that American women were not allowed to vote until 80 years ago or that they were required to stay at home to raise the children and run households while men had the public life? So what if the average man produces ten to 20 times as much testosterone as the average woman and the average woman produces more estrogen than the average man?

Heterosexuality is built on the idea that biology is destiny. Do gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people really want to embrace this notion? Straight culture values maleness over femaleness, and this dichotomous thinking dominates every one of its institutions--from family to religion. Straight people are so trapped by these notions of male or female, dominant or submissive, father or mother that they go into a crisis when their lives do not follow a fantasy script. How can I be a man if she works outside the house? I am not a real woman unless I am a mother. He must be a fag because he is effeminate.

Is it any wonder that gayness, lesbianism, bisexuality, or transgenderism is so threatening to straight people? Our lives attest that destiny is more than evolution: that even if desire is biologically based, it is as much culturally constructed. Our relationships blur rigid gender roles. We procreate without heterosexuality. In profound ways we disrupt the idea that biology means a particular, heterosexist destiny.

Analyzing the interrelationship of biology and culture is more interesting than "proving" the dominance of one over the other. Maybe this is why Sullivan's article on testosterone made me so irritated and so sad. Perhaps dealing with feelings of inadequacy as a gay man--created by parents who don't accept you fully, a church that shuns your sexual joy, and a society that derides you as a half man--is harder than reducing the "he in me" to a yellow liquid that looks like cooking oil.

It's time to move beyond the tired dualism of male versus female and on to the more imaginative position of "intersection." Male and female intersect in the same body; therein lies the ultimate heresy and prophecy.

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