Reactions to "The He Hormone" ...

It’s funny, Venn- while you say that the more time you spent reflecting on Sullivan’s last several paragraphs, the less they bothered you, my reaction was quite the opposite. When I read the article for the first time, I was in agreement with the author almost through the entire piece. I found myself initially trusting him because of the open and honest nature of his writing; he was quick to tell his readers why he took the hormone in the first place, which gave his writing a sense of transparency, and while he pointed out his own biases, he seemed to readily acknowledge the ways in which his perspectives could be challenged. Plus, he has clearly experienced firsthand the power this hormone has over the body and mind, so if I should trust anyone about the effects of testosterone, it seemed like I should trust him.

And then…well, then towards the end of the piece he started writing about politics and how women are not biologically suited to lead in our electoral system because of their internal chemistry. I re-read this statement and decided it wasn’t really offensive. Our current system is grounded in aggression, and if the author is making the argument that increased testosterone leads to increases in aggressive behavior, it logically follows that those with more testosterone will be more successful in the political arena. However, the more I processed his words, the more Sullivan’s tone seemed to say, “this is the way it is, let’s find equality elsewhere” with an implied shoulder shrug of resignation. It started to get under my skin; our system could use a lot less aggression and a lot more empathy regardless of what gender brings it to the table, and it’s definitely not beyond our power to recognize that and make the appropriate changes. So here, my trust in his critical expertise began to waver. Then, he lost my trust in his biological expertise when he referred to the role of gender in athletics and stated that, “Women could compensate for this [the fact that they’re weaker than men] by injecting testosterone, but if they took enough to be truly competitive, they would become men, which would somewhat defeat the purpose.” This statement says a host of things about Sullivan's beliefs, the most pronounced of which is that he believes a certain level of testosterone can draw the line between being male or female. What?! Maybe testosterone injections in what we typically refer to as a female body would induce physical changes, like the development of more muscle and the alteration of female sex organs, and maybe it would also induce more aggressive behavior. But does being more aggressive and muscular than the “average” female make you male? To reference Venn’s awesome Gatorade ads, if Mia Hamm is more muscular and aggressive than the average woman, does that make her male? No. I'd like to ask Sullivan if in his opinion one has to “look the part” to be male or if a sufficient amount of testosterone is enough to qualify. While I readily acknowledge the role biology plays in gender differences and agree with the author to a point, I don't buy his final claims that this one particular hormone so drastically influences our conceptions of appropriate gender roles in society.

**On the topic of gender and sports, here’s a website that deals with “gender verification testing” and presents some tests that used to be undertaken to determine whether or not an athlete was allowed to compete as a female: http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/gendertest/gendertest.html.