Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
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The fact that "testosterone made him do it" is being projected onto a four year old boy is proof of how ridiculous the demonisation of a simple sex hormone has become. The lie is taking on a life of its own, free from any sort of scientific rationality.
Biological essentialism of gender is a complete load of balls, if you'll excuse me for that.
I am sympathetic to parents because I think you do have to come to terms with the limits of your control. You send your boy off to preschool and he's coming back smashing up all his toys. That's real.
But it's not biologically ordained, and you have the responsibility to counter the messages he's internalising from society at large. To set positive examples of adult behaviour, to maintain clear rules of what is acceptable and what isn't.
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And fuck the demonisation of a sex hormone anyway!
I've said it before: testosterone might make you hairy, horny, hungry, and hot, but it does not make you violent. It does not make you destructive. It does not make you anti-empathetic. Those are choices; gender behavioural norms that boys and then men are encouraged by social pressure to conform to, and may reject if they have the strength and the support to do so.
@Tattie And it doesn't even "make" everyone all of THOSE things. I still have no appetite. And I remember hearing two trans guys bemoaning that they were always cold and they hoped T would change this and it hasn't for either of them.
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And fuck the demonisation of a sex hormone anyway!
I've said it before: testosterone might make you hairy, horny, hungry, and hot, but it does not make you violent. It does not make you destructive. It does not make you anti-empathetic. Those are choices; gender behavioural norms that boys and then men are encouraged by social pressure to conform to, and may reject if they have the strength and the support to do so.
@Tattie Not pushing back on this per say, I think what I'm framing is a version of what you're saying.
It seems that some of what we attribute to "boys will be violent or aggressive" is more about how testosterone effects modes of communication.
And, if we would actually see four year old boys as communicating physically through aggression instead of with words it would be helpful for everyone.
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@Tattie nah, it has *always* been so. The stereotyping is deeply embedded in culture, this is just a handy justification not to do the work.
"snips and snails and puppy-dogs' tails."
@Colman it rises and falls. There was a push in the nineties and AIUI the seventies towards more "gender neutral" parenting. But we seem to be swinging away right now.
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@Tattie Not pushing back on this per say, I think what I'm framing is a version of what you're saying.
It seems that some of what we attribute to "boys will be violent or aggressive" is more about how testosterone effects modes of communication.
And, if we would actually see four year old boys as communicating physically through aggression instead of with words it would be helpful for everyone.
@Tattie There's interesting discussions around perimenopause and brain fog that underscore how hormones mess with that pathway between what's in our heads and how we react in the world.
It feels like so much of the shortcutting about "boys will be boys" is that we don't offer the patience prior to the onset of surging testosterone (puberty and beyond) to help boys communicate in the ways that are most articulate and then it becomes simply seen as normal.
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And fuck the demonisation of a sex hormone anyway!
I've said it before: testosterone might make you hairy, horny, hungry, and hot, but it does not make you violent. It does not make you destructive. It does not make you anti-empathetic. Those are choices; gender behavioural norms that boys and then men are encouraged by social pressure to conform to, and may reject if they have the strength and the support to do so.
@Tattie@eldritch.cafe It is prosocial, but it's up to you to be responsible. So I've recently adopted the opinion this is purely selection bias, because socialized people simply participate in the society more (duh). I am also wondering whether the studies that made any claims about negative social impact of T actually did a control for this bias. Because it's also well known that androgen deficiency messes with people of all sexes
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@Tattie testosterone made me hungry and horny all the time. But it did not make me a misogynist or a bad person.
I'm way hornier as a transgender woman on full feminizing HRT than I ever was trying to live as a dude with natural testosterone.
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@Tattie There's interesting discussions around perimenopause and brain fog that underscore how hormones mess with that pathway between what's in our heads and how we react in the world.
It feels like so much of the shortcutting about "boys will be boys" is that we don't offer the patience prior to the onset of surging testosterone (puberty and beyond) to help boys communicate in the ways that are most articulate and then it becomes simply seen as normal.
@Tattie I often think of how angry one can get as a child when adults won't listen. I see how animals get angry when the expected things don't happen. And...I have wanted to smash open an unopenable jar a few times.
It seems like aggression is often a result of this lack of skill, knowledge, experience or access and little boys often get rewarded quicker for being aggressive.
Which, I think I'm agreeing with you, reinforces inarticulate ways of communicating needs and that becomes gendered.
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I'm way hornier as a transgender woman on full feminizing HRT than I ever was trying to live as a dude with natural testosterone.
Before, I had random erections and I would get horny at random times and it absolutely sucked. I wasn't really "into it", it was more of a physiological need
Now, I generally feel horny in the morning time but it's a lot different. It's more of a mental desire.
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@Tattie AFAIK (and I may be wrong), boys *do* have testosterone throughout childhood ... but so do girls, and the levels are basically the same. It's produced in the adrenal glands.
(Personally, I've always been weirded out about how some people talk about boys that age, because it is *completely* alien to my own memories of being a boy. And, well, a lot of how people talk about testosterone in adults too.)
@datarama you are technically correct, the best sort of correct! /ref
Yeah, testosterone isn't completely absent at that age, just extremely low compared to the levels you'll see going into puberty.
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The fact that "testosterone made him do it" is being projected onto a four year old boy is proof of how ridiculous the demonisation of a simple sex hormone has become. The lie is taking on a life of its own, free from any sort of scientific rationality.
Biological essentialism of gender is a complete load of balls, if you'll excuse me for that.
@Tattie@eldritch.cafe This is the viscous cycle of bioessentialism. they expect 4 yrs boys to be destructive and rude, so they accept and encourage it. When they grow into men who are destructive and rude it's just the same boys will be boys shtick.
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The fact that "testosterone made him do it" is being projected onto a four year old boy is proof of how ridiculous the demonisation of a simple sex hormone has become. The lie is taking on a life of its own, free from any sort of scientific rationality.
Biological essentialism of gender is a complete load of balls, if you'll excuse me for that.
@Tattie I would say it's dehumanizing towards young boys
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I am sympathetic to parents because I think you do have to come to terms with the limits of your control. You send your boy off to preschool and he's coming back smashing up all his toys. That's real.
But it's not biologically ordained, and you have the responsibility to counter the messages he's internalising from society at large. To set positive examples of adult behaviour, to maintain clear rules of what is acceptable and what isn't.
@Tattie what upsets me about this as a person who's both autistic and testosterone dominant, is that no ones considering how kids smashing things up is likely a self regulatory behavior. No one is asking this child what's so overwhelming that they need to break something about it, no one is redirecting that behavior into something safer and no one is teaching that child how to communicate or set boundaries. These children will be perpetually punished for doing the things that get them into a more stable mindset then be taught no alternative. Im sure as one develops, it is then easier to internalize the message that their biology is bad, they were born bad and are now entitled to being bad. Anyone with any alternative in how they communicate or regulate become something to resist, bolstering their entitlement. And this is how you get incels and misogynists and transphobes etc.
(Side note: respectfully, as if your brother is mansplaining to you how hormones work, as if you havent undergone an entire hormonal transition. Miss me with that.)
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@Tattie the most part of the problem that anyone has ever been Jesus Christ
@pendell tempting as it is, I don't want to drop my brother in it for his words. He's part of the parenting culture he's embedded in, and genuinely seems to have been duped by bad science and political/cultural agendas. (Gender agendas?)
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@datarama you are technically correct, the best sort of correct! /ref
Yeah, testosterone isn't completely absent at that age, just extremely low compared to the levels you'll see going into puberty.
@Tattie (I sort of had that exact Futurama quote in my head when I hit "Reply".
)I've heard people claim that adult women don't have testosterone at all too, and ... well, I'm not a biologist, but I like to think that at least I'm not a total dumbass, and there's *very* little that works that way.
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@Colman it rises and falls. There was a push in the nineties and AIUI the seventies towards more "gender neutral" parenting. But we seem to be swinging away right now.
@Tattie at the edges of the right-on class maybe. Don’t ever remember it being particularly prevalent.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
We have a 2 year old daughter and noticed that a lot of parents with boys will write off pretty much anything as "it's because he's a boy".
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Before, I had random erections and I would get horny at random times and it absolutely sucked. I wasn't really "into it", it was more of a physiological need
Now, I generally feel horny in the morning time but it's a lot different. It's more of a mental desire.
I do not miss the random erections!
As a dude, my sexual desire was imminently bound up in my gender dysphoria and my self-hatred for what my body represented. I didn't like it even though it felt amazing and gave me emotional connections to people I loved. My wife—who is still with me, by the way—thought maybe I was secretly gay.
Now I get this low-level simmering feeling like the embers at the bottom of a fire just waiting for someone to ram a poker in there and stir it back up.
I used to think it was a panic attack coming on because it feels very similar to that. But panic attacks don't have this luscious undercurrent in every single breath.
When I lived as a dude, my horniness was very blatant and focused when it happened. This is much different. Instead of it being centered around a specific "appendage" begging for attention, it's a full body hum.
As a dude I still had very strong emotional needs that were completely separate from horniness. That aspect has not changed.
Desire, aggression, empathy, all of our human behaviors are far more than responses to hormones. We are unique, complicated individuals among a diverse population. What's true for one person—what's true for a dozen or a thousand—isn't necessarily true for everybody. It's why gender essentialism is dumb.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie I'm imagining a four year old with a Ron Burgundy stache and sounding like Barry White.
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I do not miss the random erections!
As a dude, my sexual desire was imminently bound up in my gender dysphoria and my self-hatred for what my body represented. I didn't like it even though it felt amazing and gave me emotional connections to people I loved. My wife—who is still with me, by the way—thought maybe I was secretly gay.
Now I get this low-level simmering feeling like the embers at the bottom of a fire just waiting for someone to ram a poker in there and stir it back up.
I used to think it was a panic attack coming on because it feels very similar to that. But panic attacks don't have this luscious undercurrent in every single breath.
When I lived as a dude, my horniness was very blatant and focused when it happened. This is much different. Instead of it being centered around a specific "appendage" begging for attention, it's a full body hum.
As a dude I still had very strong emotional needs that were completely separate from horniness. That aspect has not changed.
Desire, aggression, empathy, all of our human behaviors are far more than responses to hormones. We are unique, complicated individuals among a diverse population. What's true for one person—what's true for a dozen or a thousand—isn't necessarily true for everybody. It's why gender essentialism is dumb.
Pre estrogen, I wasn't into anyone. I just masturbated to make the random erections go away (if the situation permitted) and/or fall asleep.
