I very briefly dated a bodybuilder in 1986 when I was a naive 17, and his friends jokingly called him roid boy. He was unpredictable, creepy and huge. Now in 2024, a hefty handful of my teenage daughter's friends are taking testosterone--stunning and brave! 🤨 Yeah no. Like lambs to the corporate sponsored slaughter. Thank you for taking the time to point out the hypocrisy and absurdity of our culture when it comes to T.
An amazing piece of work! I’d intuited some of this before, but very useful to see all spelled out like this. Also a reminder of what a tragedy re Norah Vincent.
UB, I loved your interview with Carol last week. So smart & informative.
This review of the sleight of hand in reporting on anabolic steroids & “T.” What a shande is this whole mess! You’re not a historian but you think & conduct research like one. Well done & keep it up!
Interesting in how the contrast between the two narratives shows neatly that most stories are just paint by numbers to an existing template. Bad Angry aggressive harmful steroids, good healthy, liberating, modern progressive testosterone.
I found the somewhat recent Netflix series about the people who were on American Gladiators tv show to be a pretty honest look at how steroid use damaged a lot of people. The women ended up getting breast implants as their voices got suspiciously deep. The men got in bloody fist fights with their friends on the show and had shrunken testicles.
People will vociferously rail against steroid use and plastic surgery in these people, but then turn around and wear their protect trans kids buttons.
I remember reading Andrew Sullivan's article The He Hormone about 25 years ago. He was taking it to combat his H.I.V. symptoms. The surge he experienced in aggression and confidence apparently was euphoric for him. It confirmed what I'd been observing and thinking about the evolution of the sexes for decades. The disturbing conclusion he infers is that he realizes that war, rape and violence could be reduced by 95% if testosterone were removed from the human equation, but he would never want to do that because the male emotional state he experienced was worth the negative price to be paid.
Thank you for this. Congress even came out with The Mitchell Report regarding the use of anabolic steroids all while young females were be handily given the roid juice. I found the bit on Andrew Sullivan interesting. I did not know he claims to be HIV positive but I cannot say I follow his work much at all. I have noticed quite a few supposedly HIV positive men that have a heavy hand in today's narrative. I wrote about this HIV connection (IMO) in a piece on insurance coverage for so called "transition" where also I mention Ms Jamison Greens role in this coverage. Robert Garofalo, Peter Staley, and Scott Wiener - they all can be found in the media professing their HIV status. They all make lots of money and praise too. The AIDS/ HIV narrative is built on lies, deceit, and industry gains. See : https://margox.substack.com/p/synthetic-sex-insurance?r=1kuq0
Interesting! Sullivan’s role in this narrative is complicated. He's concerned about transing away the gay but he doesn't get the big picture at all, believes in true trans.
This narrative strategically neglects something quite significant, which is common when authors wish to demonize Testosterone.
Bodybuilders don’t do just Testosterone, if they do it for competition, they do a “stack”. There’s a bulking stack. A cutting stack. There’s an ECA stack. They cut carbs. They cruise. They do PCT with SERM’s.
Steroids are anabolic and/or androgenic. Anabolic means it increases protein synthesis and growth, while androgenic means it triggers male body characteristics.
A stack has multiple anabolic and some androgenic steroids - some test, some Winnie or Tren or Anavar or Deca or … endless permutations.
Most bodybuilders I know are, as a result, staggeringly horny. The androgenic effects are amazing, you would fuck a brick if it said hello! I found it convenient, I’m gay and I like masculine hairy men, well and… I’m not shy. All fun until…
… until the body fully aromatises testosterone into estrogen (estradiol). Bam! The body is flooded with estrogen and all the associated effects. What’s an effect of estrogen in men? Depression. Ouch.
When a bodybuilder feels too bloated, they begin cutting. They take a different variety of anabolics, but they also drastically reduce carbohydrates. What happens easily when you eat 50 grams or less of carbohydrates a day? You lose a lot of subcutaneous fat. You also get depressed. And sleepy.
What do you do if you’re sleepy? You take stimulants to burn fat and conveniently keep you awake. The ECA stack - Ephedrine Caffeine Aspirin - well, it keeps you wired and aggressive (note) while you are depressed from no carbs and possibly from Estrogen OD.
Estrogen OD.
Wow, we’re not talking about testosterone in and of itself, we’re actually looking at a constellation of issues - estrogen depression (not to mention bitch tits), low carb depression, stimulant mania.
Anabolic steroids are illegal. They are widely used. What happens when people widely use illegal drugs? The only place they think they can buy from is “by definition” criminals. Has anyone ever heard of drug-related violence? Interestingly, anabolic steroid use in studies (Sweden) have shown that it it’s inconclusive whether chronic users are more violent than the average male.
1) When you read about violence and “Steroids” or “Testosterone” consider carefully that violence correlates with depression. You can find many many studies showing doubling or tripling the propensity to commit violent crime is linked to clinical depression.
2) Testosterone _could_ cause Estrogen related depression if the test levels were astronomical for long periods of time and the guy didn’t care about bitch tits and had no access to any SERM’s. They all care about their tits, and manage it carefully.
3) Bodybuilders over-dieting - Atkins - will get depressed, and exhausted. Correlate to violence.
4) Bodybuilders using stimulants to compensate for over-dieting will be both depressed and manic. Correlates to violence.
In women, I have no opinion on Test use. I haven’t spoken to enough doctors to have an opinion. I can say that low estrogen causes most of the effects noted above, testosterone could exacerbate it but… women’s bodies constructed themselves to expect estrogen at a certain level, suppressing it cannot be good.
These articles never tell you about _all the other_ drugs and conditions present when there seem to be problems with testosterone.
I like the authors other writing but this piece is easy to dismiss.
Here’s the funny thing though, young people don’t seem to know the difference either. Your detailed post is appreciated to specify what body builders who juice do.
I distinctly read one woman (who now could be described as F2 trans masc NB) in (t)he(i)r early 20’s complain how Joe Biden stopped trans people from accessing hormone therapy….
You can buy Test from China $10/250mg of Sustanon (1 ml subcutaneous injection). For $20-$40 a month you can immediately develop supraphysiologic levels of test.
There’s a ‘consumer reports’ website https://www.eroids.com which is one gateway to illegal substances and “peptides” to regulate the hell out of your hormonal systems, anything from melanotan-2 to human chorionic gonadotropin (hGC) semaglutide, SERM’s and SARM’s, Clenbuterol, every variation on Viagra and Cialis, and things I can’t even figure out.
Anyone can access anything they want in this domain with little effort if the desire is there. It’s astonishing.
I’m surprised we’re not surrounded by aggressive killer bodybuilders with such fountains of juice flowing.
Quite an insightful article, as usual. Reminds me that I still need to finish "Sex Science Self" by Bob Ostertag, since I think he covers a similar body of material.
BTW, thank you for critiquing Ken Zucker. I think a lot of GC-types uncritically defend him because of all of the (largely unfair) abuse he got from TRAs, but there is a lot in his work that is genuinely problematic. Stella and Sasha imho treated him with kid gloves in their "Gender: A Wider Lens" interview.
Glad you liked the Zucker post! I think we're all learning a lot very quickly as we try to unwind this enormous scandal that began before we were born.
I've been very interested in this subject, and I think this article alludes to something I haven't really seen explored that some Lesbians transition out of a hatred and envy of men. We know that some men transition out of a hatred and envy of women but this way around hasn't been explored probably because it requires feminists acknowledging how much their anti-male rhetoric has done.
And then they're heartbroken, angry, and confused to discover that the social aspects of manhood are difficult. Not the life of ease and privilege that's painted by feminist revisionist history and sociology.
In the book Self Made Man, Norah Vincent was able to convincingly pass as a man. Didn't find the story she expected to find.
I salute her courage and integrity in publishing her story anyway. Unfortunately, the combination of personal worldview crisis and the vitriolic attacks from feminists was unbearable for her. She didn't survive.
I’m very interested in the reasons that lesbians will transition. I held back a lot of questions when a lesbian friend and leader of our soccer group transitioned. I mainly felt that we had failed them. I didn’t think they had been dysmorphic. They seemed incredibly well adjusted, and were in a lovely, stable relationship (as far as I know) for a decade.
I feel like anything I say here would just be incredibly stupid… and yet… Do lesbians want love from their mothers they way straight mom’s love their sons?
I think when adult lesbians transition, it's often about status-seeking (boosting their queer bona fides) or midlife crisis. I wrote about Masha Gessen a few months ago, she's an example.
I think there have always been super butch lesbians who feel deep discomfort with their womanhood and at some point opt for transition as a way to reconcile it. Whether the deep discomfort is itself a natural state or some sort of trauma response stemming from childhood or adolescent experiences, I don't know. (My friend has a cousin who fits this bill. Lives in a small town and not part of any scene; transitioned in her 30s about 10 years ago. Was depressed as a lesbian but apparently seems more at ease as a transman.)
However, I believe there is another phenomenon at play when it comes to the surge in previously well-adjusted lesbians deciding in middle age that they are actually non-binary or "transmasc" or he/theys, and then choosing to undergo medical transition of some sort. This is not entirely unconnected to ROGD in teen girls. There is definitely a contagion infecting "queer" scenes in big cities -- and remember, in big cities everything gay or lesbian has been rebranded as queer for anybody under 40.
I casually know of one person whose trajectory tracks with this. She was previously a lesbian working in a creative field, living in a major city. Went through a break-up age 36, next thing I hear she's got a new name and is on a waiting list for a mastectomy.
Just like the 16yo girls who watch TikTok influencers and get attracted to the idea of reinventing themselves, 36yo women are getting swept up in the idea that this is a cool and status-conveying identity. There is a significant amount of "Peter Pan" syndrome in LGB circles too, let's not forget! (I say this as a member of this population.)
Whereas a 40yo hetero woman with a corporate job and young kids probably doesn't have the time to consider an identity "journey" that requires becoming delusional about your body and its biological functions, a 40y gay woman who's still going clubbing on weekends and works in a field full of progressives is far less likely to have a built-in reality check.
I very briefly dated a bodybuilder in 1986 when I was a naive 17, and his friends jokingly called him roid boy. He was unpredictable, creepy and huge. Now in 2024, a hefty handful of my teenage daughter's friends are taking testosterone--stunning and brave! 🤨 Yeah no. Like lambs to the corporate sponsored slaughter. Thank you for taking the time to point out the hypocrisy and absurdity of our culture when it comes to T.
An amazing piece of work! I’d intuited some of this before, but very useful to see all spelled out like this. Also a reminder of what a tragedy re Norah Vincent.
Yes! We knew some of this from the news stories involving Olympic athletes...
UB, I loved your interview with Carol last week. So smart & informative.
This review of the sleight of hand in reporting on anabolic steroids & “T.” What a shande is this whole mess! You’re not a historian but you think & conduct research like one. Well done & keep it up!
Interesting in how the contrast between the two narratives shows neatly that most stories are just paint by numbers to an existing template. Bad Angry aggressive harmful steroids, good healthy, liberating, modern progressive testosterone.
Yeah, my media posts about the media are the easiest to write.
I found the somewhat recent Netflix series about the people who were on American Gladiators tv show to be a pretty honest look at how steroid use damaged a lot of people. The women ended up getting breast implants as their voices got suspiciously deep. The men got in bloody fist fights with their friends on the show and had shrunken testicles.
People will vociferously rail against steroid use and plastic surgery in these people, but then turn around and wear their protect trans kids buttons.
I remember reading Andrew Sullivan's article The He Hormone about 25 years ago. He was taking it to combat his H.I.V. symptoms. The surge he experienced in aggression and confidence apparently was euphoric for him. It confirmed what I'd been observing and thinking about the evolution of the sexes for decades. The disturbing conclusion he infers is that he realizes that war, rape and violence could be reduced by 95% if testosterone were removed from the human equation, but he would never want to do that because the male emotional state he experienced was worth the negative price to be paid.
Thank you for this. Congress even came out with The Mitchell Report regarding the use of anabolic steroids all while young females were be handily given the roid juice. I found the bit on Andrew Sullivan interesting. I did not know he claims to be HIV positive but I cannot say I follow his work much at all. I have noticed quite a few supposedly HIV positive men that have a heavy hand in today's narrative. I wrote about this HIV connection (IMO) in a piece on insurance coverage for so called "transition" where also I mention Ms Jamison Greens role in this coverage. Robert Garofalo, Peter Staley, and Scott Wiener - they all can be found in the media professing their HIV status. They all make lots of money and praise too. The AIDS/ HIV narrative is built on lies, deceit, and industry gains. See : https://margox.substack.com/p/synthetic-sex-insurance?r=1kuq0
Interesting! Sullivan’s role in this narrative is complicated. He's concerned about transing away the gay but he doesn't get the big picture at all, believes in true trans.
This narrative strategically neglects something quite significant, which is common when authors wish to demonize Testosterone.
Bodybuilders don’t do just Testosterone, if they do it for competition, they do a “stack”. There’s a bulking stack. A cutting stack. There’s an ECA stack. They cut carbs. They cruise. They do PCT with SERM’s.
Steroids are anabolic and/or androgenic. Anabolic means it increases protein synthesis and growth, while androgenic means it triggers male body characteristics.
A stack has multiple anabolic and some androgenic steroids - some test, some Winnie or Tren or Anavar or Deca or … endless permutations.
Most bodybuilders I know are, as a result, staggeringly horny. The androgenic effects are amazing, you would fuck a brick if it said hello! I found it convenient, I’m gay and I like masculine hairy men, well and… I’m not shy. All fun until…
… until the body fully aromatises testosterone into estrogen (estradiol). Bam! The body is flooded with estrogen and all the associated effects. What’s an effect of estrogen in men? Depression. Ouch.
When a bodybuilder feels too bloated, they begin cutting. They take a different variety of anabolics, but they also drastically reduce carbohydrates. What happens easily when you eat 50 grams or less of carbohydrates a day? You lose a lot of subcutaneous fat. You also get depressed. And sleepy.
What do you do if you’re sleepy? You take stimulants to burn fat and conveniently keep you awake. The ECA stack - Ephedrine Caffeine Aspirin - well, it keeps you wired and aggressive (note) while you are depressed from no carbs and possibly from Estrogen OD.
Estrogen OD.
Wow, we’re not talking about testosterone in and of itself, we’re actually looking at a constellation of issues - estrogen depression (not to mention bitch tits), low carb depression, stimulant mania.
Anabolic steroids are illegal. They are widely used. What happens when people widely use illegal drugs? The only place they think they can buy from is “by definition” criminals. Has anyone ever heard of drug-related violence? Interestingly, anabolic steroid use in studies (Sweden) have shown that it it’s inconclusive whether chronic users are more violent than the average male.
1) When you read about violence and “Steroids” or “Testosterone” consider carefully that violence correlates with depression. You can find many many studies showing doubling or tripling the propensity to commit violent crime is linked to clinical depression.
2) Testosterone _could_ cause Estrogen related depression if the test levels were astronomical for long periods of time and the guy didn’t care about bitch tits and had no access to any SERM’s. They all care about their tits, and manage it carefully.
3) Bodybuilders over-dieting - Atkins - will get depressed, and exhausted. Correlate to violence.
4) Bodybuilders using stimulants to compensate for over-dieting will be both depressed and manic. Correlates to violence.
In women, I have no opinion on Test use. I haven’t spoken to enough doctors to have an opinion. I can say that low estrogen causes most of the effects noted above, testosterone could exacerbate it but… women’s bodies constructed themselves to expect estrogen at a certain level, suppressing it cannot be good.
These articles never tell you about _all the other_ drugs and conditions present when there seem to be problems with testosterone.
I like the authors other writing but this piece is easy to dismiss.
Here’s the funny thing though, young people don’t seem to know the difference either. Your detailed post is appreciated to specify what body builders who juice do.
I distinctly read one woman (who now could be described as F2 trans masc NB) in (t)he(i)r early 20’s complain how Joe Biden stopped trans people from accessing hormone therapy….
You can buy Test from China $10/250mg of Sustanon (1 ml subcutaneous injection). For $20-$40 a month you can immediately develop supraphysiologic levels of test.
There’s a ‘consumer reports’ website https://www.eroids.com which is one gateway to illegal substances and “peptides” to regulate the hell out of your hormonal systems, anything from melanotan-2 to human chorionic gonadotropin (hGC) semaglutide, SERM’s and SARM’s, Clenbuterol, every variation on Viagra and Cialis, and things I can’t even figure out.
Anyone can access anything they want in this domain with little effort if the desire is there. It’s astonishing.
I’m surprised we’re not surrounded by aggressive killer bodybuilders with such fountains of juice flowing.
It’s not the juice.
Quite an insightful article, as usual. Reminds me that I still need to finish "Sex Science Self" by Bob Ostertag, since I think he covers a similar body of material.
BTW, thank you for critiquing Ken Zucker. I think a lot of GC-types uncritically defend him because of all of the (largely unfair) abuse he got from TRAs, but there is a lot in his work that is genuinely problematic. Stella and Sasha imho treated him with kid gloves in their "Gender: A Wider Lens" interview.
Glad you liked the Zucker post! I think we're all learning a lot very quickly as we try to unwind this enormous scandal that began before we were born.
I've been very interested in this subject, and I think this article alludes to something I haven't really seen explored that some Lesbians transition out of a hatred and envy of men. We know that some men transition out of a hatred and envy of women but this way around hasn't been explored probably because it requires feminists acknowledging how much their anti-male rhetoric has done.
And then they're heartbroken, angry, and confused to discover that the social aspects of manhood are difficult. Not the life of ease and privilege that's painted by feminist revisionist history and sociology.
In the book Self Made Man, Norah Vincent was able to convincingly pass as a man. Didn't find the story she expected to find.
I salute her courage and integrity in publishing her story anyway. Unfortunately, the combination of personal worldview crisis and the vitriolic attacks from feminists was unbearable for her. She didn't survive.
RIP 😔
I’m very interested in the reasons that lesbians will transition. I held back a lot of questions when a lesbian friend and leader of our soccer group transitioned. I mainly felt that we had failed them. I didn’t think they had been dysmorphic. They seemed incredibly well adjusted, and were in a lovely, stable relationship (as far as I know) for a decade.
I feel like anything I say here would just be incredibly stupid… and yet… Do lesbians want love from their mothers they way straight mom’s love their sons?
I think when adult lesbians transition, it's often about status-seeking (boosting their queer bona fides) or midlife crisis. I wrote about Masha Gessen a few months ago, she's an example.
I think there have always been super butch lesbians who feel deep discomfort with their womanhood and at some point opt for transition as a way to reconcile it. Whether the deep discomfort is itself a natural state or some sort of trauma response stemming from childhood or adolescent experiences, I don't know. (My friend has a cousin who fits this bill. Lives in a small town and not part of any scene; transitioned in her 30s about 10 years ago. Was depressed as a lesbian but apparently seems more at ease as a transman.)
However, I believe there is another phenomenon at play when it comes to the surge in previously well-adjusted lesbians deciding in middle age that they are actually non-binary or "transmasc" or he/theys, and then choosing to undergo medical transition of some sort. This is not entirely unconnected to ROGD in teen girls. There is definitely a contagion infecting "queer" scenes in big cities -- and remember, in big cities everything gay or lesbian has been rebranded as queer for anybody under 40.
I casually know of one person whose trajectory tracks with this. She was previously a lesbian working in a creative field, living in a major city. Went through a break-up age 36, next thing I hear she's got a new name and is on a waiting list for a mastectomy.
Just like the 16yo girls who watch TikTok influencers and get attracted to the idea of reinventing themselves, 36yo women are getting swept up in the idea that this is a cool and status-conveying identity. There is a significant amount of "Peter Pan" syndrome in LGB circles too, let's not forget! (I say this as a member of this population.)
Whereas a 40yo hetero woman with a corporate job and young kids probably doesn't have the time to consider an identity "journey" that requires becoming delusional about your body and its biological functions, a 40y gay woman who's still going clubbing on weekends and works in a field full of progressives is far less likely to have a built-in reality check.
Agree, except I think this has now gone beyond big cities. Also, I've heard of multiple cases where a married lesbian with kids transitions.
Would “lengthening of the clitoris be horizontal or like a vertical drop?😬
Another great analysis! Thanks
Wow! Where are you located?