Toxic Manhood Can’t Be “Cured” by Testicle Tanning
Tucker Carlson’s (of Faux News fame) latest attempt at diverting attention away from his devotion to Vladimir Putin and just asking questions about white supremacy involves a stunning leap into the junk science of America’s declining manliness.
I say junk science because there is a HUGE industry devoted to selling products that either claim to directly address falling levels of testosterone in men and/or the symptoms associated (in theory) with hormonal imbalances.
Before I go into full debunking mode, let’s cover the highlights of Carlson’s video, which isn’t selling any miracle cures as much as it’s advocating for a specific concept of manhood..
What’s prompted discussion and plenty of derision is a teaser/montage for “The End of Men”, the latest in a series of purported documentaries promising to explain the world as seen through the eyes of Carlson and assorted guests.
Via The Independent:
The 49-second clip showcases a montage of shirtless men wrestling, chopping wood, drinking beer, shooting guns and even a shot that includes a fully nude man standing in what appears to be a field with his arms outstretched in a style evocative of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man but whose genitals remain strategically covered by what some online commentators joked was a Tesla charging station.
And as all these images are diced into the clip, a voice begins to narrate, “Once a society collapses then, you’re in hard times,” while the heart-pumping musical theme most commonly associated with 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey begins to reach a crescendo.
“Well, hard iron sharpens iron as they say, and those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive,” the narrator’s voice continues. “They go on to re-establish order, and so the cycle begins again.”
The naked man getting juiced is actually an image to back up the assertions of a guest suggesting “testicle tanning” using infrared light as a “bromeopathic” therapy.
Just about every comedian I know of went on social media to attempt to coin the most humorous take on tanning the nether parts. The clip’s homoerotic nature compared to the rabid homophobia rampant in right wing circles was a common observation.
As is true with all good hustles, there are a couple of truths buried in a pile of misinformation when it comes to testosterone. Sales of herbal products claiming to boost testosterone level are driven by male concerns about sexual performance. There are, however, individuals with hormonal imbalances that include lower than expected testosterone levels.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the herbal “cures” which seem to be uniformly priced at or near $50, are mostly made from vitamins and herbal essences that have zero effect on testosterone levels. About 25% do make incremental upward changes, and 10% actually decrease the desired hormonal levels.
What’s unknown about these products are the long term effects of over the recommended doses of zinc and fenugreek extract. What is known is the profitability that comes from hawking them, an income stream that keeps the likes of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the air.
It is true that men’s levels of testosterone by age group across societies throughout the world are declining at a rate of about 1% annually. (It’s not a USA problem as Tucker would like you to believe.) In short, today’s man isn’t the same as his grandfather. This decline has gone hand in hand with sperm health, which has taken a similar negative trajectory.
OMG! Maybe women won’t need men to procreate come the next century. (They’ll just have genetically engineered sperm to do the fertilizing.)
What Tucker and his bros are selling is the viewpoint that this disappearing maleness is caused by societal changes connected to the roles men are supposed to play. Or to put it in terms they’d use when the mics are turned off, ‘the feminazis are brainwashing our boys.’
Never mind that these changes in men’s physiology are also being observed in aboriginal societies that have completely different traditions when it comes to men's roles.
There is one observed underlying condition associated with testosterone decline. Unfortunately for Tucker Carlson and his ilk, that would mean his viewers would have to turn off the boob tube and go for a walk. Survey says, as they used to say in the game show business, the number one known cause of testosterone decline is obesity. Number two is, cough, cough…
According to study results presented at the Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting:
"Men who had declines in testosterone were more likely to be those who became obese, had stopped smoking or were depressed at either clinic visit," Wittert said. "While stopping smoking may be a cause of a slight decrease in testosterone, the benefit of quitting smoking is huge."
There are larger issues that many scientists suspect are connected to hormonal changes, which are happening to humans in general. We know more about female changes because they are more likely to seek medical help. That’s probably why they also live longer than men.
Since changes in our humanoid systems are not connected to national, political, or sociological factors, investigators have turned their attention to widely distributed man-made substances ingested by eating, drinking or breathing.
No doubt you’ve heard or seen coverage about the world-wide phenomena of micro plastics being found in places far from civilization and in species that would rather have nothing to do with humans.
Here’s the deal. It’s not just little balls of plastics scientists are finding; it’s the chemicals used to make them, along with the preservatives being used in cosmetics and food. And, although the exact processes involved aren’t settled science, there is a universal understanding that they have some relationship with human endocrine systems. As a group, these chemicals are known as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDC).
Studies in cells and laboratory animals have shown that EDCs can cause adverse biological effects in animals, and low-level exposures may also cause similar effects in human beings.
EDCs in the environment may also be related to reproductive and infertility problems in wildlife and bans and restrictions on their use has been associated (DDT is the most famous example) with a reduction in health problems and the recovery of some wildlife populations.
Sadly, we’re looking at another situation like the one we face with guns and the NRA. Well paid lobbyists have managed to subvert the intentions of legislation involved in funding this sort of research. Domestically, we can look at the recent settlements with Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder, which had asbestos content hidden by the company for decades.
Here’s one Tucker might want to look at: Aquatic life subjected to endocrine disruptors in an urban effluent have experienced decreased levels of serotonin and increased feminization. So, maybe, just maybe, it’s the unregulated excesses of capitalism that need to be examined.
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The real purpose of the messaging in he-man propaganda is combatting a broad disagreement with the shifting of gender roles. Republicans have gone so far as to ignore instances of domestic violence in candidates willing to toe the line on building authoritarianism.
Expectations of what defines masculinity have changed over the years. At its crudest, it’s manifested through the inability of yesteryear’s high profile men being unable to understand why groping and leering is now socially unacceptable.
Traditional male role playing in society has not vanished, but it is being eroded. Risk-taking behaviors and lack of willingness to seek help still lead to negative health outcomes.
A lack of willingness to seek help is not limited to physical injury and illness. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that the suicide rate for men is about four times higher than it is for women.
The harm and violence men inflict is not limited to self-harm. Men still resort to violence to resolve conflict because anger is the only emotion that they have been socialized to express. And it remains true that the way that young men are conditioned to view sex and their need to be dominant contributes to instances of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Reversing the course of this behavioral change, as the video suggests, means establishing norms inclusive of hostile and sometimes violent behavior. Manly men are angry men, willing to drop everything to defend the “motherland.”
Instigating the notion of violence as a political option is at the heart of GOP messaging these days, as Paul Krugman lays out in his April 18 column examining Trump’s endorsement of the JD Vance campaign for US Senate from Ohio, entitled Republicans Say: Let Them Eat Hate::
…I’d say that G.O.P. campaigning in 2022 is all culture war, all the time, except that this would be giving Republicans too much credit. They aren’t fighting a real culture war, a conflict between rival views of what our society should look like; they’re riling up the base against phantasms, threats that don’t even exist.
…But look, none of this is a mystery. Republicans are following an old playbook, one that would have been completely familiar to, say, czarist-era instigators of pogroms. When the people are suffering, you don’t try to solve their problems; instead, you distract them by giving them someone to hate.
And history tells us that this tactic often works.
Coming back around to red lighting one’s balls, here’s Dana Milbank at the Washington Post to conclude this post:
But Carlson isn’t primarily hawking a genital-lighting device; he’s really touching all the erogenous zones of the Trumpian right.
There’s perceived loss of national pride: Carlson sees testosterone collapsing in “American men” (it’s a worldwide phenomenon). There’s paranoia about the government: “The NIH doesn’t seem interested in this at all,” Carlson says, impersonating some presumed official from the National Institutes of Health saying “it’s not a big deal” (the topic is widely studied). There’s paranoia about the media: McGovern claims the benefit of red-light therapy “isn’t being picked up on or covered” and says “there’s a lot of people out there that don’t trust the mainstream information.”
There’s the usual racist fearmongering: After the trailer shows several fit White bodies, the first Black body to appear is obese (as President John F. Kennedy intones that “there is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children”), and an image from a street riot is used to convey “weak” America. There’s obsession with gender and sexuality: A shirtless man throws a javelin that turns into a flaming rocket; a man squeezes a cow’s udder; and other men, several also shirtless, exercise, fire a gun, wrestle, flip a tractor tire, swing an ax, swallow raw eggs and, of course, stand naked in front of red lights.
There’s the Trump right’s celebration of masculinity as aggression rather than chivalry or gentlemanliness, a notion promoted lately by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka. In the trailer, words appear on the screen over President Biden stumbling on Air Force One’s stairs and Democratic senators kneeling in tribute to George Floyd: “Good times made weak men; weak men made hard times.”
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com