The tech bros have had a whale of a time in recent weeks with all the testosterone flooding into their poor Biden-battered veins. This is not a joke; testosterone is a big issue for some of these guys. Obsessions backed by great wealth and power have a way of affecting people’s lives.
Last September, Elon Musk reposted a tweet suggesting that “women and low T men” are unable to think freely because they “can’t defend themselves physically”. Thinking freely is for “high T alpha males and aneurotypical people… this is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think”.
Back in 2009, Peter Thiel wrote that women getting the vote and the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries had “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron”. All low-T presumably.
And of course the lately bronzed and buffed Mark Zuckerberg’s paean to masculine energy, MMA fighting and more aggression in the workplace was actually a hymn to testosterone. A slew of media reports describe the latest wellness craze in San Francisco: “T-parties” where tech bros get together to check their testosterone levels.
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A look through recent social media exchanges between tech guys offers an insight into the T world. Of course many were quivering with excitement about the “undeniable return of masculine energy and vigour. Civilizational TRT [testosterone replacement therapy] starts now”.
One poster got 16,000 likes for a tweet which drew followers’ attention to a study which showed that a dose of testosterone made a man less likely to “feign prosocial behaviour” in front of an audience. What made it surprising was how it was interpreted as an undilutedly good thing. One commented excitedly that it meant “a man with higher testosterone will do what he truly believes is right, rather than what he thinks others think is right”.
They’re all right – just not in the way that they imagine. A 2017 Caltech study showed that men given testosterone doses were “less likely to realise when they’re wrong”. They performed more poorly on a test designed to measure cognitive reflection than a control group. “The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work or increasing the intuitive feeling that ‘I’m definitely right’”, said Prof Colin Camerer.
That “I’m definitely right” feeling is what threatens to smother decent rational thinking and bring the bully back to the playground.
Slurs that had rightly become unacceptable are once again being fired around the bro sphere. A Financial Times story recently cited a “top banker” who felt “liberated” and “excited” at the prospect of being able to say “retard” and “pussy”. “It’s a new dawn,” said this top guy. Like a toddler giddy at discovering that the f**k word shocks his parents.
But that’s the vibe shift, bro. And, as Zuckerberg said, what we need is more aggression in the workplace. Because woman chief executives lead 28 of the world’s 500 largest businesses and all that spoiling and non-price gouging of customers is getting out of hand.
Some of us are old enough to recognise all of this as just an old-fashioned backlash because that’s how it goes.
In her 1991 classic, Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women, Susan Faludi described it as a strategy of blaming the victim. In the 1980s, the backlash took the form of blaming the women’s movement itself for a lot of the problems said to be plaguing American women (never men). Yes indeed, there were problems… I still recall the lowly job interviews in my 20s where smirking chief executives exuding Zuck-levels of testosterone, feet up on the desk, asked how I liked my eggs in the morning and massaged my knee while asking about work experience.
Harvey Weinstein’s statement following the New York Times’ allegations kicked off with the generational defence: “I came of age in the 1960s and 1970s when all the rules about behaviour and workplaces were different. That was the culture then…” Pause a moment and think about that, then add the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Recall the powerful tabloids’ evisceration of young women, treating them like interchangeable body parts. Recall how the testosterone-driven culture supported that heavily with hard cash.
In later years, WhatsApp messages at rape trials left no doubt about the spillover of Zuckerberg’s MMA masculinity. Recall the message sent by a rugby player to a group with a picture of him and three women – “love Belfast sluts”.
Remember, #MeToo was a workplace safety movement at its core. Its most powerful stories were about employees (mostly women) accusing their professional superiors (mostly men) of using their power to perpetrate or facilitate sexual harassment and assault. Remember, too, that that movement was a reckoning primed by Donald Trump’s 2016 election and his bragging about assaulting women, calling them fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. There was an overreach, of course, because every worthwhile social correction will have overreach. Even Margaret Atwood was accused of being a bad feminist at one stage. Her reaction was to understand the context, step back and wait for the storm to settle. She probably understood that the backlash would be soon, swift and ferocious.
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But hey – relax. There was a whole decade ago. A decade when people once marginalised were beginning to feel they fully belonged in the great tapestry of society. Just a decade out of countless millenniums, and the poor bros couldn’t cope with that sense of being a low T type.
But backlashes don’t last forever. Neither does hubris. See DeepSeek for further information.
