Nearly eight years ago, Andrew Sullivan wrote this piece about testosterone in the New York Times Magazine.
I read it at the time and it's been with me ever since, nagging at me now and then. His story is striking: having been diagnosed with low testosterone due to HIV, he was prescribed artificial testosterone and experienced unbelievable effects.
"My appetite in every sense of that word expanded beyond measure. Going from napping two hours a day, I now rarely sleep in the daytime and have enough energy for daily workouts and a hefty work schedule...I feel...more persistent, more alive."
And that's to say nothing of the stupid fight he almost got into one day after giving himself his shot.
Here's what interests me. After stating he means no disrespect to women, he says he's glad "to feel things no woman will ever feel to the degree that I feel them, to experience the world in a way no woman ever has."
Women used to be thought of as lesser, defective versions of men, and there's a hint of that here in the idea that he feels MORE than we do ("no woman will ever feel [the things I feel] to the degree that I feel them").
Of course there's a truth in that. The explosion of energy he experienced after boosting his T-level is certainly amazing to behold. The women who match his punishing schedule, and there are many, tend to do it because we have no choice, and we tend to look (and feel) awfully tired while doing it.
But we do it anyway. In fact, there's a subversive point here: not how awesome men are with their great coursing tides of testosterone giving them endless power and energy, but how awesome women are to be doing as much as we do without it.
What amuses me, though, is that Sullivan doesn't seem to see that there's another side to this. He says he "experiences the world in a way no woman ever has." This implies that his own experience encompasses ours but goes beyond it. I'd say that's almost certainly not true. Women's testosterone, as Sullivan points out, is WAY lower than men's. So much lower, I'd argue, that we're talking about a whole different universe. Plus, we've got way more estrogen.
Women, therefore, experience the world in a way no man ever has. Most men would probably not leap at the chance to discover life on the other side. But it is a world of its own, not a paler, deficient version of theirs.
I remember once when I was a very young girl, puzzling over the profound bizarreness that my father was--you know--a man. How, I wanted to know, did he stand it? (I liked him, you see, so I felt bad that the tragedy of not-femalehood had been visited upon him.)
He informed me that he didn't know anything different from being male, so it was fine and he was happy that way.
I felt terribly sorry for him.
