The Wheel of Influences
For Your Consideration:
Here are four ways of thinking that you may not have considered and may be surprised to learn, but scholars and researchers are already identifying issues that maybe we don’t see, or don’t want to see.
The Manosphere
Men have been susceptible to potions for increasing virility and strength pretty much since forever. The manosphere is a whole new circus tent. In their research paper Selling Masculinity (found in the Argo Resource Kit), Gram et al present a sobering picture of the manosphere culture, especially framed around the theme “being a real man”. Social media posts and influencer rhetoric scream that there is a crisis of masculinity, and only by staying on top of his testosterone levels at any age can a male ever hope to meet expectations. The question is “Whose expectations?”
Testosterone Marketing
Testosterone is both a male and female hormone, but much more dominant in a male.
It is estimated that the global testosterone-supplement business is projected to reach somewhere between $7 and $11 billion by the mid-2030s. The global market currently sits at approx $4.5 billion. Ka-ching!
Gender Performativity
Judith Butler is a gender studies scholar and Distinguished Professor at the University of California (Berkeley), and published their book Gender Trouble in 1990. Butler argued that gender is created by social norms that are performed over time. She further posited that gender performativity is often an unconscious social process that builds identity. What does this have to do with andropause? In a 2018 study conducted by Turkish researchers Erol & Ozbay (as cited in Rasmussen & Hvidtfeldt, 2024) heterosexual males had a much stronger association with the need for an erect penis during sexual performance than gay men. Gay males created a different definition of masculinity and chose not to use penis performance and did not identify with andropause. They simply changed the narrative.
Hegemony of Masculinity
The definition of hegemony is the overwhelming dominance of one group or entity over another, repressing all other ideas. In this context, what is the definition of masculinity? Is it an erect penis?
Does masculinity = testosterone = erect penis = successful male aging?