Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats

I’m wholly ignorant here, what would make for a respectable sample size?

The fine article covers that. No effect for strongly or weakly affiliated republicans.

did some digging - that image is fake, but there is a study with that name. Doesn't contain that data though.

> current left-wing philosophy that provides any sort of meaningful place or role for masculinity as it is commonly understood

I think this strongly depends on your reality and perception.

How is masculinity commonly understood and what examples do you have of the left and democrats not making space?

On the other side, how can you not see examples of toxic masculinity demonstrated from prominent Republicans including the president?

I think you're conflating the Democratic Party with "left-wing philosophy." Actual left-wing ideology (Marx, Lenin, the socialist tradition) focuses on material conditions for workers: who owns the means of production, labor power, class relations.

From that perspective, the problem isn't that Democrats have the wrong messaging about masculinity. It's that neither major US party offers politics centered on workers' material interests. Both parties abandoned class-based politics in favor of cultural appeals.

If you're a young man struggling economically, being told you have "privilege" feels disconnected from your reality of declining wages and diminished prospects. But the socialist response isn't "better messaging about masculinity," it's organizing workers to gain power over their economic conditions.

Joe Biden embodied many of the classic aspects of masculinity I find valuable- love for his family, moral fortitude (specifically, the ability to do the right thing instead of the thing-that-looks-right, see the Afghanistan pullout or his early support for gay marriage), as well as the classics like physical fitness, style, propriety and getting things done. The people running the algorithms hate this, and so you're never going to see evidence that he was loved for his masculinity online, but there's a reason he won his primaries. Unfortunately, Biden just got old as shit, and no one came up behind him- Gavin Newsom is what, 1 for six on the criteria I brought up?

I think the idea of masculinity versus femininity, versus nothing, should be removed from politics. No one should be demonizing any of it, some people are masculine, some people are feminine, some people are in between or nothing at all or neither. I don't like to see The political universe demonizing what is really innate human behavior.

>Carl Jung and others who explore archetypes and symbols understands this well.

Anyone who dates and has sex understands this. Masculine energy attracts feminine energy. You don't need a PHD in it.

Define what you are talking about if you want to put your stake in the ground so people can respond. What is masculinity as it is commonly understood?

I believe men should be willing to fight for the group. Republicans think it should be every individual for themselves. I believe in myself enough I don't need to surround myself with the same religion/race as me. Republicans are afraid they will be replaced. I believe men should be able to have sex, and that birth control should be legal so they can do that. Republicans don't believe that. I believe in hanging out with my bros. Republicans love to hang out with pretend bros by listening to podcasts.

I believe I should be self sufficient and shouldn't need a surrogate mother to take care of me. So I do my own laundry, I cook, I clean. Like a real grown adult human. I believe enough in myself enough I don't need to sequester my partner away from the world and keep them at home.

These are like THE defining masculine traits. Protect others. Secure in yourself around others. Having sex. Being engaging enough to hang out with. Be self sufficient. Confident enough of yourself not to be jealous/overprotective of your partner or need to keep them hidden away at home. Republicans have none of these.

I live in a red state. All the REAL men (forresters, park rangers) are dems. Now the short guy rolling coal in his ridiculous truck, sure, he's a republican. The cop wearing a bulletproof vest while on duty in my tiny mountain town, sure, he's a republican. I guess that's the masculinity the right talks about. The appearance of masculinity. Not ACTUAL, lived, legit masculinity.

You can't cite Jung and be expected to be taken seriously in 2025. Type "Animus and Anima" in Google and see how crackpot this all sounds and looks.

Republicans are stuck with their backwards views, and they shut their mind completely to concepts like "patriarchy", which elicits violent, automatic reactions from them. I am yet to see a single guy from the right correctly define what "patriarchy" means to the left, and understand that the leftist projects by no means intends to harm men as a group.

To the contrary, liberating men from having to conform to a specific ideal is extremely freeing. So is not being berated for their height, lack of big muscles or whatever it is one "lacks" compared to the model man.

I’m not sure that it’s masculinity per se that is a sticking point on the Left, it’s the other thing you pointed to, the culture around how we address these things. So-called “cancel culture” is actually a very masculine and conservative activity, specifically by way of established dominance and social hierarchy, and reinforcing in-group norms.

It can be about toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever. I think that these are all real things and important to address, but participating in make-wrong and alienating fellow leftists, while completely dismissing non-leftists as inhuman, is self-defeating.

I like the idea of “call-in” vs “call-out” culture. By inviting other people to the table in a private setting and opening a dialogue to discuss the experiences of marginalized people - or any individual’s need for accommodation - rather than scolding people in public for not adhering to in-group norms that may be completely opaque to outsiders, you change the dynamic. And just by relating to people as people, in more intimate and personal settings than online anonymous forums or a standoffish workplace culture, we take down some of the walls that seem to separate us.

The research does not actually show "republican men have more testosterone than democratic men."

I am *not* a sociologist or a psychologist or anything in that realm, so I do NOT know the implications of what I'm saying or how much accuracy I have.

I think you're right that it's wrong to hate on boys (and the men they grow up to be) for wanting to mold themselves into society's current reflection of what a man is.

It's often said that the Left has a branding problem - and that a lot of the Left's stances are too cerebral for the sound-bite and gossip culture we have lived in since forever (and that has gotten more extreme in the world of micro-form content). I think that's correct.

I think there is much to be said about the Left doing a poor job right now of separating and giving strong examples of toxic and non-toxic masculinity - I do think the Left is getting way better at that now, with some very left-leaning men, who DEEPLY fit the Masculine Archetype starting to reveal themselves - there's a specific Afghanistan Vet running for office whose name escapes me that comes to mind; and also that one guy chopping wood.

I think a reasonable argument could be made that, at least in relative recency, Masculinity has been experiencing the kind of transition that Femininity went through in the 80s - a complete reversal and even rejection or hatred of recently feminine roles[0]. I've heard that women were hated for wanting to be stay-at-home mothers, like they were rejecting the progress that had been made. Recently, we've started to reverse that again and now a woman can be anything she wants, including a CEO and a stay-at-home mom, without being ostracized (as much) or hated for her choices. We'll get there with men, too, I hope. At least, we will in some circles.

I also think that the Right (and especially the Alt-Right Pipeline) are taking advantage of the framing and blurring of Toxic Masculine traits vs. Non-Toxic Masculine traits. Even the wording: "toxic v non-toxic" puts the negative as the stronger term and the positive only as a negation of the negative. And this conflation and attack reads *very* well for anyone that struggles to find acceptance in both their community and within themselves.

It's not just that, either, it's the whole culture. I'm sure we've all seen the stories of men who, when they do open up to a woman they thought was safe, the woman reflects that she doesn't feel "like he's a man anymore" and so even in places people think should be safe, they have working examples (either in video or in personally lived experiences) of when that DOESN'T work, and the contradiction and pain is exacerbated.

Being accepted for who you are is really, really hard. The generational trauma of a great grandfather who was told by his father to not show emotion, and then carried that same emotion down through the lineage gets us here. The orator who uses their platform to blames others and then how those negative feelings permeate generation after generation. Pain is continued through so many through-lines. And underneath it all, unique people with different life-starting circumstances and different wants and desires just want to be able to be who they are - or who they *want* to be, and there's always someone, somewhere, that tells them what they want is wrong. That person gained their perspective through the same hell and is probably facing the same pain, possibly without even knowing it. And so the cycle continues.

[0] I don't like using the word "Traditional" because gender roles are very fluid and our "Traditional Gender Roles" is mostly a myth that was basically from the post WW2 period through the Vietnam War.

Black pill movement is a scam, get over it.

> I think this is an uncomfortable truth

What truth? A derivative tells you nothing about the absolute value of a function. Maybe the Democrats have a higher base T than Republicans, for all we know. And they just turn "red" when you overdose them on it, temporarily. You can probably find similar results with other substances.

As far as I know, the science is settled when it comes to plastics, aerosols and hormones, so it does baffle me that this huge issue that affects us all is fringe and untouched while I see flags representing intersex people (am I evil for not particularly caring about this?) every day in the city.

Moreover, the republicans are reported as having lower T on average but the difference is not statistically significant.

It looks weird to me they don't report how age behaves across groups and don't correct for age in baseline comparisons.

The validity of a sample size has nothing to do with the size of the set it's drawn from. 136 is a reasonable sample size, 25 is considered the minimum for a yes/no question.