For the past thirty years, testosterone has been falling at about one percent a year.
This is about the same rate of decline as that produced by aging after the age of forty. So a forty year old male today has about the same testosterone levels as a seventy year old male had in 1984. This is a change sufficient to produce a massive decline in interest in sex, and a massive increase in odd sexual deviations.
Environmentalists suggests it is estrogen like compounds in the water supply. I am inclined to believe it is metaphorical estrogen in the metaphorical water supply. Society and the education system has been treating masculinity as an evil pathology, with ever increasing severity. Maybe the problem is that we need to encourage boys to be men, to be manly, to be tough.
We need to encourage our boys to hate, to fight, and to fuck.
To hate jocks, to fight them, and to fuck them up.
To play well with others, be nice, and spread joy and good cheer.
Not so much. We need to teach them to be competitive, but sportsmanlike; to hold the door for the ladies, but sneer at charges of misogyny; to be rock-like centers of calm, not talk about their feelings.
To be nice to screwed-up little nerds who will in any case be useful as weapons-designers and jesters. “Jocks” = nasty alphas. “Knights” = nice alphas. The only political problem: how to ensure that knights, rather than jocks, run things?
Before you look for sociological causes, look for biological causes.
1.People are much fatter than they were in 1984, substantially lowering testosterone.
2.Exercise frequency and physical activity have decreased, substantially lowering testosterone.
3.Have stress levels increased? That would lower testosterone.
It would be interesting to see how much of the drop in testosterone levels can be explained by 1 & 2.
I would add:
4. More men expend more socks of testosterone through porn than before.
5. Sleep replenishes testosterone levels, and Americans have been having less of it.
6. The average American diet (foods like pasta, bread, cheap pizza, french fries, soda, etc.) celebrates foods that aren’t converted into testosterone (meat, vegetables, etc.).
It always amazes me that America is history’s first country with a large population of poor, fat people.
A couple quibbles:
– Bub, do you have evidence of causation for point 1? I believe fatness correlates with low testosterone, but not that fatness causes it.
– Phoenicks, do you have evidence that masturbating to porn lowers testosterone (point 4)? http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com (highly NSFW–disable images prior to viewing) causes me to disbelieve this; it’s the blog of a world-record-holding powerlifter who alludes to frequent masturbation to porn.
Personally, I believe it’s mainly point 6, diet. Look at the photographs in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price to see what modern diets have wrought (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12805389?dopt=AbstractPlus
http://www.nebido.com/obesity-is-strongly-linked-to-low-testosterone-levels-in-men
Thanks for the citations, bub.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12805389?dopt=AbstractPlus doesn’t meet my bar for scientific rigor. They should have placed the “control” group on the same diet as the experimental group, but with uncontrolled portion sizes; instead they left them to continue eating whatever they previously ate.
http://www.nebido.com/obesity-is-strongly-linked-to-low-testosterone-levels-in-men doesn’t directly make the case for causation. The study they cite about liposuction patients looks promising, but I can’t see enough to evaluate it (paywall).
Porn is bad for men. There are many sources, too many actually. The site “Yourbrainonporn” is somewhat like archive for all those medical sources, you can look at them. Erectile dysfunction is now occuring in 18-25 year old healthy adults. Their ED is because of brain changes resulting from obsessive masturbation and porn watching.
I have nothing against Porn, more Porn = more weak beta men (more pussy for Alpha hypsexual men who don’t waste their PRECIOUS sexual energy to their computer screens or magazines).
And i am definetely not some pro-woman mangina who hates the sexual humiliation of women (on the contrarty)… But i am for the truth. Porn is Bad, Obsessive Masturbation is Bad.
FUCK (and abuse if you are into that kind of kinky stuff) REAL WOMEN.
I will give example with myself. I stopped masturbating and watching porn… i am now a hypersexual male. I want sex 24/7. I reallyhave enough energy to satisfy 3 women, my gf is not enough for me. I want more women, and i will get them
Plausible, but surely markedly reduced male status must have some effect.
Don’t know if the data are available, but I’d guess the elite’s testosterone levels aren’t falling, or aren’t falling nearly as much. The educated and affluent are more and more learning to take care of their bodies, at the same time as the average American is getting obese eating the wrong oils and not exercising. It would make sense that as the 1% become more dominant, the testosterone gap between them and the hoi poloi will increase.
In fact, I know a bunch of athletes well into their 50’s and even ’60’s performing at levels I don’t think many old timers did 50 years ago.
I believe http://www.tomatobubble.com/putin_obama.html is problematic for your theory.
Also, we’re getting vague here, but your observation about older athletes outperforming their age peers of prior generations may be confounded by across-the-board technical advance (improvement in equipment, training techniques, …) in the sports in question.
Obviously Obama’s girliness is not caused by obesity. Rather, his wife and upbringing metaphorically castrated him, which metaphorical castration appears to have similar effect on his testosterone levels as literal castration.
You are confusing cause and effect. It is not reduced male status that cause lower levels of testosterone but lack of testosterone allows female domination. All the psychological explanations for physical phenomens have failed and talk therapies dont work. Ulcers are not caused by stress but bacteria, heart attacks are not caused by nervous disposition and so. It must be something physical that is making us to lick instead of fuck.
I think the substantial increase in estrogen compounds in the water supply, that results almost exclusively from the increased usage and social acceptability of hormonal contraception is indeed an important factor here, as well as all of the cultural ones cited.
Are you saying that estrogen compounds enter the water supply–and are not filtered out in treatment plants–in significant quantity, by excretion from hormonal contraceptive users? Fascinating, if true. Please provide a source.
Most water supplied in cities is not filtered nor treated. Anyway, you need reverse osmosis (membrane) filtration to keep out estrogen-like molecules. You can buy and install one in your home. But it wouldnt help because it is not only in drinking water but in the environment.
J: sources please. If we’re both talking about cities in USA, I do not believe that the water is untreated, because I have seen a treatment plant in my city with my own eyes.
If there are estrogen-like compounds that slip through, in what quantity? Is that sufficient to cause emasculation? What other environmental sources do you refer to? Same question on quantity there?
I’m not saying I disbelieve you, but please make the case; I’m interested to know more.
All the water supplied in America is potable. Raw water undergoes treatment according to its source: it can be clorination to kill bacteria, sedimentation (with addition of alum) to reduce turbidity, filtration to separate particles. Estrogen compounds average size is in the order of 3 ?m. Only ultrafiltration or reverse osmosis can filter out parfticles of such a small size and those are very expensive processes not normally used in urban water supply plants. Ultrapure water – without virus and hormones – is used in pharma and vaccine production, but not for drinking.
Regarding hormones in the environment, there are everywhere. The most commonly known sources are hormones supplied to domestic animals such a milch cows to increase milk production, pork and so on. Then treated urban wastewater is disposed in natural water bodies which all have high levels of estradiol like compounds (from female anticonceptives) and those are absorbed by the fish and by the animals feeding on fish and so on. Then there are many plastics that liberate estradiol-like molecules into the environment.
About the question if the concentrations are sufficient to cause emasculation, can be no general answers and also there is much uncertainty about its long term (20 -30 years) effects. The consensus is that environmental hormones are not the reason of falling testosterone levels. The consensus is known to have wrong many times. As for me, I suspect that living with females on pills must affect us, if not hormonally then reducing sexual excitement attraction (read Norman Mailer – sterile sex is quasi masturbation).
Anyway, we have no escape from civilization, so better stop thinking about bad things.
Pill consumption in Japan is negligible. So little estrogen in the water.
Surely you can’t say modern Japanese are very manly.
There is no divorce rape either, no annoying feminists in every office. Most women stay home after marriage.
So it’s not that.
I say it’s porn.
supernormal stimulus desensitizing people to normal stimulus?
In an anime, a small number of male japanese schoolboys are stuffed into a train cabin full of japanese schoolgirls. Terrified of being accused of groping (because they are necessarily pressed up against the schoolgirls) they raise their hands in the air. I know it is a joke, but the joke was that they were mighty castrated.
That’s a joke on the very real threat of anime-viewers (which tend to be omega males) being falsely accused of groping in trains. Once police gets their hands on you the burden of proof is on yourself, so you’re pretty much fucked. Which means getting fired from your job, and ostracism forever.
The idea of avoiding it by raising their both hands has been common among the 2chan crowd for years.
Of course legal emancipation of women doesn’t help. Men before WW2 would have gotten a wife by arrangement and could do whatever the hell they wanted with her. Now you can’t get drunk and beat her if she doesn’t cook you a meal in 10 minutes.
Women are a mighty hassle compared to the convenience of anime and porn, which is why 30% of men don’t even bother, and the rest don’t put that much of an effort either.
Asians also have lower sex drives, and are less social than other ethnic groups, which probably increases the number of unmarried males.
The most collectivist countries on Earth, less social?
Whatever you’re smoking man, stop it.
I don’t understand. Why would those two be in opposition? Do you need to spend lots of time together to be collectivist?
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/03/race-ethnicity-and-social-closeness.html
Have Japan’s testosterone levels decreased?
What you see as feminized, asexual attitudes, may just be a cultural/ethnic practice. Asians are generally conformist and non-confrontational. That’s not recent – it’s probably genetic.
Failure to reproduce, or even have sex, is new.
Saint Paul assumes that the average person will gnaw his or her way through concrete to get laid. We are seeing in Japan a massive loss of interest.
Are you quoting the Bible?
Regarding falling testosterone levels, they are in excess of what could be expected due to rising obesity. Also, it’s unlikely there’s just one cause, it’s probably both pollutants like bisphenol A, hormones from birth control and god knows what else.
>>
This is a change sufficient to produce a massive decline in interest in sex, and a massive increase in odd sexual deviations.
<> I am inclined to believe it is metaphorical estrogen in the metaphorical water supply.<<
Winning or losing does things to testosterone, but iirc, don't know whether it's been measured to respond to long-term status changes.
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2606468)
^the above post contains more text, but it’s lost due to bad tag formatting..
Why not view falling testosterone levels as a giant, society-wide shit test? We have too many males for the available females and thus need to winnow some out. Hence video games, porn, junk food, drugs — everything that cuts testosterone levels. Only those men wise and strong enough to resist these temptations prove themselves worthy enough to get the few remaining attractive non-tattooed intelligent women.
So ugly, tattooed, or dumb women should remain celibate? Obviously there are low-value men, and low-value women. Aren’t they built for each other?
But the ugly, tattooed or dumb women have the government to help them. The state pays them to whore around, by removing all the consequences of bad sexual behavior, and propagandizes them into thinking this is ideal. So these women choose attractive males, rather than selecting a provider.
>>Obviously there are low-value men, and low-value women. Aren’t they built for each other?<<
Sure, but considering the amount of supposedly sentient meatbags running on this dirtball, a reduction in numbers wouldn't hurt.
Because the qualities that sustain technological civilization and get us into space aren’t necessarily the qualities that are optimal for reproduction in the current situation.
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