The decline of sperm production

Today’s average male has sperm production and sperm motility considerably lower than when these were first recorded, the data least subject to systematic error being sperm counts from couples tested for infertility where the infertility was subsequently determined to be due to the female.  It has been in decline over the last seventy years.  Testosterone levels have also fallen substantially.  Changes in obesity and other factors do not explain the decline in testosterone.

I was watching the anime cartoon, Strike Witches, which is the Battle of Britain fought by cute witches on broomsticks in their underwear, and was wondering why I did not like it, when I realized that characters were behaving in a way that was both very feminine and quite manly, which was rubbing me the wrong way like a girl with hairy legs.  This caused me to look up the real heroes of the Battle of Britain, on which the loli catgirl witches with BFGs were based, and I found that those who fought the Battle of Britain really were manly, much more manly than moderns.

If you look at photographs of the soldiers of World War II, it is obvious that they were more manly than moderns.

And, of course, I have long known that the Victorians were much more manly than those who fought World War II, and Greeks of the March Upcountry far more manly than Victorians.

I would be inclined to guess it is the decline of patriarchy that is doing it.  The Classic Greeks were more patriarchal than Christians, Christianity has been in decline ever since William Wilberforce and his fellow Calvinists discovered that they were more holy than Jesus and the apostles, and here we are.  My guess is that feminism is quite literally emasculating men, making men physically sick, though World of Warcraft is another possibility.

The definitive test would be a country that is moving back to the natural sex roles, or at least not moving away from them, but due to world wide Cathedral hegemony, we seem to be short of such examples.

Polygyny, of course, leads to widespread homosexuality, so the Taliban victory in Afghanistan does not give us suitable comparison.  The early Victorians were about as patriarchal as the Muslims, but were far more manly. To properly test the theory, we would need sperm counts from a mostly monogamous country in which feminism is losing traction,  or at least not gaining traction quite as fast, preferably a highly polluted modernizing country to rule out the other variables of modernity.

There is strong geographic variation in sperm production, which hints at variation in sperm production by religious affilation, counting academic attendance as a church attendance.   It looks to me that the closer your research is done to a major Cathedral facility, the lower the sperm production you find. The real test would be to compare Mormon couples with Anglican couples.  (Comparison with Amish couples would not only vary in exposure to feminism, but also exposure to other ailments of modernity).  Unfortunately, no one has surveyed sperm production by religious affiliation.  If feminism is doing it, Mormon men married to non Mormons would have markedly lower sperm production than Mormon men married to Mormons.

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42 Responses to “The decline of sperm production”

  1. […] The decline of sperm production. […]

  2. Stacey Walsh says:

    Changes in seasonal sperm production can be related to factors like temperature, length of daylight exposure, and hormone variation. Some research indicates that worldwide sperm counts are falling , for reasons that might include sedentary lifestyles or environmental contamination.

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  5. Dr. Faust says:

    Or it could be the return of the goddess like the new age feminists predict where we’re entering into a thousand year golden age of matriarchy. lolololololzaoo

  6. Dr. Faust says:

    http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/drd4-long-form-variant-7r-a-genetic-correlate-between-liberalism-and-homosexuality-the-extreme-r-hypothesis-of-homosexuality/

    Jim et all you need to read the theories posted at anonymousconservative.com because I think they may have something to do with the declining testosterone levels. To put it succinctly, the theory is that test declines in men and raises in women as abundance increases bringing about changing in mating strategies in the population. The men will have easier access to mating and will need to be less manly and less provisionary for women. They also benefit from being less competitive because it endangers them from other males less as well. See the modern effete liberal male. The women will not be able to secure long term male provision and protection, will have less need for it, and so will adapt her own more aggressive rearing strategy, adopting her own masculine behavior. See the modern entitled feminist.

    The theory would be that the harsh climate of the north regions allowed for a stronger selection of genetics making K selected types more likely to survive. But abundance of food and resources have allowed people to revert back to an R type mating situation.

    What has caused the decline in testosterone? My theory is abundance.

  7. spandrell says:

    Blacks have little patriarchy, yet they have higher testosterone.

    What’s with Greeks being more manly than, say, the Crusaders? Plenty of fags in Greece.

    Everyone’s putting their own pet theory. Mine is the lack of exercise. Technology has been replacing physical labor slowly for centuries. You do get a testosterone high after working out. If all you do all day is lift stuff and eat meat it’s no surprise you have high T.

  8. Matthew Walker says:

    Civilization causes violent men to have fewer children (until the 1960s at least). See HBD Chick for details. We tend to think of this as a good thing, because we’re descended from the peaceful ones. But the functional-yet-virile civilization of 1900 is just a point on the curve leading to transexual daycamps for boys.

    Like that Heinlein novel, we bred the wolves into sheep. It’s a dead end. HBD happens over time as well as geography. We are not the same race as our ancestors.

    • jim says:

      Don’t think so. From 1800 to the present day, we see a rapid decline in virility, but Anglo Saxons of the 1800s were wolves among sheep, the greatest soldiers in all the world, due to honor and group cohesion, soldiers versus thugs.

      If our society allowed it, I am pretty sure we could tell our soldiers to kill every male and every unattractive female, and enslave all the pretty girls, and make the conquered land their own, and they would do so with great efficiency. It is not that we are cripplingly non violent, but that we are cripplingly universalist, caring rather too much about far away strangers, and rather too little about those close to us and resembling ourselves.

      • Melonhead says:

        Since the US started our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq I have wondered one thing about our course of action. Why didn’t we put the Iraqis and Afghans on reservations and open their lands to homesteaders? We’ve spent exorbitant amounts of national treasure on invading these lands with a very poor return on our investment. Letting American homesteaders civilize new wild territories has worked very well in our past.

        Poor Bremer was essentially the military governor of Iraq, and has little to show for it today. Andrew Jackson was military governor of Florida and now Florida is a very well liked state of the Union and Jackson parlayed his success into a post at the White House.

        • jim says:

          Events in the Gaza strip have demonstrated that Israel was not protecting the settlers. The settlers were protecting Israel.

          Worked for the Jews, until they started feeling guilty about it. It would work for us.

      • Justin says:

        Does that include all the foreign soldiers England hired to fight their wars? I would say German and French before Anglo Saxon.

  9. RS says:

    Regarding free and (bio)available T — available is what really matters.

    The available fraction includes both the free stuff and that which is bound to the abundant blood protein albumin. This binding helps get the stuff going around, cause it is not very soluble in water. But it is a very weak binding, so the T will quite readily come off and get onto the androgen receptor, where it can actually do something.

    The rest of the unfree T is tightly bound to SHBG and is ‘on ice’ for most purposes (a couple exceptions exist) — it’s sequestered, a reservoir.

  10. RS says:

    > I’m guessing testosterone levels in matriarchies would be even higher than in patriarchies. Matriarchy being as Daniel Amneus would define it where breeding males are thugs.

    It’s not quite so simple, Africans in the US have the same T (total? available?) as Whites ; Africans in Africa actually have less. But sure, they have a more brazen, dauntless, and violent behavior than Europids — though I think they are actually marginally less steely in actual war, as opposed to street violence, which is not surprising given their less-malthusian history.

    And they wouldn’t have those traits without T . . . but the difference vs Whites is really in the genes interacting with the T. (Not least, perhaps, the androgen receptor gene.)

  11. RS says:

    > That would explain the decline in sperm production, but not the decline in testosterone.

    Aren’t female contraceptives largely estrogenic?

    Circulating estrogens/estrogenics feed back negatively on T secretion. This is the main reason for the dramatic effect of excess fat on T proper. If you are seriously plump, that can cut circulating T by 50% — not sure if that is total, free, or available T.

    (Though also potentially important is the deactivation of already-existing DHT, an equally important androgen, by visceral fat in specific.)

    • jim says:

      If a male were to take female contraceptives, the effect would be estrogenic, but males do not. The effect on females is anti estrogenic, in that the contraceptive pill reduces the natural production of estrogen. The pill contains some estrogen to compensate for this, but not enough to fully compensate. A fertile age female on the pill will likely reduce her estrogen levels, though an early teen female on the pill will probably increase her estrogen levels.

      It is common for sexually active preteens to go on the pill before they menstruate, since they don’t want their first ovulation to lead to pregnancy. This immediately results in breast formation, indicating that if a not-yet-menstruating girl goes on the pill, it increases her estrogen levels substantially. But for adult women, definitely reduces estrogen.

      • But if the estrogens were getting into the water in trace amounts… everybody might be taking them a bit.

        • jim says:

          Thing is, men produce quite large amounts of estrogen, and women quite large amounts of testosterone. So you would need quite a bit in the water supply to make a difference.

          A pregnant woman’s testosterone levels are pretty close to those of a man, though this does not have detrimental effects because her estrogen level are several hundred times normal. For much of a woman’s cycle, her estrogen levels are probably lower than her husband’s.

          A man needs a certain level of estrogen for good health, but any higher than that causes bad health. I am pretty sure that any level of testosterone in women is a bad thing, except during pregnancy. The ideal testosterone level for women is zero. High level of estrogen in men is definitely bad, causing a wide range of detrimental effects. Estrogen is rising in men, testosterone is falling.

          • b says:

            No.

            T in women is associated with sex drive.

            Case in point: The wife has published well-cited papers of very high abstraction in a STEM field and has quite a good sex drive, both of which point to high T for a woman.

            Very healthy and aside from field of work & sex drive very feminine. So there.

  12. Barnabas says:

    I’m guessing testosterone levels in matriarchies would be even higher than in patriarchies. Matriarchy being as Daniel Amneus would define it where breeding males are thugs.

    • jim says:

      Yes, testosterone levels would be higher, but what patriarchs would regard as manly behavior would, almost by definition, be lower, because women don’t appreciate that kind of manliness.

  13. Barnabas says:

    Should be “.” Not “?”.

  14. Barnabas says:

    Saying Wilberforce was a Calvinist enough times will not make it any more factual than saying Zimmerman was a racist.

    • jim says:

      See Republican Party Hacked for an explanation of entryism

      At the time, Wilberforce had to take an oath that he was not a Calvinist in order to pursue power. However, he sought to get Calvinist Bishops appointed the the Church of England, which was analogous to getting communists appointed to the state department, and he operated from the same building as the Calvinist evangelical movement, pursuing theocratic Calvinist objectives.

      That a great pile of supposedly independent organizations had the same address, is a dead giveaway of entryism. Back then Calvinists, today commies.

      “The shortest way with dissenters” was in large part about the problem of entryism. He recommended selling entryists into slavery, which strikes me as a good idea and entirely justified.

  15. Too much wanking probably.

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  17. Xenophon says:

    Couldn’t this be simply a consequence of modernity? Technology does away with the need for brute strength, empowers women, turns men into sedentary, passive receivers. With technology, real men are less necessary.

    • jim says:

      Could be. It is well known that physical exertion makes men more manly.

      On the other hand, it is also well known that weakness, fear and passivity makes men less manly.

      • Dr. Faust says:

        If you’re going to make any theories about a decline in testosterone you need to include technology in that theory. What else has changed except technology?

        If men are more masculine it’s because they need to be. I don’t believe things just happen without reason so there must be a good reason that men are effeminate now. Most likely it’s because of technology. There is no need for masculinity and without a need for it it was dropped.

  18. Koanic says:

    Causation reversed. It’s diet. This causes unmanliness, which causes feminism.

    • jim says:

      The classic Greek diet was in large part barley porridge, and they were more manly than anyone. On the other hand, a lot of them were queer.

      • Koanic says:

        “barley porridge”

        You say that like it’s a bad thing.

        Resistant starch as a staple is perfectly fine. Note it’s not wheat either.

    • Hemiomnivorous says:

      “It’s diet.”

      Amen to that.

      Let’s compare testosterone and sperm count levels in those who eat the carb-laden swill so prevalent in this country to those who eat paleo/primal or non-junky vegetarian or Pollan-esque “food, not too much, mostly plants” or, at a minimum, eat food that doesn’t come out of either a box or the kitchen of a chain restaurant.

  19. Samson J. says:

    There’s a lot to be interested in here, to be sure. I’d also like to know whether becoming a traditionalist can reverse the process.

  20. On the other hand, sperm counts in NYC seem particularly high. Maybe automobiles lower sperm counts.

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