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Joe Canimal's avatar

People are getting fatter and fat is estrogenic.

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SGfrmthe33's avatar

Disagree with most of the comments, but love all the ideas people are putting forward!

Going from most plausible to least plausible claims:

1. Lower T is one of the drivers of obesity, and lower T is caused by some mixture of obesogenic diets, declining physical activity, and pro-female cultural pressures.

2. The study on testicular suggests testicular cancer is most likely diet and hormone related. India has a notoriously low meat intake, and smaller, more effeminate, men. Lower T, lower growth hormone (lower heights), and probably lower IGF-1 (due to less meat) all contribute to their lack of testicular cancer.

3. Porn somehow decreases T levels by giving men depression, or through suppressing their effort in mate-seeking. The immunosuppression idea doesn't make sense to me as surely that would lead to more infections? Yet precisely the opposite has happened over time. In fact, declining infections has been speculated to be a driver of obesity, as less time fighting off infection generally means lower body temperatures, which means less energy expenditure in the form of heat.

4. The lobster man was right to recognise the significance of the pill in changing society. There's a few studies suggesting that some forms of female contraception decrease women's preferences for physical masculinity, and heightens their focus on other factors (What kind of dad will he be? What kind of job does he have? Is his family wealthy?). It is also possible that lower T for men might be somewhat correlated with income, since lower T probably makes you more likely to do better in school, and more capable of adapting to an increasingly feminine work environment.

So perhaps birth control has led to more men with a low T phenotype reproducing, due to them having better jobs (and wealthier families?) on average.

Tbh, I think people generally underrate the pill as an explanation for a lot of things. We are doing this massive experiment of putting lots exogenous sex hormones in women, and there is probably no free lunch there. For example, if you're a guy taking T for a long time, your body eventually loses its ability to create T itself, so you have to stay on it for life just to remain normal. Obviously, T has many behavioural effects too, so it seems probable to me that fucking with womens' hormones for years (especially during puberty) is going to cause some pretty significant changes.

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