YouSaid · the spoken record

Carole Hooven

lines on the record: 56
first: 2021-07-30
most recent: 2021-07-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So, I think it would produce the difference. I think if you managed to increase the testosterone level in your female fetus, that you would see the effect that you're after. Whether that's ethical, my intuition is no. But that is not my, I'm not a medical ethicist, yes, but my intuition there is don't mess with it. And you might get something that you didn't plan for and you should just be happy to have a healthy kid and get your girl that like I played baseball. I was really into it. I was pretty much of a tomboy and my son, I tried to get him to play baseball. He hated it. He got hit and that's how he got on base. So I just, you know, there's all kinds of natural variety. He had way more testosterone than I did in utero. And he's, I was feel like I was much more and much more masculine probably than he is. So you don't know exactly what you're going to get. And yeah, that's it, but it's an interesting.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And how I understand the world, and having these tools is something I want to give to everybody else so that they can have that expansive being really sharp and learning to be unbiased, even when something feels offensive or painful, learning what to do with that information and respecting people enough to know that they can handle it, they can use it, it's helping them. I'm not going to make decisions about what people should or should not know or can or cannot handle. I want to teach them how to think clearly and critically and use scientific facts, hopefully to make the world a better place ultimately.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In sports or the rights of athletes who have differences or disorders of sexual development like Castor Semenya to be able to compete in women's sports or certain feminist agendas. But in my view, that is a mistake. We can fight for all of that. We can fight for what we believe in and increasing human rights and reducing suffering and increasing equality. That is totally compatible with an understanding of reality. In fact, all of that is only facilitated and promoted by understanding the facts, being literate in science, and then understanding what to do with the implications of that science. That's where the errors are being made. Just because male and female are two different things does not mean that people can't have equal rights. And that's so basic to me and important to me. And as a science educator, that is a hill I will die on because that is changed my life. It's empowered me.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Men and women really aren't that different by nature, then we can have hope for a better society. But in order to have that hope and in order to show that we can have sex equality, we need to show that the sexes are basically the same biologically. And I think that's a huge mistake because we're missing out on so much valuable information, first of all, and people are getting confused about science because it's not matching what they observe in the world. And I think people know that they're not getting the truth, especially via the media. And it's these a lot of activists who are now taken as the experts in these areas, even if they don't have any training, any formal training in evolutionary biology or endocrinology. They seem to come in because they're working to promote the goals of like the rights of trans women to participate.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm glad you said I was nice to them because I did feel nervous about even criticizing their arguments even a little bit because I respect these women and I think they're really smart and thoughtful. But we are coming at this issue from very different perspectives. And I see them as coming at this from, and I think that this is a justified comment that they're coming at it from an activist perspective rather than from a purely”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Animals. So, and that's just really important to keep in mind. So I'm definitely not saying that culture isn't important. In fact, it's the most important thing. I mean, in terms of shaping our behavior, because we have our natures, we have our hormones, and we know that culture can have a powerful influence in how we express our natures.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That patriarchy exists everywhere, but it also seems to some degree map onto what we see in non-human animals and just also evolutionary logic where male animals need a psychological mechanism to motivate them to mate with additional more sexual partners than females on average. And that's a perfect mechanism. You know, again, I agree with that perspective. Social and the other, the Sari Van Anders comment is also pretty much right on that culture's incredibly important, that what happens and the environment, what happens in the environment has a large impact on our biology, on our hormones, what we eat, whether we have kids, what religion we are, what kind of family we're in, how much sunlight we're getting during the day, all of these things are important in humans and in non-human.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Control over female sexuality to a pretty high degree in many cultures. So that is all totally right. Culture matters. It shapes the way that both sexes can express their natures. However, the reason that I believe that testosterone is a super important factor in shaping the desire for sexual variety and libido is because of all of the evidence, the confluence of evidence from humans and non-human animals. I mean, just look at the consistent reports of people who go to female to male testosterone levels. The libido skyrockets. And every single place in the globe, men around the globe, men report a higher libido. And you could say that that is the problem.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I am totally sympathetic to the perspective of these two questioners. And I agree with most of what they're saying. So I guess I'll just tackle the second one first. Definitely culture has a huge impact on, first of all, the way that women answer questions in these studies that people are conducting that show that they have a reduced libido. There is some bias there and some of that work. There is a history and it's not just a history. Women's, the ability of women to freely express their sexuality doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned. So we don't know what it would be like if there were if women were allowed in terms of cultural norms to fully express their sexual nature. We can't know that because yes, patriarchy mostly males have”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't disappear. Grip strength is a massive advantage for people born male even when they block testosterone. So many of those benefits, most of them, I would say are retained even after blocking testosterone, but it plays out different ways and different sports because different kinds of abilities will promote success in different sports. So it's not, you know, it may be that Laurel Hubbard ends up not beating everybody else because for one reason she's 43. So all things are not equal. Like she's much older than the other women in the female category who seem to be about half that age, or at least in their 20s. So there are some differences there. She's not at the peak of her physical capacity. So there's no guarantee that she's going to win. But on average, all other things being equal, yes, trans women who have gone through a male puberty will have”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give men a huge advantage. And only some of those advantages that are accrued in puberty decline significantly when testosterone is blocked after transition. So hemoglobin levels plummet with the testosterone drop. But after a year on testosterone blockers, only about 5 to 10 percent of the muscle mass is lost. And especially if you're talking about upper body and like weightlifting, people born male have about 40 to 50 percent more upper body musculature and you're only seeing a 5 to 10 percent loss there after a year. You will get, there's a huge amount of variation, but overall that advantage is retained and it does not disappear. And the bone strength never disappears. The body size obviously”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Men are bigger and stronger than women because of testosterone, because they go through male puberty. So prior to the age of 10, boys and girls are not very different in terms of their athletic ability. You're not going to get almost all boys beating almost all girls in a road race. But as the testosterone levels start to diverge 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, that is just maps on perfectly to the growing male advantage in almost every sport. And they have an advantage because they have twice as much muscle as females. And females have twice as much body fat. Just carrying around a bunch of dead weight and you have less muscle.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Female category, even in the Olympics, as is happening this year with Laurel Hubbard, that they should be able to because testosterone is not that important or its effects on strength and body size and muscle mass and hemoglobin, et cetera, all really significantly diminish after blocking testosterone. But the science is clear and there is an advantage and I will talk about that in just a second. But to me, that's not the issue. The issue is what are the human rights of trans women in particular and what do we do about this really complex situation where you have these talented athletes who identify as women who want to compete in the female category. So there are human rights issues there to consider. And I don't think that we're having that conversation in the way that we should because people are so busy arguing about the science. So the science is clear.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So obviously that's controversial and sensitive. And I just want to pick up on one thing you said, which is how does the evidence bear on fairness in sports? So I don't think it does directly bear on the fairness issue. It bears on the advantage issue. Do people who have gone through a male people who are born male and go through a male puberty retain an athletic advantage even after they reduce their testosterone levels? So that is the sort of question at play. The answer is easy. It's yes. I mean, it seems to most people that it's obvious that the answer is yes. And it is. However, people are trying to use the science of testosterone to make their case that trans women should be able to compete in the future.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are related to that testosterone inhibits the expression of those traits. But there's Richard Rangham, who I talked about earlier, has written extensively about two types of aggression. One is reactive and one is proactive. And proactive is sort of a calm rational planning that you would see in war where men mostly men are working together and using language to plan out attacks. That's not so clear that that kind of aggression is related without physical arousal to higher testosterone. But the reactive aggression seems clear that when you're aroused and angry and your heart's racing and you're adrenaline's up, that does seem to be related to higher levels of testosterone.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something like a male drive to achieve certain goals to create things that also could be related to testosterone. But again, that's just me sort of hypothesizing without a lot of robust evidence. About the war question, I didn't go there in my book because it's such a big, important question. And the evidence, again, is kind of loosey-goosey. I think, yes, that first of all physical aggression is males do have a predisposition towards physical aggression to trying to defend a particular territory and to cooperating with other males to do that and do that aggressively. That seems to be related to higher testosterone levels for various reasons. Males tend to have lower empathy, lower fear, and there is some evidence that those”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is due to male bonding, the very, very tight bonds that essentially men form that could be considered positive in different kinds of circumstances. But it also shows that men are capable of a kind of cooperation and very fast reconciliation from conflict that does seem to be related to higher levels of testosterone. So the male hierarchy seems to be facilitated by higher testosterone. And while there are conflicts and while there is aggression within a community, when those conflicts can be solved quickly, then the hierarchy can be reestablished and males can tend to cooperate to advance the needs of their group. And so again, I can't say that there's any particular study or body of work right now that is very robust, but there's also”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's where the research is because these are problems that need to be solved. But a lot of the positive aspects of masculinity, I believe, are associated with having high testosterone, but I don't have the studies that I can say that sort of pro-social behavior is tightly related to testosterone. More and more research is being done in this area, and I think it's really important and really interesting, and it points towards male cooperation as particularly important and possibly facilitated by higher levels of testosterone. So even in war, some wars are fought for very good reasons. And some of this success in war, if you can call it,”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, little changes the muscle mass is affected and athletic ability is affected in women when testosterone goes up. But behaviorally, there's not a lot of evidence within the normal range. For serious effects.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Research, it does not appear to be as important as a lot of people seem to want to make it. There's potentially some role in ovulation, but we know that women who don't have much testosterone at all, which is almost all women relative to men anyway, they have perfectly normal libidos and sexual function. If women take testosterone supplements, they typically won't feel any effect until they get out of the typical female range. And when that happens, they might start to develop some secondary sex characteristics that they find undesirable, like facial hair or deepening of the voice. And that suggests that it's really going into the male level that causes masculinization and the really the increase in sex drive and potentially aggression.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, this is great. I love these questions because estrogen, first of all, in non-human animals, so a lot of non-human animals just take seasonal breeders. So estrogen is the hormone that motivates sexual behavior. So outside of estris, many female animals will have show no interest sexually in males. They will in fact attack strange males. But when they're able to get pregnant and their estrogen is high, this changes everything and their libido goes up and they show it and they become very eager for sex. And that's obvious. And that is via estrogen. So it also seems that in humans, so there are women who have exceedingly low levels of testosterone and they tend to have no, there's no relationship between female levels of testosterone and libido in reproductive age women. So what testosterone does in women, first of all, needs to be studied more, but in my”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lesbians were exposed to higher levels than average of testosterone in utero. And that's not the most, those aren't the most robust findings in the world, but that is where the evidence points there. And I think that's interesting. Females are very sensitive to increases in testosterone.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think about sexuality as being one of the most important components of a male sexual strategy, because this is a masculinized sexuality, and if testosterone is a masculinizing hormone, then we shouldn't necessarily expect it to be lower in gay men. So what I'm saying is we don't know what the role of, if any, of testosterone in male homosexuality is. I think it's a really interesting question. There could be something going on prenatally that has to do with epigenetics, which is the different, not differences in genes themselves necessarily, but the way that genes are expressed. There could be different testosterone levels at different times, but we just don't see the evidence in men for any testosterone differences that would predict homosexuality. But we do see that in women. So there is some evidence that”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have sex with other men in general relative to men wanting to have sex with women, men wanting to have sex with men understand each other and are generally on the same page and have less of a problem with being objectified. And so what you see is a lot more sex with a lot more partners. And that's just a fact about gay sexual culture. You know, there's no judgment there. It's just an observation that we can see and that we can really learn something about male sexuality when sort of unrestricted or unlimited by female reluctance. There's just a lot more of it. That's just it's expressed much more freely. And it suggests that the evidence that there's no difference in testosterone levels, first of all, between gay men and heterosexual men. And that makes sense.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I love this area because I think it's really illuminating. So first of all, just some observations about gay male sexual culture, which is that if two men, not just two men, but if men are in sort of a sexual marketplace and other men are there, the target of their sexual interest, of course, you're going to have a very different dynamic than in a heterosexual sexual marketplace where the target of men's sexual interest is going to be women because men then have to figure out basically how to, well, just say, well, no, I won't. How to acquire a mate, say, or have sex with somebody, right? So sometimes they're just trying to strategize or manipulate. But if it's men wanting...”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accepting him more just for who he is rather than trying to get him to be like me and not really understanding even that though I've studied testosterone for ages it was really the transgender literature that helped me there.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, different view of things. And it went along with an overall, again, there's lots of variation of people's experiences, but a reduction in the ability to, I'll just say, get in touch with a range of emotions. So anger seemed to be one emotion that was retained. I didn't see much evidence that it goes up, but it's that other sort of more vulnerable emotions like fear, anxiety, or the expression of those feelings through crying is really tamped down. So people would say they kind of feel like they want to express those emotions, but they couldn't get in touch with them. And they would overall stop crying. People who went from crying a few times a week would just basically stop and cry maybe once or twice a year. So those are some of the most pronounced effects. And I did find that fascinating. That affected my relationship with my husband too, because I think I started.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To men than men. But the urgency of the sexual impulse seems to really increase the libido goes up and this tendency to objectify increases. That can level out over time after people are on testosterone for many years, but it certainly seems to be the most pronounced effect is like people say, okay, I get it now, what it's like to be a man. And the challenge is that men face that are particular, that are called.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A surprise to most people, and that's sex. That's this, you know, people, it seems like their brains and bodies kind of explode when you live as a woman and then you take male levels of testosterone. And even before the body begins to change and the muscles grow and the facial hair comes in and the voice deepens, even before that, people describe feeling something like what a male puberty must feel like. I haven't gone through it, but everyone I've talked to says you are just consumed with thoughts of sex during puberty. It can be difficult and overwhelming. And some people even feel ashamed of their sexual thought. But what's interesting is people who went from living as women and potentially being objectified by men sexually start to do it after they transition. They start to feel that they're beginning to objectify if they're attracted to women than women if they're attracted.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I found that also one of the most fascinating parts of my research for the book. So I interviewed a male to female transgender person, a female-to-male transgender person, a non-binary, 12-year-old who was taking puberty blockers, and a detransitioner who went from female to male and then back to female again. let them tell their stories in the book but i also really dove into the relevant scientific literature and it really matched overall what these people were telling me so for the female to male transgender people in general and i just want to say that there's a huge amount of variation in people's experiences but there are some effects of going from a female level of testosterone to male level that are fairly consistent the number one thing that change that people talk about probably won't be”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two wise, but that's not because society is conditioning boys to do that. We see the same kinds of sex differences in non-human animals where male, juvenile animals of all kinds engage in that physical rough and tumble play and you can manipulate the expression of that by manipulating prenatal testosterone. And that's what we see in humans where girls who have this unusually high level in utero show higher rates of rough and tumble play for one thing, tend to want to play with the toys that are more typical of boys. And then even in adulthood in adulthood, they tend to gravitate relative to females who don't have this condition, which is corrected at birth. So those hormone levels are correct at birth. They will tend to gravitate towards more male typical professions where they work more with things than people, for instance.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That predict those behaviors. So they're higher in males and tend to be lower in females. But we also have cases where in particular fetuses are exposed to unusually or atypically high levels of testosterone for their sex. So female fetuses will basically without any testosterone whatsoever or very, very low levels of testosterone will be feminized. They will tend to show typical female behavior. But if as in the case with congenital adrenal hyperplasia where female fetuses produce higher than average levels of testosterone, those girls end up being more masculinized in their interest as kids and as adults. They play more like boys. So they want to tackle each other and have this physical play that is much more characteristic of boys. I mean, most people can see that with their own.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humans, which is that when we reduce testosterone or we look at animals, female animals that have very low levels of testosterone, we see very similar patterns to what we see in humans, which is high levels of testosterone, male typical levels of testosterone are in fact associated with high levels relative to females of physical aggression and the competing for mates and relative to females, those with high testosterone tend to pursue as many mates as possible in many species. Of course, there are species that are socially monogamous, but overall males are competing for additional mates, and it's testosterone that facilitates the sexual behavior and the aggressive behavior. And in humans, first of all, we have the sex differences in testosterone.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way that our genes are expressed and our behavior obviously end what's going on in our environment and our environment contains sophisticated human culture, which is highly, highly gendered. So it's very sometimes very difficult to imagine that our own genes and things like differences in sex hormones are having a big impact when we see all around us these influences that could so obviously induce the way that we express ourselves in gendered ways. However, when you look at the evidence from non-human animals and you look at, and that's experimental evidence and that's also just observational evidence where we measure testosterone levels and look at different behaviors, but also we can manipulate testosterone levels in a bunch of different kinds of animals. And what we see really mirrors what we would expect and what we see in”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes. So that's a different kind of evidence. So remind me to get to that because I don't think that's the most. That's interesting. And it does, and we should talk about this because what you're talking about illustrates that testosterone levels can be heavily shaped by”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To help and protect even complete strangers. Females can do the same. They're certainly capable of that, but they do it at much, much lower rates, and it tends to be their own children. So there's a lot, and I could go on about the positive aspects of masculinity, but those are, I think, two good examples.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, you're a dad, right? So you, and only 5% in only 5% of mammals, do we see this high intense level of paternal investment where the males really invest heavily in their offspring by providing resources, protecting, and in humans, you know, there's this incredible emotional bond. I think that's one really positive aspect of masculinity that can be supported and amplified by cultural norms. And we see that to some degree in Western cultures. And that's incredibly important. Another positive aspect of masculinity, and a lot of people don't like to hear this, but it is a fact that men are far more willing to risk their lives to protect others, even those that are complete strangers. So they will engage in actions that expose themselves to physical risk and even death.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For instance, then females. But the size of that sex difference can be dramatically narrowed, and that's because the male rates of those behaviors are reduced in cultures that do not tolerate those behaviors, like Singapore, which I mentioned in the book, you may not approve of their tactics, but it is evidence that culture can have a massive effect on these behaviors that we know are problematic. So there's really nothing about the facts of biology that justify any of the behaviors that we think are problematic. But I just want to make sure we don't forget about all of the positive aspects of masculinity that are also facts that people forget about and ignore.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of that behavior in nature. That's just a logical error. There are plenty of aspects of our natures and behaviors that are basically natural that are terrible and that we all agree should be eradicated and we should do whatever we can to tamp them down. And I would say extreme male aggression is one of those things. something that is a huge problem. And if we close our eyes to all of the information that we have available to us about what causes something like extreme male aggression or sexual assault, we are not doing everything we can. And I would say as feminists to solve these complicated problems, which are always the result of gene-environment interactions. And we know that that's the case because everywhere around the globe, males commit more sexual assault by far and murder.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And I know you're just being funny, but you're not just being funny because that is the criticism of this particular, that is one reason that people resist biological explanations for human behavior, particularly of sex differences, because of patriarchy and men having more power than women, the fact that discrimination and sexual inequality does exist. And it can sound like what I'm saying is in fact justifying these behaviors that are many male behaviors that are incredibly problematic. Now, nothing in what I've said justifies any particular behavior. And if you think it does, you're committing what's called the naturalistic fallacy, which is the idea that what exists in nature is good or that behavior is validated when we find evidence for the cause.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partner because he might doubt that the kids that I have are his. So that's not necessarily going to pay off for me. But on average in humans, yes, males are biased relative to females to seeking out more mates and have an increased preference for sexual variety. And that's just a super clear finding that's prevalent in every culture that's ever been studied. It's to express to different degrees in different cultures because culture is incredibly important in shaping our human natures. And I think that's an important point. I think our natures are kind of pretty fixed to some degree, but how we can express them in a given society is very, very malleable, of course, as we see.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so sorry. So you probably, if you're going to be a good investing dad and you want to increase the probability that those kids are going to go on to survive and then reproduce themselves, you're going to be investing energy in your mate and in your offspring. That's going to take away from your ability to compete on the open market for additional mates. Doing that might not be the best strategy. Okay. Yes, and your testosterone is probably lower than it was before.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, those are two different questions because we both have the same reproductive goals. That is as efficiently as possible convert energy into offspring. And you have different strategies potentially that you are perhaps prone to use or might be tempted to use or will try to use to achieve that goal, right? Your strategy relative to mine would be seeking additional mates. not compromising you have three kids, right?”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be coordinated over a long period of time. So the way that that works with steroids, estrogen, and progesterone, so obviously girls into reproductively viable adults, i.e. women, the steroids are able to control gene transcription. And that is a much longer term, longer lasting effect. And testosterone acts on all these different tissues, including the reproductive tissues, the secondary sex characteristics, and the brain, to coordinate these large scale processes over long periods of time. So that's kind of the difference between, say, the steroid hormones and the protein hormones.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they're different. And they're different partly because chemically they're very different. But that chemical difference turns out to be very important. So testosterone is a steroid. Steroids are lipophilic, and they can get right through cell membranes. They can go right into your brain, no problem. You don't have to use energy to transport steroids into your brain. They can go into every tissue, basically. And the way that they work, as opposed to protein hormones, which is what insulin is. So insulin, the protein hormones cannot get right into the cells. They have to act at the cell surface. So they have shorter-term actions, like open up a little channel to let glucose into the cell, glucose comes in, homeostasis is achieved, say. But if you want to coordinate the transition of a boy into a sexually viable adult, i.e. a man, there are lots of processes that have”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're converting it into fat because that's what we need to do to reproduce. And there's all kinds of obviously implications about the differences then in fat and muscle and body size. But yeah, you only asked what a hormone was, and I give you a much longer answer.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Similar to what insulin does by acting on appetite, it would be odd if males didn't also sort of come predisposed to use aggression to compete for mates. And we see that playing out in today's world. But testosterone does all of these things for males and pairs all of these different, the development and maintenance of all of these different traits, which are physical and behavioral, just like a lot of the other hormones do. But it's really centered around what males need to do to efficiently convert energy into offspring. And females need to do something different because especially in mammals, we're the ones who grow the babies in our own bodies. Men don't male mammals do not do that, including men. So we don't have testosterone high levels of testosterone. We're not converting our energy into muscle.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you have high levels of testosterone, it will develop into a penis. If you don't, it's going to be more like a clitoris and you'll develop a vagina. And then it also acts in the brain. And we can talk about that later. But then in adolescence, it controls the production of sperm. So it helps us, it helps males reproduce by controlling the production of sperm and pairing that with other physical traits that men would have really needed, especially in our evolutionary past and to some degree today, to compete for mates, because that is relative to females, a way that males can increase their reproductive success or the number of offspring that they have over a lifetime. So larger body size, more muscle mass, and it would be odd if males developed a larger body size and more muscle mass.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So insulin, when our blood sugar is low and insulin levels are low, that insulin signals that information to our brain and that motivates us to go find food, right? So it has these dual effects in our body. And what's really interesting about the reproductive hormones, and let's just take testosterone for example, it has really important actions in the body that don't have to do so much with survival, but have to do really with reproduction. So in males, testosterone starts way back in utero, shaping the brain and the body. So it masculinizes the genitalia. It gives little boys a penis, basically. That is what you need to grow a penis. If you don't have testosterone, the structure that could become basically the penis or the clue.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So hormones are chemicals that we produce in various glands. Most people have heard of the pancreas, and that produces insulin, for instance. And we have our gonads that ovaries and testes that produce reproductive hormones, mostly estrogen and progesterone in females androgens, mainly testosterone in males. And there's tons of other hormones that we produce, but insulin is a good example because this is a hormone that helps us survive by regulating how we use energy, especially how we use glucose. And what's interesting about insulin and so many hormones that have actions in our bodies is that they at the same time shape our brain and influence us to engage in certain behaviors that are relevant to the actions that they have in the body.”
2021-07-30 · Intelligence Squared · Testosterone: Debunking the Myths of the Misunderstood Hormone with Carole Hooven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source