Anxious Masculinity: How Social Media Markets “Low T” And Shapes Men’s Health with Emma Grundtvig Gram

We chart how social media turns low testosterone into a crisis, selling masculinity, anxiety, and medical fixes to healthy men while skirting regulation. Emma Grundtvig Gram joins us to unpack overdiagnosis, celeb MRI scans, and the manosphere’s grip on health norms.

• harms of screening and the right to balanced information
• direct-to-consumer tests, devices, and influencer advertising
• celebrity-promoted full-body scans and overdiagnosis risk
• low T marketing as a lifestyle and masculinity product
• gendered parallels with menopause messaging and diet culture
• regulation gaps on social platforms and undisclosed conflicts
• cultural costs: emotions framed as failure and narrowing norms

Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. 
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com 

Transcript

Acknowledgment & Hello 2026

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadarong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Aurora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Medical history has been made and conducting action. Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. Co-hosted by Chris Mayze and Janine Williams.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Um so actually, Chris, is this forgive me for not remembering, is this our first one of 2026?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yes, Jane, it is our first one of 2026.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

I'd like to point out that it's March and it's our first episode of 2026.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah, well how have things been for you, Jane, in this new year.

Why We Obsess Over Medicalization

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Um fine? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, a little bit grim. It's obviously been pretty chaotic. I think uh our last uh episode where we had a guest was maybe September um or October. So we have had a bit of a hiatus, but at the same time, um we do have some plans that we will share with the listener uh in due course. Uh we're yeah, we're hoping to maybe do things a little bit differently, but um at the same time that may never eventuate. So we'll we we don't want to promise things that we can't deliver on. Um but do you want to introduce today's topic, Jane?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yes, um I can. So we've we've talked sort of around this topic quite a bit in the past. We've talked about the medicalization or or pathologizing different aspects of of life on this podcast. Uh the keen listener might recall we've had conversations about the pathologizing of ugliness with Eva Quino and of fatness, um, of hormonal changes associated with menstrual cycles, with about aging. So we we quite like talking to people who are sort of troubling um what's happening with kind of normal bodies that are becoming abnormal? Possibly not the right word.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Unnormally disintegrating, perhaps. I don't know.

Meet Emma: From Screening To Overdiagnosis

SPEAKER_02 2:37

There you go. Anyway, so today um we have a guest. We're talking with Emma Grundvigram about testosterone and the medicalization of low T. Um, Chris, do you want to introduce Emma?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Uh I would love to. I also I uh in reading Emma's work, uh which we'll be getting into, I just worry this there's a high danger of um too much information being shared, uh, particularly um in relation to testosterone and uh some of the uh aspects of what we're gonna be talking about, but uh not to preempt those sorts of Well, I'm excited. What we've got Emma uh to talk uh us through this uh yeah fascinating topic uh to do with um medicalization, I focus men's health and and low T. Um so Emma is a PhD candidate at the University of Copenhagen, uh whose focus is broadly on overdiagnosis or what happens when we go looking for problems in asymptomatic people. She has done work on screening for breast and colorectal cancers and gestational diabetes. Emma has also worked on direct-to-consumer advertising and medicine, which often involves more ad hoc screening. Emma collaborates with our colleagues at the University of Sydney and the University of Wongong here in Australia, where she is part of the Wiser Health research team. Um, so yes, a lot of uh really fascinating crossovers already just in your bio, we could just talk about that, but we're gonna talk about uh your paper that was published in the Social Science of Medicine called Selling Masculinity, a qualitative analysis of gender representations in social media content about low-T. Um so even, yeah, without sort of pumping it up even further, like the social media dimension of the methodology and and those sorts of things are also uh worthy of significant conversation. But before we get into all of that, Emma, uh we do like to sort of start the podcast by hearing a little bit about uh the person we're talking with and a particularly about how they got to be doing the kinds of things that they're doing, um, reflecting the the title of the podcast, undisciplinary. We find most people uh have a pretty unplanned trajectory uh of how they landed where they are. So, yeah, we'd really love to hear a little bit about your academic journey and your current research interests and and how you got there.

Harms Of Screening And Informed Choice

What Is Direct-To-Consumer Medicine

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Thank you for a lovely presentation, and I'm very excited about this and also a bit worried about what you think we cannot talk about, but I think we'll get to that. Um, in terms of my academic journey, it has definitely not been a result of any master plan or anything. Um, I think if anything, it's just uh push shaped by letting things unfold and staying curious of new trends. Uh, but I have a background in public health, and before that I was working many years as a waiter and a sommeiller, and I very much loved that job and missed parts of it. But um, I also loved studying. So at one point I just started browsing university programs, see if something might resonate. And I thought um medicine was quite interesting, but couldn't really see myself attending to patients or cutting in people and stuff. So I stumbled across uh public health and and I didn't really know what it was at the time, but but it felt worth exploring, and and I ended up doing both my bachelor's and my master's in public health at the University of Copenhagen. And I think what really got me hooked on public health was the interdisciplinarity, the bringing together of people with various different backgrounds and and ways of thinking too, um, which I found and and still finds very incredibly inspiring. Um and then I think it was about one or two years into my bachelor's program, we had a lecture on um the harms of breast cancer screening. And I thought, harms of breast cancer screening, what can that be? And because up until that point, we've just been taught about different prevention strategies and and as just unambiguously good things. So in that lecture, I learned about overdiagnosis and unintended negative harms that can come from cancer screening. And for some reason that really stayed with me. And I think in hindsight of trying to make sense of that, I think it was because I was a bit embarrassed by not having realized earlier that as of with everything else, cancer screenings and prevention strategies or public health interventions carry both benefits and harm too. Um so I think that moment, at least in hindsight, really uh changed my trip trajectory. And I ended up joining a research group that broadly studied too much medicine when I was a student, and and when I was close to finishing my master's program, they said, Hey, you want to do a PhD? And I was like, hmm, I don't have any other plans, let's go. Uh um, and so I did my PhD on breast cancer screening and the harms of breast cancer screening, and just broadly researching harms of medicine. Um and doing my PhD, I think what I was really drawn to was the sort of um injustices in how people are informed about the harms of medicine. And and I think you know, we receive so many messages that we have to take care of ourselves and take control of our health that are just about responsibility, empowerment, and and in breast cancer screening, it's also about solidarity or even feminism, all just urging women to attend screenings. And I think, you know, being more aware of the evidence on breast cancer screening, I found these messages quite misleading with the limited evidence of benefit and the overall omission of potential harms in in this public messaging. Um, so that was kind of my starting point into too much medicine. And then it kind of took a turn as I am a young woman being active on social media. I started noticing how um similar narratives were showing up in other areas of health. And as I said, being a young woman and also having no children, my algorithm feeded me a lot of content about fertility or egg-free singing. I also got a little bit of psychiatric diagnoses and just general lifestyle interventions and wellness devices, even. Um, yep, that's my algorithm summed up. Um but I think I was quite horrified to learn how much money people are making off of promoting these services that may not have any benefit or have minimal benefit or even carry serious risk of harm. Um, and just simply feeding off of our concerns or hopes or fears about health. Um and then in in relation to that, um, as you also said, Chris, in the introduction, I collaborate with the people at Wiser Healthcare, University of Wollongong and University of Sydney, which have met through the preventing overdiagnosis community. And um and that was really a turning point too. Um and during the past three years or so we've been collaborating, and and my work has kind of turned more towards direct-to-consumer advertisement and how that may risk too much medicine, and especially on on social media. So I think that was kind of leading to where I am right now doing uh research on low-T and social media.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Emma, my PhD was also about cancer screening, and um but mine was about uh the cervix. So it was, you know, that's the one we don't talk about and we don't get all solidaristic about, right? Um but it's also much less complicated than breast screening because there is evidence of benefit. Um but it was a thing that was very common when I would talk to people about the harms of screening, people would be like, How can it possibly be harmful? What could possibly be harmful about looking for cancer where there is none or where we're in an asymptomatic person, sorry. And um that that kind of intuitive trying to explain to somebody that what they have thought about it as a long time, you know, for a long time as intuitively good feels kind of it it's a difficult conversation to have actually because people are um quite a few people are quite invested in doing the things that makes them a responsible, healthy citizen, and quite often um may have experienced harms that they hadn't really thought of as being harms, you know. I think perhaps also because I'm a bit older, I know a lot of people who um do breast screening and they talk about um you know the stress of it and what happens when you have to come back because they're not sure if it's a thing or it's not a thing, and blah, blah, blah. Uh which is of course legit, really stressful. But um, the fact that it might also be unnecessary seems particularly difficult for people to understand, I think.

Social Media, Regulation, And Loopholes

SPEAKER_01 12:57

So yeah, and I think being on the side of researching too much medicine, especially in cancer screening that has such a strong cultural history too, I think is like this, the classic strawman, where we we seem to be wanting to take things away from people, um, which is obviously not the case, uh, because people who need care should receive care accordingly. Uh, but it's, I think what was intriguing for me was the injustice around communication and the information that we receive about screening, that uh even if it has benefit, I think we should be informed about the harms too, because that like your preferences and values may differ, um, even if it has benefits.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So you mentioned um Emma that you've been working on some uh direct-to-consumer testing. What is that? What's direct-to-consumer testing?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, direct-to-consumer testing can really um be a lot of things, but I think uh broadly speaking, it refers to either the advertisement of medical tests or treatments or services that are advertised directly to consumers or tests that you can access without any consultation with the healthcare system. Um, so generally, just uh consumer medicine is driven by the advertisement and the availability and accessibility of medicine broadly.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And it seems the regulatory aspect of that has changed dramatically um with social media. Like I don't know if this is still true or if it ever was, but I remember you know that the US and New Zealand were like the two countries that had the direct to consumer advertisements for pharmaceuticals, uh though or at least they were the two that I was aware of. Whereas Australia, you know, prided itself on this sort of strict regulation around what could be advertised. James now Googling to see whether New Zealand is part of this unholy connection with the US. Um whereas now on sort of two fronts, both like social media, you get either actual advertisements or um people who are content creators with a financial interest essentially advertising them. But then also just with so many, so much different kind of media, like I watch, you know, US basketball, for instance, and then you invariably will see their ads, which will then have those sorts of products. Now, if I went to my GP and asked for a prescription to whatever it was that was being advertised, chances are it wouldn't be on the PBS or available here, but it's still I think this part of your broader research and this whole thing about screening and particularly asymptomatic dimension is that it plants those seeds in people's minds that I might be sitting here in need of some kind of medical intervention um that I was unaware of before I saw that Instagram reel or before I saw that advertisement. Um so yeah, I guess what extent and and you're in uh Europe and I mean Europe is obviously a big place too, but I mean what regulations uh in place, I guess, to try to control that, or is it just that it can't be controlled, so there's not really much conversation around the regulation of what can be advertised on social media?

Celebrity Scans And Manufactured Fear

SPEAKER_01 16:37

I love that you mention regulation because I think there's been so much pressure put on individuals to just be learn or be educated to spot and reject misinformation on social media or spot these things that they really don't need. And I think that's just oversimplifying that these uh these advertisements that we see, for example, on social media is is is uh made by multi-billion dollar companies. So I love that you bring up regulation, Chris. Um in in Europe and especially in Denmark, we I think we're quite keen on regulation. We don't see it as as as restricting, we perhaps perceive it more as as protecting as it seems to do in in Australia too. Um and historically there has been quite strict rules for the direct-to-consumer advertisement of drugs. And it is only, I to my to the extent of my knowledge, only New Zealand and US that that allows direct-to-consumer advertisement of drugs. Um but you can advertise medical devices to a larger extent than you can with drugs, relying on the assumption that they don't carry as many harms as drugs might carry, which I think is uh perhaps not true with all of the tests available today. Um but even though, of course, there's still some general trade rules that apply to medical devices, and but I think social media is just posing new problems for how we can enforce regulation because this the amount of content that gets posted every day, how are we able to oversee that? Um, and the speed that it reaches a large audience? How can we do damage control? What should the fines be for those misleading advertisements? And and I'm also thinking about when new tests develop. Perhaps we don't have the evidence in place at the time of demarketing or advertisement. So, how will we know if the advertisement is is um substantiated by evidence, or how will we know if it's actually misleading or if it's helping people? Um, so I think social media just poses new problems for proper regulation of this to protect consumers.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

I think also, so was it last year, I think, that there was a spate of um famous people sprooking their own tests, right? I think Kim Kardashian Taika Waititi both um were talking about their full uh full body scans. Um and we sometimes have people say that they've had a life-saving body scan, right? Because those scans have found something that may or may not have um been something that needed finding. Um so it's not clear to me if when when um celebs are sprooking their full body scans, if people realize that it's an advertisement or if they think it's health advice. Uh do you know anything about that? Do you know whether people do they say this is an advertisement for I don't even remember the name of the product, but I did yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So um this is it's the provenance scann that they all of the celebrities are collaborating with. Um I think the the line between what's an advertisement and what's a just um personal health advice or recommendation is getting blurred because there was a UK um a UK study that tried to map how many undisclosed conflicts of interest there were in health on social media. And I think I think it was at least more than half. I can remember the specific number, but at least more than half that was undisclosed. So even if we can identify an advertisement, some may be undisclosed. Um but I think social media is um has become a more established part of medical marketing, and and what we see on social media should be interpreted within that context, just in general. Um and I and I think the MRI example is so interesting because when an incredibly expensive service like the full body MRI is recommended by celebrities with hopes of of saving lives, these messages just reach a huge audience, and they may come to think that they need this scan to be healthy or to avoid disease when it may in fact cause harm or um overdiagnosis of all sorts. Um so I think social media is really productive in getting people to perceive themselves as sick and in need of medical intervention, creating like a huge market. Um and in this case, uh with the celebrities, it's it's it's made by people without.

Shifting To Low T On Social Media

SPEAKER_00 22:00

any obvious at least um medical qualifications and the provenue well and the provenue is just making heaps of money off of it i mean it would be interesting to know if like what kind of if it were like works for provenue i mean obviously it gets them out there um but with that um taker um uh instagram reel yeah yeah so he it does say at the bottom that it's a paid partnership because and partly because if you put the code taker in you'll get a discount for it but what was interesting uh and I don't bring this up just for my own uh self-flattery but um the comments on it were so I wrote a facetious comment on it and it got a lot of likes which was nice but um uh a lot of the comments most of them are actually very critical of him and and whether it's just that because I think as you said Jane uh Kim Kardashian did it maybe her fans like it was like a lot of people like saying how tone deaf this is considering how expensive healthcare is in the US um expecting people to do this um a lot of other people are um you know just also pointing out that these things don't do much so whether he was just a badly selected celebrity um I don't know but the comments and I guess this is the dual nature of social media the comments were predominantly um critical and then also critical of his other political stances on things like Israel well that's that's uh that seems that seems like a good development but I think even if people are able to recognize um that these things may not be uh beneficial and how tone deaf it it it is to promote a three thousand dollar scan saying that everyone should do this um but I think if we if we take a step back do you think three years ago that people knew that you can that a full-body MRI could be used to detect cancers so it still places like a sort of awareness about the need for um early detection or the need to can take control of your health so even if people can recognize I think it still spread some awareness about the need or um about MRIs or something.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

The product and the advertising have always not always but at least for 10 years or something have been there. But but the social media thing is I think what gives it a different kind of reach. So there were definitely full body scans available and they were uh advertised in like GP clinics and rich parts of town you know just a little flyer that you can take home with you and things like that. So that definitely happened but um we should probably move on to the low T. Yes it's such a fun paper to read Emma congratulations and I would super recommend to our listener that um you read this paper because some of it is like I don't want to say nuts but it's nuts sorry um is that unintended there no it wasn't um so we you know we have talked about testosterone um on this podcast before uh and that was in the in the context of sport and it you know we it has popped up in sport over recent years and that's mostly mostly from people freaking out and um scaremongering really about trans people or people with um innate differences in sex characteristics competing in sports you know pops up around world competitions and so on. But what you're talking about is completely different and until I read your paper it was something that I didn't know about.

Masculinity As A Product

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So tell us about the low T scare if you like in social media um well so we looked at um TikTok and Instagram are some more like short form content and um overall we found that low testosterone was presented as a crisis or like a threat to um masculinity and and I'm and I'm just paraphrasing now but it was if you do not wake up in the morning with a boner it's sabotaging men and it's a silent struggle or a thief of men's vitality. And what I was really interested in coming with like a a background in medicalization was that how does that reconfigure norms of normal sexual functioning or um just what it means to be a man in a way. And as you said it's been it's been uh around for quite a while especially there there's a really interesting book written on this that's called testosterone rex or the T-Rex. But uh this what I found was that there was kind of a change in how it was advertised is that it targets younger men now and it targets mostly um men who are uh healthy so it's the it's the silent struggle in a way um and it's also presented as a lifestyle drug so you can it's not just for treating medical diseases it's also to optimize different aspects of your life for example the the boner example optimized your sexual performance or your masculine appearance or also your fitness performance um and and if you had normal levels that was sort of presented as being undesirable and and if you did not fit into this stereotype of what it means to be a man if you're not supermuscular or dominant or uh if you express emotions or have a larger body then you have low T you're basically sick and you're in need of intervention. And and Jane you said that it was it was nuts and coming to the more nuts part of that the the content was just highly ridiculing of men that didn't fit this profile which I found was quite disturbing.

Ridicule, Body Shaming, And “Alpha” Norms

SPEAKER_00 28:39

So if you were um if you for example had a larger body you were not someone who uh could be loved by a woman or uh if you were um being insecure or if you were showing emotions you were not a man worthy of female desire or love uh or you were a failure in some way um in terms of masculinity can I just read a couple of quotes from your paper like from just because I think for the the listener it will really sort of flesh out what you're talking about. So this is a quote from uh I don't know if this is TikTok or Instagram. So this isn't Emma. This is uh some of the stuff um so I finally got my blood work tests done after putting it off for years and straight up I was like three numbers away from being called a female and then it has like different emojis representing uh the female it's been a long time since I've been this soft weak small feeling and then there's another example um uh so what will happen is when a man's testosterone levels will drop he will lose his drive uh his this sense of humor sense of self direction in life enthusiasm libido you name it frankly all the things that made his wife love him may go away then the magic spice disappears from the romance from the marriage they seek marriage can't counseling but it goes nowhere because the man has some kind of bio uh biochemical problems that hamstrings his abilities to be a man that a woman would naturally love I mean that's full on yeah it's really sad though it's like so if you want to keep your wife you should buy our products and I think well while this like it seems really nuts but if you try to see it um they could potentially try to empower their audiences they could potentially try and help them um but what we see is that and and and you know just recognizing that testosterone treatment may benefit men who experience severe problems with sexual function or whatever um but what we found was that these posts were just dominated by people who had a direct financial benefit of promoting these tests and treatments.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

And I think that's where it gets really muddy is that these people are not just genuinely trying to empower their audiences. They are selling these things targeting our insecurities about being a man that a woman would love or being a good husband or being funny or whatever was in that quote too.

Selling To Insecurities And Relationships

SPEAKER_00 31:38

And if you have sense of humor sense of humor yeah so if yeah so basically all of the insecurities one might have in life about uh sexual and and and romantic relationships but also identity in a way like being funny or having a direction in life or whatever these are being pathologized for the profit of of different companies that sells uh testing or treatments or supplements or just being sponsored by pharma in general I wonder as well if there's any um research or uh what if you've seen anything of where um a wife for instance and particularly because women and um you know perimenopause and menopause they're often sort of blamed for family breakdown and all of these sorts of things and and overmedicalized and intervened and all of these sorts of things if there's any evidence I guess of you know women also I guess picking this up and going well maybe it is your biological your biochemical imbalance that's screwing up our family maybe you do need to go and uh sort out your testosterone this is I think this is very interesting at least looking back at some of the early uh marketing of breast cancer screening it was promoted as something the woman should do for their family so they could stay and be the a health cust custodian of their family or still be there to support their husbands.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

So I think we did see some similar but very different for women while here it's the ability to be desirable or to while here for women it was more um you you should be able to support your family and therefore you need to be healthy.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

But I did see like women should stop smoking for their families.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah so I think there is perhaps a difference in how these things are advertised to men and women um but when you when you ask that question I was thinking what I've seen very much in the news right now is testosterone for women in menopause. And we also when looking through um a lot of social media posts on testosterone I did notice some posts from women too or uh posts targeting women and the narrative I noticed there was that doctors and and and researchers too are kind of um um keeping this vital information from women um and um although it's it's it's funny being a researcher uh considering how much we go through just to get published where we don't keep anything from anyone um but on a more serious note I think this narrative is very powerful because it explains why we have never heard about this before. It's because their forces keeping us from being happy or whatever. But I think generally when we hear about these miracle cures uh we should be a bit wary because um such magic bullets are very rare in medicine and of course sometimes they happen but they we should be very wary when we encounter these narratives of these magical and miracle treatments.

Gendered Marketing And Menopause Parallels

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I mean this brings up this this uh you know there's many things that we could talk about for a long time considering time is short. Um the other dimension to all of this is the the manosphere um and just this conspiracy around um science and and knowledge and things being kept from us uh and in this case things are being kept from us that are um of benefit to us um the information and the access to testosterone whereas then other things that are not beneficial like vaccines and um you know big pharma science that's actually causing us men to be emasculated literally and figuratively um yeah that's an another aspect that you bring into this uh paper that it would be really good to hear a bit more about um the role of the the manosphere so perhaps I don't know if you could give us a little your working definition of the manosphere and how this plays into the the lower t the low t cultures I think I I actually didn't know much about manosphere before beginning this project this project I thought it was just these very extreme communities these incel groups and uh we've seen them um portrayed in the Netflix uh movies and stuff but so I thought it was these very extreme communities but what we found about masculinity and these regressive ideas about what it means to be a man and um the distinction between or the suppression of women in this context taps into the more mainstream uh version of Manosphere that is present very much on social media which and to give a working definition I think I would say that it refers to um like a network of online communities that just circulate regressive ideas about gender and um male superiority um but what we draw on in the paper is that this it's it's this portrayal of the alpha male that is very present in the in the manosphere where men are promoted as having to be dominant sexually successful and physically powerful as well and and in in our study we found that testosterone was then portrayed or sold as like the the key or the super actor to achieving this alpha male status um I think um listening to you talk I keep coming back to all of the similarities with diet culture hey so it's you know the idea of quick fixes and that women are also supposed to be all sorts of things but also thin and uh and you know I don't want to say that diet culture doesn't um impact and target men also or all sorts you know all genders all bodies really but um it's really it it feels like all of the stuff that I read in your paper and all of the like tapping into insecurities and thinking about how you can be a better person and the idea of there being quick fixes even though quick fixes aren't perhaps as morally acceptable as doing the work you know is there a doing the work version of testosterone I don't know what that would look like but do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Like I know that there's like the the kind of doing it naturally is supposed to be somehow better.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

I think the um the yaxu position of of thinness or diet culture for for women is is very interesting because it it speaks to social media as promoting a certain way to be a good person or a good citizen or which I think is really interesting. And about doing testosterone the hard work of testosterone I think was present in some of the posts that emphasized um that emphasized fitness or gym culture. But I think it was still sort of medicalized because you were saying if you do not fit this description you you can achieve this by going to the gym more often or getting better sleep or this whole longevity um uh space but it was still kind of if you do not fit these frames you're you're basically sick. But I think that doing the hard work was more tapping into like longevity adjacent spaces of of the social media.

Biohacking, Diets, And “Doing It Naturally”

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah because I was curious about this so have looked a few things up and I guess I will thank you for having my algorithm now will pump me full of all sorts of things through testosterone. But um I wonder whether there is it seems to me that the testoster this testosterone space is closer to some of the um crisper biohacking sort of highly sort of scientistic and um uh the I guess the the Nicholas rose that which you draw on the sort of biomedicalization because I was looking up um yeah I looked up you know is there a diet because I'm quite interested in food and food cultures and these sorts of things and because as you mentioned there are some needs for people to lift their testosterone but a lot of the at least the foods this is just you know through a few seemingly reputable looking uh sources talking about the foods that increase testosterone I was kind of expecting have you heard of a guy called the liver king? Yes today yeah thinking a couple days ago yeah so he's part of the manager and so I was expecting that kind of like you've got to r eat raw offal and livers and testicles and things like that but the diets are you know what one could say you know kind of feminized foods of like salmon and um broccoli and you know things like that are a pretty sort of regular not these extreme dude um and carbs you know which are you know often downplayed um again through these sort of evolutionary narratives like grain brain and and all this sort of stuff but um yeah I was also I guess just piggybacking on what Jane said this idea of doing it naturally but I do wonder whether some like that liver king guy I don't know if we're gonna get sued but he's definitely not doing many things naturally if I look at his body like I think he's embracing um all that science has to offer to boost his body I think it's when you when you um I'm right now I'm doing a project similar to this one but looking into menopause and uh the narratives that are are prevalent in in this um content targeting women and there's a lot about dying dieting there um so which is broadly looking into menopause treatments and I think half of it is about diets uh while it wasn't as prevalent for the testosterone uh products I've seen here um but for menopause and I wonder if there's like something about targeting women for diet and then the bros gotta go to the gym or you know um but I think that the diet thing is is super interesting how you can do it naturally just by eating certain certain things and then villainizing other food groups or um but I wonder if there's something to do with gender there and gender stereotypes in terms of it's perhaps more um legitimate for women to be dieting than perhaps it isn't seen as as masculine. Yeah because when it comes to the ispic side of things, you know, as Jane was alluding to earlier there's the you know well that's the quick fix you should really be out there doing the work in the gym and eating right and those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

I think the the villainizing of larger bodies and this testosterone was something I was super interested in and was trying to um just uh put small um parts of in the paper too because I couldn't leave it out because I thought it was so horrible that if you have a large body as a man, you can Be masculine, uh, which I thought was a horrible medicalization of different types of bodies.

Manosphere Influence And Alpha Archetypes

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Totally. I um I I talked to Chris about this the other day, Emma. I don't know if you've heard about it, but I was um I was I was discussing your paper with one of my kids who um is just kind of interested in stuff and whatever. We were talking about low T and I asked them if it was something they'd come across, and they were like, Oh, yeah, that's the whole thing about that you're not supposed to get a receipt when you go to the shop because the paper that the uh receipts are printed on have estrogen in them, and I'm like, What? Like anyway, and I was like, No, I think we're talking, oh I'm you know, it was just like here is something that my smart child has completely fundamentally misunderstood, and I looked it up and it's true. So all of the boys in um in my kids' high school won't touch receipt paper because God forbid that they get some lady germs in them. I don't know quite what, yeah. So um, I think that's possibly speaks to the reach of the manosphere, hey. So so there's um I don't think uh young people who are seeking that stuff out, but it is um definitely part of their just part of their milieu, I guess. Um, and a similar thing, uh I had a friend who was talking about the 12-year-old who was using some of the language, uh, you know, that looks maxing guy, that clavicular, I don't even know how you say his name, but it it all just seems so deeply unpleasant. But but his his vocabulary, his very specific vocabulary, or the very specific vocabulary associated with this kind of looks maxing thing that's going on in the manosphere is now becoming very mainstream, such that my friend's 12-year-old was using some of that vocab, like not really understanding what it meant, but but that it's just now in the common vernacular. So that's more of a comment than a question, I guess. But um, I guess there is so much going on with this, but it all seems also to be targeted at cis men and women, and you know, there we seem not to talk about testosterone as part of gender affirming care, you know, or maybe that's just a whole other corner of the internet that is not something I'm across. I don't know. Did you did you find anything in your I mean, are they just completely separate spheres?

Teen Vernacular And Everyday Reach

SPEAKER_01 46:57

I we actually did not encounter a single post about um about gender affirming care. Um which is quite interesting, which I didn't really think about before now. That it's it's it's intriguing why we didn't see any of that. But in terms of like the cis hetero appeal, what I thought was really interesting here is that the content we identified was uh homosocial or like homoerotic. It was men who were appealing to men, um, but targeting primarily heterosexual men and heterosexual desire. Um, but they were they would present very odd clothes with erection showing or like very sex highly sexualized content with men, not women, um, but um but targeting um heterosexual men. Um so I think that was kind of an interesting um aspect of the content, but we um didn't really see any in terms of gender affirming care. Um only that these messages just generally repress alternative gender expressions, I think, and are quite regressive in terms of trans people's rights.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah, well I was just looking up some of that looks maxing stuff, and um Yeah, the men aren't alright. Especially the um Yeah, there's uh a lot of And this is where I think I mean I I wouldn't say that it's there's been a lot of really important work done uh in feminist critiques of medicine uh for a long time. And I think um the the impact of these things on men and the way that and and young men in particular and self-esteem and all this sort of stuff. Um I th I guess, you know, it's uh perhaps an obvious point to say, but you know, the the manosphere and the dominance of these are playing very much into those insecurities around what it means to be a man. And we didn't get to the formativity of gender and all of those sorts of uh things that you bring into your analysis, but I think um you know, this work and then yeah, on this point about trans care as well, and just the I think the way that uh testosterone buying or playing into that current politics around gender binary and that yeah, like that quote that I read out that you know they were three points away from being female because of this um testosterone reading rather than seeing the hormonal diversity.

Missing Gender-Affirming Care Narratives

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Um yeah, it's it's very interesting. There was um a recent report from the Movember organization that um uh surveyed, I think it was around 300 3,000 sorry um young men, and they found that they they did perceive some of the masculinity content on social media as motivational, for example, for going to the gym or uh being aware of these receipts or so. Um, but it was also associated to um so viewing masculinity content online was associated with um poorer health outcomes and negative attitudes towards women and more uh stereotypical beliefs about the roles of men and women and what it means to be a man. Um, and what I found especially disturbing from the report was that showing emotions was also framed here, are perceived by these young men as a failure in men. Um, so I think although we also discussed with the Kim Kardashian MRI example before, that people may recognize these things as harmful or non-beneficial, but either way, it has perhaps some type of indirect effect on culture and and our awareness about certain things or our hopes and fears about health.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Yeah, that's probably a good depressing place to start.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

I was gonna say we should end on something less depressing. Anyone have good news?

SPEAKER_02 51:31

Um no, actually.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

But no, it has been uh wonderful, wonderful reading uh this paper and um having this conversation with you. Um and yeah, I wish you all the best in your future uh research. Um and yeah, look forward to hearing what you find around uh menopause as well.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

So yep, come back to it and you're talking to us about the menopause when you've uh finished that one.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Oh, I would love to read this piece of flecture. Thank you so much.