Michael Tesler
  • September 28, 2026

  • Michael Tesler, political science, explains in this essay for Good Authority

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“Like it or not, testosterone is now a part of the political vernacular. Some pundits even describe the male sex hormone as “MAGA’s latest obsession.”

The Trump administration has accordingly moved to make testosterone prescriptions and treatments more widely accessible. The FDA is revising testosterone guidelines, including removing the controlled-substance classification and changing the warning labels for testosterone replacement therapies.

In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that “warfighters” over 30 will have their testosterone levels checked annually so that they can stay on the “leading edge of lethality.” The Pentagon issued the clinical guidelines for this program last week. Republicans have also broadly disparaged the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas as “Low-T Talarico,” in an effort to paint him as insufficiently masculine. 

The GOP’s newfound fascination with testosterone as “a cultural proxy for masculinity” echoes broader themes on social media. A recent study of “gender representations in social media content about ‘low T’” looked at influencers’ and wellness companies’ aggressive online marketing of testosterone treatments. The authors concluded these efforts to target male insecurities “were closely mirrored to those promoted within the manosphere, where hormone levels were being presented as a measure of manhood.”

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