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Hegseth’s Testosterone Program Is a Disservice to Men

By measuring manliness by muscle and testosterone levels, the defense secretary is peddling damaging stereotypes and legitimizing a narrow view of masculinity.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on July 27, 2026.

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new program to add testosterone testing to regular health checkups for “war fighters” and to offer testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) for anyone with low levels. Proper testosterone levels, he argued, would “optimize” performance and preserve America’s “lethality” on the battlefield. “We have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage,” he said in the July 15 video, which was titled “High T Department of War.”

In the days following, journalists and scientists questioned the medical soundness of this new initiative. Measuring testosterone is notoriously tricky, and there is disagreement on when TRT is needed. But whether this testosterone program will tangibly enhance performance is almost beside the point. Instead, this announcement indicates the arrival of a particular politic of testosterone at the highest rungs of power within the US government.

Rebecca Jordan-Young, a professor at Barnard College and the author of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, called Hegseth’s new program “another chapter in a very long love affair with the idea that testosterone can solve any perceived crisis of masculinity,” in an e-mail to me.

By rolling out a testosterone program using this language, the Pentagon is legitimizing ideological beliefs about biology, bodies, and masculinity that are deeply harmful. There’s already been a long-standing cultural link between testosterone and violence, including sexual violence. Now political pundits are saying the quiet part out loud. In a Fox News segment discussing the new program, host Jesse Watters issued a warning to women “on base” or at port calls in Asia: “These guys are gonna be wild animals, and you better watch out.”

Under Trump, this language is particularly disturbing, as allegations of abuse and misogyny persist against many of the officials and lawmakers he has lifted into power, not to mention those against Hegseth and the president himself.

Associating testosterone with “lethality” is “a damaging narrative,” Carole Hooven, evolutionary biologist lecturer at Harvard and author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us, told me. “That’s not what testosterone is about. It’s not about killing other humans or killing other animals.”

This rhetoric didn’t happen overnight. Although right-leaning podcasters like Joe Rogan have proudly announced their TRT use, and even RFK Jr. and Dax Shepard have openly discussed their testosterone use to bulk up and slow down aging, the idea that men’s behavior can be explained by testosterone actually goes back thousands of years.

The idea that a man’s “vigor” resides in the testes dates back to ancient Rome, when castration was........

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