BUZZ
It’s about ‘purging the military of anyone [Pete Hegseth] feels is not by birthright entitled to its privileges’
Progressive politicians and various feminist academics recently chided Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that U.S. servicemen age 30 and over diagnosed with low testosterone would be eligible for testosterone replacement therapy, or TRT.
California Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff compared the announcement to Hegseth coming out “in favor of gender-affirming care.”
Similarly, the Financial Times doesn’t see a difference between minors getting life-altering procedures and adult military men facing afflictions like lethargy and loss of muscle.
It opens its article about the issue with the following:
“The Trump administration has denounced puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors as ‘chemical mutilation.’ This week, it made clear it has no such qualms about injecting US soldiers with testosterone.”
The Times says the testosterone issue is merely the latest line of attack for “cultural critics” of the Trump administration, who’ve also made light of so-called “Mar-a-Lago Face” — “synonymous with fillers, Botox and ultra-white veneers” — along with Trump’s “penchant” for “hyper-feminine women with [those] unmistakable cosmetic enhancements.”
UCLA Gender Studies Professor Juliet Williams, who like the Times apparently doesn’t see a difference between TRT and the administration’s alleged “policies targeting gender-nonconforming people,” called the matter “completely cartoonish” and “gender as performance.”
“From the start, Hegseth has been about purging the military of anyone he feels is not by birthright entitled to its privileges. It’s a way of putting men back in the centre, with respect to the military,” Williams, whose research interests include “feminist theory and politics, masculinities studies, and gender discrimination law,” said.
MORE: Harvard says masculinity and testosterone are not ‘connected’
Brunel University’s Meredith Jones (pictured), editor of the volume Performing the Penis: Phalluses in 21st Century Cultures, said the issue is part of a “backlash against gender fluidity, the trans movement [and] homosexuality.”
Jones also compared the matter to when the “Rosie the Riveters” of World War II “were pushed back into traditional domestic roles” after the conflict.
New York University Sociology Professor Kathleen Gerson said “There’s no question that there’s increasing uncertainty among men about their place in the world, but the answer is not returning to a time when physical strength was the determining factor of who did what. The answer is not testosterone.”
University of Warwick Philosophy Professor Heather Widdows, whose expertise lies in “global ethics, bioethics, moral philosophy and feminist philosophy,” said of MAGA’s alleged “testosterone fixation” that “appearance has become a dominant value, such that who we are is how we look.
“We are literally writing ourselves on our bodies, moving from the cut of the dress to the cut of the breast.”
Michael Kimmel, a gender studies sociologist and founder of Stony Brook University’s Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, said Hegseth and other administration personnel “are true believers in gender politics circa 1950” where men went to work and women stayed home “having babies and taking care of the house.”
MORE: Mayo Clinic professor suspended after saying testosterone improves athletic performance
