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http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone?act=2#play[1]

Excerpt:

Griffin Hansbury: My first injection was a pretty large one of 2 ccs of 200 milligram strength depo-testosterone, which is a fairly high amount. Just to give you a sense of how much that is, the average amount of testosterone in an average male body is between 300 and 1,000 nanograms per deciliter of blood. After that shot, and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanograms per deciliter, so that I have the testosterone of two high-testosterone men in my body at once.  Alex Blumberg: You have the testosterone of two linebackers.  Griffin Hansbury: Exactly. Exactly. That's a lot. That's a lot of T. And what's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is, that it happens within a few days really. The world just changes.  Alex Blumberg: What were some of the changes that you didn't expect?  Griffin Hansbury: The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city. And I would see a woman on the subway, and I would think, she's attractive. I'd like to meet her. What's that book she's reading? I could talk to her. This is what I would say. There would be a narrative. There would be this stream of language. It would be very verbal. After testosterone, there was no narrative. There was no language whatsoever. It was just, I would see a woman who was attractive or not attractive. She might have an attractive quality, nice ankles or something, and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me. But that was enough to basically just flood my mind with aggressive, pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn't turn it off. I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched, turned to sex. . . .  Alex Blumberg: What did you do with that? I mean, what did you think?  Griffin Hansbury: Well, I felt like a monster a lot of the time. And it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. Suddenly, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast. And I would really berate myself for it. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue, there was a woman walking in front of me. And she was wearing this little skirt and this little top. And I was looking at her ass. And I kept saying to myself, don't look at it, don't look at it. And I kept looking at it. And I walked past her. And this voice in my head kept saying, turn around to look at her breasts. Turn around, turn around, turn around. And my feminist, female background kept saying, don't you dare, you pig. Don't turn around. And I fought myself for a whole block, and then I turned around and checked her out.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (2 children) | Copy Link

Unsurprising, really, and why women don't understand men. I'd love to be able to track population T levels over the ages and see if our industrialized lifestyle and diet are having negative effects on T for more men lately.

Also interesting that elsewhere in the interview he says he only became interested in science after his treatment. Puts a new spin on the Tim Hunt and Matt Taylor kerfuffles. Perhaps the pursuit of science is gender-imbalanced for a reason.

[–]SFofallplaces0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

The science thing. I was surprised by that, too. I would have imagined it was an entire brain wiring thing, but the simple addition of one hormone into the bloodstream started her understanding science. Wild.

[–]NahDudeFkThat7 points8 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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