Does testosterone matter?
The “male sex hormone,” as they are quick to point out, is present in women, too. And there’s not much evidence that guys with a big supply can pump more iron or run any faster than their “low-T” compadres.
But the implications of the T skeptics’ argument run much deeper than that. If testosterone isn’t as potent as believed, then biological explanations for differences in male and female behavior would lose a lot of their power. And culture and expectations would emerge as the primary drivers of traditional gender roles.
But alluring as that idea may be, Carole Hooven, a lecturer in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard and author of the new book “T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us,” isn’t having it.
Early in her scientific career, she witnessed what looked like the raw, unmediated power of testosterone up close, tracking chimpanzees in the Kibale Forest of western Uganda. At one point, she watched an alpha male named Imoso savagely beat a female named Outamba with a stick — making her the first researcher to witness a nonhuman primate using a weapon in that way in the wild.
