I have a friend who calls it ‘Boy Trash,’ putting it in the same category as Point Break, The Rock, Face/Off, and the spiritual successor to Heat, The Town, all of which offer a basic plot, lots of action, and usually a smattering of Men’s Mental Health to make it feel like you haven’t just been watching two men run around shooting fake guns at each other for three hours. I think Heat is too good to be associated with the word ‘trash’ in any way, but if I relent and play the game then Heat is surely the alpha and omega of ‘Boy Trash,’ a divine dreamscape for any man who is tired of the world asking him to have patience and coherent emotions.

I was reminded of this when I found myself watching it (again) for a sold-out anniversary screening in central London. Sure enough, just like every other time I’ve watched it, each male character manages to fuck over his female love interest in some way or another with his own stupid, kamikaze compulsions. Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) mumbles: “The sun rises and sets with her, man,” about his beautiful wife Charlene (Ashley Judd), but still destroys her life through anger, gambling, and crime regardless. Even as Trejo (Danny Trejo) lays dying he chokes out the words, “My Anna’s gone, gone.” But she’s only gone, brutally slain in the room next door, because he refuses to stop getting involved in crazy heists.

The arc of Donald Breedan (Dennis Heybert) summarizes the doomed romanticism and inevitable catastrophe of Heat better than any other in the film, despite him playing a relatively miniscule part in its plot. Freshly released from prison, Donald is subjected to a degrading life of parole, finding himself at the whims of a horrible boss at a local cafe, who steals his pay and treats him like shit. 

Yet through it all, his partner Lillian (Kim Staunton) is there supporting him, driving him to work, telling him how proud she is that he’s trying to turn his life around, loving him through the fug of downtrodden self doubt he is engulfed by.

“In the world of Heat, there are no stars, only city lights, which twinkle on indifferently in the background of every scene, like a distant father the men in the film can’t stop trying to impress”

Then Neil McCauley catches Donald unawares at work and asks him to be his getaway driver. He thinks ‘Fuck it, why not,’ beats up his boss, and heads off to get shot dead by the police. He is the quintessential male character in Heat, and maybe in all ‘Boy Trash’ movies: tragically compelled to throw it all away in an instant because consciously or not he has sworn to live by the film’s immortal maxim, as so memorably incanted by Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore): “The action is the juice.”

Cheritto himself has a wife, kids, and investments, but when faced with the prospect of one more bank robbery with the lads, he just can’t resist. In the world of Heat, there are no stars, only city lights, which twinkle on indifferently in the background of every scene, like a distant father the men in the film can’t stop trying to impress. There are no lofty aspirations beyond the perfume cloud of the here and now. Nothing to aspire to except the chance to live forever in one boundless moment where you act first and don’t think about the consequences, because standing still is a great way to realize that existence is too absurd and painful to bear.

Again: The action is the juice.

As a certified millennial navel gazer, I can’t help but relate to footsoldiers like Donald, Chris, and Michael. They might feel like they are raging against forces beyond their control, but really it’s just themselves. And rather than change course, their reaction is to plough their lives headfirst into the nearest wall. In reality, there is a lot of love on the table for these men, and there is much that they can actually control. They all have jobs, roles to play, friends, lovers, and at least a modicum of self determination. But they just don’t care, because they know best, even if knowing best means believing you’re the worst. 

Is this behavior mindful, considerate, or in any way conducive to long-term happiness? No. Like nearly all of the men in the film, they die violently and without ceremony, leaving behind them a trail of grief and ruin. But this is what makes Heat so great. The fact that it doesn’t try to sermonize. Not really. It is, after all, a three-hour action movie. At some point, the moral lesson has to stand aside. Instead, it leans into the adrenalizing, verboten joys of living in a way that is both selfish and self destructive. Diving deep into the various written tributes published this week, acknowledgement of this seemed lacking. Yet there is a reason why Heat has been calling a certain type of man towards it like a siren song for the last three decades.

The reason is the action, and the action is the juice. 

If you could summarize the mindset that McCauley and Hanna share, you might quote one of the former’s key lines: “I am alone. I am not lonely.” The two main characters’ all-consuming death drives eventually lead them to the only true moment of psychic connection they experience in the film: when McCauley is bleeding out with one of Hanna’s bullets lodged in his chest.

“I had to take the emotional quotient to that exact moment when McCauley is dying, and he’s fortunate enough to die with somebody [Hanna] he’s that close to, the only person on the planet that has the same kind of mindset he has,” explained Michael Mann ten years ago, in an interview with Rolling Stone to mark Heat‘s last decadal birthday. “But at the same time, he’s also the person who shot him, and that duality is not a contradiction—they’re both true.”

Whether you call it Bushido, the Art of War, or just the warrior’s code, men love an abstract set of moral and behavioral guidelines that draw them together and sanctify their mutual annihilation. In Heat, nothing else matters to McCauley and Hanna except their shared obsession, which takes over completely to the point that everything else—love, happiness, reason—falls by the wayside. It’s a hair’s breadth from being intensely romantic, like a gothic novel. Wuthering Heights with guns. Jane Eyre for the fellas. 

“Being self absorbed, reckless, and borderline insane usually does end badly”

The two characters blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist. By the end, you’re not really sure which is which. McCauley is a dangerous recidivist, willing to kill civilians and abuse women for his goals. He lives by the other big rule from Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” Yet you root for him. Hanna is trying to prevent crime and capture the bad guys, yet his determination is disconcerting and hard to cheer for. He’s on his third marriage, constantly coked up, and so neglectful of his wife and step-daughter that she attempts suicide. When he and his adversary sit down for a chat over a coffee, in a scene widely lauded as one of the finest in modern cinema, it’s like two old friends with a toxic addiction problem gearing up to spur it on for what they know will be the last time.

And that’s kind of the point. No one wins. Being self absorbed, reckless, and borderline insane usually does end badly. But it’s still impossible not to idolize the heroes of Heat as they soar and thrust forward into their beloved moments, bursting out the other side of those moments like clenched firsts through the same brown paper bag, the beautiful, exhilarating moments that they live and ultimately die for, ill-fated men of action who go out on their swords and in great suits. 

In a turgid millennial world, with its eight-hour screen times and miserly way with volition, you’re largely given two choices: accept whatever shit comes your way or ineffectually complain about it. Frustrated, the latter often becomes something else, then misdirected: ire aimed at the wrong people, the ones closest to us. We lash out and fuck ourselves over then refuse to take responsibility, which just wants to make us lash out even more. We’re stuck in an endless, impotent loop, so what’s the answer? 

Maybe it’s recalibrating the way we think about the world. Realizing that the end result—a singing balance sheet, a property portfolio, a racehorse, a yacht, or a trophy partner—isn’t really the thing to aim for at all, and that actually, it’s the aiming itself that’s the whole point. Maybe it’s as simple as getting out and doing something. Putting on a gray three-piece suit, a hockey mask, or some 1990s sunglasses. Learning about complex metals, yearning, or smashing up a TV. Going out and having a life, even if it kills you.

Because if the action really is the juice, who cares how it ends?

Follow Tom Usher on Instagram @_tomusher

The post ‘The Action Is the Juice’: Why Self-Destructive Men Love ‘Heat’ appeared first on VICE.

Well, a new study suggests this might be wildly optimistic. According to research published in Sex Roles journal, men on vegan diets are often perceived as “lacking in masculinity”. This perception seemed to cut across gender, too – meaning this wasn’t just the Andrew Tate bro crowd calling vegan guys “gay”. A significant proportion of men participating in the study reportedly felt that male vegans are often viewed as physically weaker and less masculine, and a number of women participants believed there was truth to these stereotypes. 

Even weirder, some vegans thought this too. In a clear case of vegan on vegan prejudice, the study found negative beliefs about male vegans – such as being unmanly or weak – were harboured by a number of female vegans. “The female vegans themselves were surprised that they have such stereotypical thinking. After all, on a rational level they know that a vegan diet is not related to a person’s masculinity,” the study’s co-author Dominika Adamczyk tells PsyPost. “I think this observation further underscores how strong the connection between meat-eating and masculinity is.”

This seems like a fairly wild discovery, and a blow for all the vegan dudes out there. If even vegan chicks think you’re a wimpy soy boy for spurning animal products, what hope is there?! But does this study really hold water? Do women think vegan men are less masculine? More importantly, do guy vegans give girls the ick?

Read Next

Eating Strangers’ Leftovers Is Fine. In Fact, Everyone Should Do It

To get to the bottom of this, VICE undertook a bit of rigorous scientific research of our own. Basically, we asked loads of women if veganism was a turn off.

“Yes,” one woman responded immediately and decisively to an Instagram call-out. “Yeah, hate to say it but I love a man that eats meat,” another shot over. “Yes, is that bad?” another asked, before admitting she was speaking as “an ex-vegan” herself. “I do get the ick a little, but that probably says more about me than them,” a fourth woman confessed. “I worry that their farts will smell all Quorn-y and I love cooking steak so, it’s a defo ick for me,” a fifth reported, definitely revealing more about herself than anything else in the process.

So far, it’s not looking good for the vegan guys. But surely Zoomers care less about all this than Boomers? Veganism is meant to have been “normalised” now, isn’t it? Beyoncé and Jay Z are vegan goddamn it! There must be a bunch of ladies out there who don’t always associate vegan guys with weakness and flatulence.

Next I turn to that infamous source of infinite wisdom: the Girls’ Group Chats. “I don’t see a vegan man as less masculine and it definitely wouldn’t give me the ick,” Phoebe, 29, says in Quorn Guys’ defence. “To be honest, I’d quite like it because I’d probably end up eating healthier.” A similar line of thinking is advanced by 31-year-old Amy: “Being vegan might mean they’re a better, more creative cook, which is a pretty hot trait in my book.” Hannah, 30, agrees on the turn on. And now I’m left wondering if this says more about early millennials who were raised on cooking shows and now fancy Jeremy Allen White in The Bear, than it does #AllWomen.

“They’re more likely to be cooks who are used to adapting, which is also pretty hot stuff,” Hannah says. “I have lots of friends with intolerances and allergies, and I have other friends who struggle to cook for them because they’re not used to adapting ingredients.” 

So vegan guys are adaptable and good in the kitchen? That might not win over the Andrew Tate bros as signs of alpha masculinity, but it might help them actually get girlfriends IRL.

Read Next

Vegans Tell Us The Highs and Lows of Dating Non-Vegans

Don’t get comfortable too soon though blokes, because not everyone is sold on this. When I turn the question over to the wider internet ecosystem, 28-year-old Martha, who uses a fake name for privacy reasons like some others in this piece, is quick to pitch in on Twitter. “Honestly for me it’s just unsexy,” she says. “Also cooking, eating out and being open to trying new kinds of food is such a big part of what I enjoy doing. Veganism is an immediate blocker to doing that”. Eager to recover her reputation as a modern enlightened woman, Martha adds that she admires “the discipline and the moral, ethical cause” behind veganism, but this doesn’t translate to desire: “It’s just not sexy to me.”

Again though, there’s another side to this story. “Having a boyfriend passionately doing Veganuary right now, it will not surprise you when I say no,” my old school friend Molly, 30, says, when I commandeer our hang out to grill her on whether vegan guys are an ick. “To me, it shows they have a strong moral compass and believe in something. It almost doesn’t matter that it’s about being vegan specifically, but it’s just a good indicator that they care about something.”

Perhaps the real issue here is what gals are comparing vegan guys to. Are they the adaptable counterpart to a boring “meat and two veg” guy, or are they hard-to-please sticklers who won’t take you out to a new trendy small plates place? It feels important to ask: How sexy is the real alternative to vegan dudes – all-meat, all-macho guys?

“I genuinely think I’d find it more of an ick if someone refused veggies and would only have meat,” says 31-year-old Rebecca – whose opinion comes all the way from Australia, proving our scientific study’s global reach. “In fact, it would give me mega ick.” This isn’t because protein shake, bulking dudes make her baulk either. “I don’t mind a bit of a gym bro,” she says. “But sole focus on meat just says man child to me. It also kind of gives caveman vibes.”

In a world where people still think Jordan Peterson is some kind of role model – even though he literally put himself into a coma through his diet of only beef and Benzos – this feels like an important dividing line.

“Raw meat feels grossly masculine,” 27-year-old Chloe says, seemingly in agreement with Rebecca. But she also raises a new point, which isn’t really about diet at all, but about vibes. “Veganism is a huge ick, for men and women,” she says, “because I think it’s so preachy.” It’s this that’s the turn off, she explains. Veganism might be more popular now, and may no longer draw such intense eye-rolls from older relatives, but what we have now is not much better, Chloe suggests. “I think influencers have kind of infected my association with vegans,” she says. “Vegan influencers are always like, ‘Look at this Bali lifestyle I have where I promote veganism and say it cures cancer!’” she adds, with her own eye-roll. Essentially, diet and masculinity works on a spectrum: “Red meat blokes are more of an incel-y ick, where vegan men is, like, I don’t want to join your sex cult of loving celery.”

Read Next

James Cameron Says Men Should Eat Vegan to Get Better Boners

So Peterson-lite carnivores: bad. Preachy, pseudoscience white vegans in Bali: also bad. Is the real ick just overdoing it then? As in, making your exclusion diet such a big deal you become, well, a dick?

Flick, 54, offers some balanced words of wisdom. “With the likes of Woody Harrelson and Joaquin Phoenix as vegan male role models there’s definitely not a short supply of literally hot vegan men,” she says. “Also lots of athletes are discovering vast energy benefits to plant based eating, so we now have super-fit, hot vegan men too.” This has to be better than the alternative, she suggests. “I would struggle to be attracted to an old school meat-eating man because it’s all a bit last century… emotionally, physically, spiritually.” Flick finds someone taking responsibility for what goes in their body and the planet extremely attractive – “as long as they don’t go on about it.”

This seems to be the resounding conclusion of our research: Everything is fine as long as you don’t make it everyone else’s problem. As Sarah, who’s a vegan herself, says: “As with literally any ideology, if the seriousness doesn’t come with humour and vital absence of preachy sanctimoniousness then it’s unbearable. Also nobody wants to be talking about anyone’s dietary requirements or choices all the time, it should be basically invisible.”

So there you have it folks: low maintenance vegans only. Basically, it’s not what you eat, it’s the way you eat it. In the grand scheme of things, diet probably isn’t the deciding factor of whether you shag or not anyway. As Jas puts it, “I really couldn’t care less what anyone puts in their mouth”. How’s that for enlightened?

@eloisehendy

The post We Asked Women If Vegan Men Give Them the Ick appeared first on VICE.

A few weeks back, I felt my eyesight getting hazier. I went to the optometrist for an eye test and, weirdly, the results indicated that my prescription had decreased, so I’d need weaker glasses. I was as confused as my doctor, but after a bit of looking into this, it was determined that testosterone was behind the changes.

As strange as it might seem, hormone levels really can have an impact on an individual’s eyesight. In cis men, this is largely because age can slow down the rate at which our body produces androgens, a group of male sex hormones including testosterone. One knock-on effect of this reduction is blurry eyesight.

For the past two months I’ve been using testosterone gel. Usually applied to the lower abdomen and absorbed through the skin, these gels top up my T levels and are prescribed by doctors.

Prior to using it, I read up on possible side effects that come with the use of gels like AndroGel: increased muscle mass, shortened temper, or a deeper voice. I’ve also discovered some other personal effects to add to that list: the structure of my hair has changed, I swear my feet have grown by a few millimetres, and, happily, my eyesight has improved.

People use testosterone gel and clinically administered testosterone injections for a variety of reasons. Everyone reacts very differently to the treatment, and since there is very little in the way of public discussion about the topic, those side effects can be surprising. We asked gel users – cis, trans and intersex – about their experiences with the drug and all of the remarkable things that come with it.

‘It doesn’t take much for me to start crying: put “Bambi” on and the tears will be streaming down my face’

I was diagnosed with HIV in 1999 and first put on medication in 2001. After a few years on the drugs, I became increasingly fatigued. It started with coming home on Friday evening and then spending most of the weekend sleeping. As time went by, I’d already be so tired on Wednesday that I had to drag myself to work for the rest of the week. This is because the medication I was on blocks your energy supply at a cellular level. 

I had contacts in San Francisco at the time, and someone there pointed out a study to me in which anabolic steroids [artificial testosterone] were used together with HIV medication to fight that fatigue. My internist approved the treatment and I have been using testosterone ever since. I do it in 12 week blocks – I apply the gel for three months and then have the next three off.

The testosterone has given me enough energy to be able to do things again. Another thing that struck me is that I need to be careful with my emotions while applying the gel. It doesn’t take much for me to start crying: put Bambi on and the tears will be streaming down my face. Fortunately, I’m not prone to depression, but I can at times wallow in self-pity. I really need to actively get myself together in moments like that. Testosterone is also the reason that I can’t allow myself to get too angry: I tend to oversimplify things and become rude. If I start to speak softly, that means I’m really angry. Then I have to restrain myself.

I also notice a difference in my sexuality. During the last two weeks without testosterone, when the fatigue starts to kick in, I’m really looking forward to applying the gel again. – Hans Verhoeven, 58, is a self-declared rainbow activist and owns the online store Gays & Gadgets

‘The first six months of using the gel really felt like being 12 all over again. I even started listening to the music I liked back then!’

I’ve been applying testosterone gel for about seven years now. Back then, trans healthcare looked very different from the way it does today. The gender clinic I was a patient at expected me to start using gel, and I thought, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ A decade ago it was really important, as a trans man, that you were able to convey as much masculinity as possible. I don’t think that way anymore, though. 

I’m still taking testosterone, it has had some very welcome effects. I don’t get my period anymore, which is great because that was really hard for me to live with. My voice dropped, and I think my beard looks cool. If I had to start the process again, I’d still use testosterone gel, but as far as I’m concerned it isn’t an absolute must.

In fact, the first six months of using the gel really felt like being 12 all over again. Everything sucked. I even started listening to the music I liked back then! Essentially you go into a kind of second puberty: You have mood swings, you’re constantly hungry and always horny. I’d wake up and the middle of the night and nudge my girlfriend and tell her I was in the mood. She’d just send me to the couch and tell me to take care of it myself. Also, my fat distribution changed – all my fat moved away from my hips and ass to my belly. 

Physically, I feel like I won the genetic lottery. Any man wanting to look more masculine would kill to have my beard. I was quite hairy anyway, but it took time to get used to it. Eating can be a challenge now. I can’t eat yoghurt anymore and soup is impossible to get out of my beard. I had to change how I performed oral sex, too. – Bappie Kortram, 30, is a YouTuber and podcaster

‘I became hairy and my penis started to grow. Suddenly, I was part of the group’

When I was 16, I looked 12. I didn’t hit puberty. I had male genitalia but I didn’t get secondary sex characteristics like a deeper voice. After undergoing a few tests, it turned out I had Kallmann syndrome, meaning the substance that helps with the production of testosterone isn’t present in my body.

The doctors put me on testosterone, administered by injection. I’d have these huge peaks after those injections. I’d get them done on Fridays because I played football on Saturdays and the testosterone made me a lot faster and stronger. And after two months on them, my voice started to drop and it gave me those other secondary sex characteristics: I became hairy and my penis started to grow. Suddenly, I was part of the group, and that can be so important.

In general, things were going too fast so I was eventually put on testosterone gel rather than getting the injections. Not so long ago, my internist prescribed me a lower dose of [injected] testosterone. My reaction was, ‘Oh no, I’m finally able to keep up with the men in the gym!’ I didn’t want to give up that feeling of pride. Fortunately, she was very understanding and assured me that I’d still be able to keep up with the other guys. 

Over the course of my life, I’ve thought a lot about what masculinity is. I can’t really pinpoint when I feel like a man because so many of those characteristics are social constructs. But I cry a lot less now when I’m on testosterone. – Pepijn Schoneveld, 36, is an actor, comedian and podcaster

The post ‘My Feet Have Grown’: The Unexpected Side Effects of Taking Testosterone appeared first on VICE.

Eating disorders can affect people of all ages, genders and sizes. But when people think of the term, they mostly conjure up images of young, very thin girls with anorexia. Men are almost never part of these discussions, especially if they’re adults.

These stereotypes are reflected in medical research, too – most studies on eating disorders focus on women with anorexia, with only 1 percent of peer-reviewed articles looking into men with the eating disorder. Our scientific understanding is also limited when it comes to similar disorders like bulimia, binge eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID).

It’s difficult to estimate just how prevalent eating disorders are among men. The most recent review of studies puts that number at 12.8 percent, but that could be an underestimate, according to Isabelle Plasmeijer, founder of the Dutch eating disorder treatment centre ISA Power. Men are just less likely to ask their doctors for help, she explains. One community that is particularly affected by the issue is queer men, who are more likely to develop an eating disorder than their straight counterparts.

Mike Megens, 26, used to have EDNOS, which stands for “eating disorder not otherwise specified”. This involves having symptoms of anorexia, bulimia or binge eating, but not quite meeting specific criteria, which means the eating disorder cannot be clearly categorised. 

Read Next

How to Deal With Baldness – From Men Who Know

Megens’s self-image changed as early as when he was in primary school. “I was a bit bigger than my classmates, so I regularly got comments about my weight,” he recalls. So he tried to lose some weight, and then even more when he started high school, which he saw as a new start. In retrospect, Megens realised his weight loss also had to do with his identity, because he was aware early on that he was attracted to boys. “Fortunately, my parents and my sister always supported me, but some other family members often joked about it, even though I wasn’t even out yet,” he says.

Losing weight was a way to protect himself: “If I had good grades, was nice and handsome and had a good body, my sexual orientation would be the only thing that was ‘not perfect’ in the eyes of others.” 

Megens managed to keep his eating disorder secret for a long time. He would eat in the evening, so his family wouldn’t notice. He had some specific requests, though. “I never wanted gravy over my food and a stew made me nervous,” he remembers. Later, he asked his parents to only serve him vegetables and potatoes, so he knew exactly how much he was eating. “I told them I didn’t like it otherwise and nobody asked about it.”

Ilias, 24, had an eating disorder for years before even realising it. (He asked to use an alias so he could share his story more freely.) Because he was struggling with other mental health issues at the time, when he was about 16, he doubted he had an eating disorder. He was treating his ADHD with Ritalin, a drug also often used by people with eating disorders to feel less hungry. On top of that, he later started using more and more drugs at parties, like MDMA, because he was in a bad place. “I went out almost every week and sometimes twice a week,” he says. “And then I wasn’t really hungry for half the week.” Eventually, he lost a lot of weight.

His girlfriend at the time made him realise something was off. “She told me I wasn’t taking good care of myself,” he says. “Not to criticise me, but out of concern. I was surprised because I thought I was just too fat, but her comment made me realise it wasn’t about that.”

Maurice Kaasjager, 16, also experienced doubts about his self-image at an early age. “My brothers often made jokes about my weight,” he says. “They didn’t do that to hurt me, but it stayed in my head.” His sister has a heart defect and his other brother has autism, so he was always the child who was supposed to be fine. “We didn’t talk much about our feelings at home, because we were always in a kind of survival mode,” he explains. 

He often compared his body to others’ and decided to work out in order to look more like them. “At first, I did innocent things like swapping sodas and sweets for water and exercising more,” he adds. “But then I ended up not eating anything at all on some days.” 

Kaasjager’s parents noticed his eating habits were changing and took him to a dietician. “I didn’t stick to the nutrition plan I got from her, because it gave me a kick to skip meals,” he says. “It sounds weird, but it felt good to have a goal – not eating – and achieve it. In reality, it only resulted in misery, but I didn’t realise that at the time.” He saw food as his enemy and on some days, he didn’t eat anything at all.

Ilias too is familiar with negative comments and “jokes”. He has family in Turkey, so he used to visit them every summer. And each year, he faced the same comments about his weight, whether he gained it or lost it. “I found it nasty that people were paying so much attention to my weight,” he says. “And no matter how thin I was, their comments made me start thinking of myself as fat.” 

At home, his parents would often give their opinions on his appearance without asking. “Sometimes it was about my body, which they thought I should work on, other times they didn’t like my hair or clothes,” he says. It even happened that strangers made comments about his body. “An unknown woman came up to me in a bar,” he remembers. “She felt my arms and said, ‘You should go to the gym more often and gain weight.’” 

In fact, the relationship between sports and eating disorders is complicated among men, and in very different ways than with women. As the male standard of beauty has become more and more muscular and sculpted, many guys feel the pressure to be buff. “The trend where men are rigid about their bodies and sports worries me too,” Plasmeijer sighs. Kaasjager confirms this: “We want to be big and are willing to exercise to achieve that.” During the pandemic, he could no longer play football and it affected his headspace, but it also had to do with the sudden absence of social contact and routine.  

That loss of a routine in daily life can fuel an eating disorder, too. According to Plasmeijer, the COVID crisis is a good example of this. “During that period, there was a lot of silence, emptiness and loneliness,” she says. “As a result, old traumas can resurface, and people deal with that in different ways. Some start exercising or dieting more, others eat a lot or very little. An eating disorder can fill the void at such times.”

Megens experienced a similarly challenging period in 2015, when he moved from his hometown in the south of the Netherlands to Amsterdam to study. “In Limburg, I thought I had control over my life, partly due to a certain routine, but also because I exercised a lot and paid close attention to what I ate,” he explains. “It sounds crazy, but the eating disorder also gave me a certain peace of mind.”

Read Next

We Asked Young Men: When Was the Last Time You Cried?

In Amsterdam, his life became less structured: no more school every day, more partying, and also less working out. Even though he kind of liked it, things went wrong: “It made my eating disorder worse, because I was trying to seize back control.”

No matter the triggers, all three interviewees linked their eating disorder to society’s definition of masculinity. “People often act as if eating disorders are women’s diseases, while I think many men struggle with this too,” Kaasjager argues. “Few men tell their stories because they’re ashamed. We want to be tougher, less vulnerable.” 

Ilias also didn’t feel like he could talk about his struggle with his family and friends. “Unfortunately, there isn’t enough space to talk about it,” he says. “In the eyes of many people, a man has to be strong, both mentally and physically.” As a man, Megen adds, you feel you can’t admit you’re vulnerable, “or that you care about your appearance”. 

One day in 2026, while visiting his parents, he read an article about someone with an eating disorder. “Although the story was about a woman, I recognised everything she described,” he says. “I looked at my mom and said, ‘Mum, this is exactly what I struggle with.” His parents tried to be understanding and support their son, but it was hard for them to grasp. “In their eyes, I was handsome and social, got good grades and had a nice life in Amsterdam,” Megens says.

Read Next

‘Bigorexia’ Is the Body Dysmorphia Men Can’t Talk About

Hhis friends were also surprised when he finally opened up to them. “They told me: ‘If a woman showed the same behaviour as you, we would definitely have noticed,’” he says. “That made some friends feel guilty, but I don’t blame anyone. For a very long time, I couldn’t even identify it myself.” 

Megens ended up going to therapy about three or four times a week, where he finally felt understood. “I remember my therapist asking me: ‘There are many things you like but don’t do anymore because of your eating disorder. What would you like to do again?’”, he said. “The first thing I thought of was swimming. I burst into tears, because it’s something I have always loved.”

Ilias, on the other hand, left his parents’ house about four years ago because he “didn’t need that negativity”, as he put it. They still talk, and he’s been doing well for the past three years, but he never sought help for his eating disorder. “I’ve seen a therapist, but found that cultural differences often made me feel misunderstood.” 

Megens did end up asking his loved ones for help and isn’t in therapy anymore, but has a lot of compassion for the people who haven’t been able to take that step. “I would like to say to those men: ‘Please do it,’” he said. “Because the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to get out of it.”

The post ‘We Want to be Tougher’: Men With Eating Disorders Are Struggling for Help appeared first on VICE.

As a man, these conversations tend to be pretty one note. A pat on the shoulder and a beer in the hand might mean a job well done on the surface, but it doesn’t always give you the real connection that you’re looking for. 

Break-ups are never a simple thing to deal with, and discussing them with your friends is a different beast entirely. Men have bred a culture of quickly moving past the meat of their emotions surrounding relationships, preferring to lean into a focus on “cheering each other up.”

Read Next

People Describe the Worst Way They Broke Off a Relationship in 6 Words

VICE NZ spoke to several young men about how their break-ups affected them:

Daniel

“I spent a long time chronically tired and unable to sleep properly.” 

Piripi

“Most of my guy friends wanted to help me ‘fix’ it. Sometimes I got frustrated because I thought they wanted me to be over it already. In hindsight, they never, ever belittled my feelings or said anything hurtful, I think it was just a combination of them not knowing how to offer emotional support and wanting to reduce my pain as much as they could.” 

Wiremu

“There was a I’ll never be enough feeling. This was a very heavy, long lasting state that I personally believe will affect you the rest of your life… these feelings turned into anger and self hatred, and a lack of humility and care.” 

Liam

“Overall I hadn’t had the personal support that I needed, but that’s partly due to my own doings of keeping things to myself. I feel as a male there’s self-induced pressure to make it out that it’s no big deal and or leave out key details to benefit your appearance in the situation due to pride or ego etc.”

So why do we struggle to talk to other men about our feelings? 

Terms like toxic masculinity are ingrained in our culture these days, but nowhere does it stand more prominent than the ways men interact with each other. This tends to manifest in a focus on logic, and how you can “fix” a break-up. 

Men are set on finding solutions, not willing to dwell in the emotion. It might feel like wasted time for you to not move on from any issue as quickly as possible, or maybe it just makes you uncomfortable. 

If you’re the one who is going through the break-up, having a friend seem so dismissive of your emotions — even if that’s not their intention — can be frustrating. And as a friend, the last thing you want to do is give your grieving friend the idea that you are tired of their wallowing.

Many young men are never given the tools or opportunities to listen and be supportive, and are put into a role that emphasises protection, strength, and making sure everyone is okay.

In many ways, finding the root of an issue and removing it makes minor problems relatively simple to deal with, allowing you to move with the things in life that make you happy. It can be easy to forget that sometimes your emotions need to be addressed. 

Understanding the post-colonial construct.

One of the many layers of traditional thoughts on masculinity here in Aotearoa are ideas around Māori men being the strong “she’ll be right” type.

Colonial ideas have fuelled people’s perceptions of Māori as physical and passionate, and many of these ideas became adopted and accepted. This bled into ideas around relationships as well, both with romantic partners, and with those around us, locking our tāne into roles that prevent them from reaching out, and in. 

Post break-up, you tend to be left in quite a vulnerable state, but because of these subconscious ideas you might assume your friend is okay simply because he appears to be. 

This notion of masculinity has facilitated an environment where men believe success and happiness is through looking and acting tough, and suppressing emotions in order to be strong and look after your loved ones. 

Many men will only allow themselves to open up once they’ve reached a breaking point; a moment when they have nothing left but to be emotional. And that is when the anger takes precedence. 

Read Next

How to Cope with a Break-Up Without Just Getting Wasted All the Time

How can we talk to each other? 

So… what can we do? It’s not just about waiting for that bro of yours to reach out to you. That’s the assumption that keeps this cycle going. 

If you know a man close to you has recently had a breakup, reach out and ask him how everything is. Get him in an environment he finds comfortable. That could be the front seat of his car, his bedroom, or even up on a hill. Do things at his pace, and accept that sometimes a solution will not present itself, or is not needed. 

That being said, maybe a distraction is what that person wants. Perhaps you have a mutual understanding that in order to create a safe space, you need to do something you both enjoy. Playing a video game, watching a movie, it could be anything. 

Ben* told us that sometimes “some cheering up and distractions was exactly what was needed. “I could hang out and do nothing,” he said. “I didn’t have to pretend to be happy, but I also didn’t have to be alone.” 

On the flip side, it can be important to keep pushing to have those hard conversations.

As Joel* shared with VICE: “A lot of the conversations were frustrated or angry and were usually about their ex. It was only when my mates got pushed to a breaking point that they cried and talked about their pain.” 

If you are the one who finds themselves in an emotionally compromised position after a break-up, don’t be afraid to open up to someone close to you. Just don’t expect there to be a moment that solves the problem because the real problem is you not allowing yourself to be upset. 

Overcoming the embarrassment and expectations is difficult, but necessary, to break the norm.

We all have the same needs and desires as each other, and it’s about time that we understand that. As a man, it’s crucial to reach out, both if you’re in need of an ear, or you want to let your friends know that you have one they can use to express how they feel. And if that dialogue is opened up, not everything has the capacity to be “fixed’” 

Ideas around masculinity are more regularly broken down these days thanks to honest and insightful conversations about the role of masculinity in recent years. The healing will come in time, but first, you have to start with admitting that everything might not be okay. And as a friend, it is vital that you allow yourself to be known as someone they can rely on to lend an ear, and just listen.

Ryland Hutana is a writer and creator who currently lives in Auckland, Aotearoa.

Own the Feels is brought to you by #LoveBetter, a campaign funded by the Ministry for Social Development.

LoveBetter Youthline support channels:

Email: lovebetter@youthline.co.nz

Or rangatahi can text lovebetter to 234

https://check.areyouok.org.nz/

The post Do Men Actually Talk to Each Other About Break-Ups? appeared first on VICE.

Last week, the cuck conversation took two forms. The first was through a viral illustration of a line of naked men all waiting to have sex with a single woman. Among all these naked men is one man in a suit, holding a bouquet of flowers. It circulated via a masculinity and dating-centric Twitter account with over 200,000 followers called “The Man Maker,” who shared the image saying, “Ignoring her past will ruin your future.” Just two days later, the account posted it again, edited so that the line appears to extend into infinity, the woman at the end no longer even visible. “You can’t keep a woman who belongs to the streets,” the caption said. “I didn’t make these rules, nature did.”

The tweets amassed millions of views, with hundreds of men responding with “100” emojis and earnest retweets. “Once a prostitute, always a prostitute,” one wrote. It also generated plenty of mocking responses that went viral on their own. But even amid all those dunking on the post, for a significant population of men, this image does represent a deep fear: not only being the chump in the suit but being recognized among their peers as such.

At the same time, photos emerged of Jeff Bezos and his now-fiancé Lauren Sánchez hanging out with her ex-boyfriend, former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez. There are pictures of the trio on Bezos’ yacht, with Gonzalez notably buff and shirtless, as well as some of the gang all walking down the street together—the suggestion being that Bezos shouldn’t tolerate hanging out with a man that fathered a child with his fiancé, particularly so soon after their engagement. It had to mean one of two things: for all his excessive wealth, Bezos cannot enforce boundaries with women and position himself as some “alpha”—or Gonzalez and Sánchez must be sleeping together, and Bezos must actually enjoy it. Either way, Bezos is a cuck—literally or emotionally.

In all likelihood, the three adults are probably attempting to foster some sort of blended family dynamic among all their children, or maybe Bezos doesn’t have many friends. Still, the mere image of them all together has brought the cuck theory to life, even when it doesn’t quite make sense. After all, Gonzalez and Sánchez had been separated for several years before Bezos came into the picture. Sánchez was married to an entirely different man when she and Bezos began seeing each other. If anyone was cucked in this dynamic, it was probably Sánchez’s ex-husband. But none of this matters because we know something about Bezos: no matter how much money he has, no matter how ripped he gets, and no matter how hot his new partner is, he will still evoke this image in our minds of a balding tech dork. For many, he will always embody the ethos of spiritual cuckoldry.

Cuckoldry has been the topic of insults and humor since at least Shakespearean times, but in less than a decade, its meaning has fluctuated repeatedly to this odd place it’s in now. When Trump-adjacent conservatives began using the term around 2015, the public acted scandalized. Buzzfeed News called it racist; the Southern Poverty Law Center published a blog explaining the meaning of the “cuckservative” meme. Meanwhile, at VICE, actual cuckold fetishists spoke out angrily about their niche being used as a right-wing dig. All this now feels dated, at best. We’re well beyond the phase of needing it either explained or defended. If anything, actual cucks have become relatively normalized: It’s common now for men whose wives or girlfriends have other partners to post publicly about the dynamic on social media, even if they are often met with some ridicule. Now, with “cuck” being both politically and sexually neutered, it’s come to mean everything and nothing.

We can say whatever we want to make ourselves feel superior to a man like Bezos, but that does not change the reality that he is one of the wealthiest people to ever live in a way that none of us will remotely compare. Whether Bezos’s fiancé sleeps with other men doesn’t change that. Meanwhile, images like the cuck line highlight the gaping insecurity men still feel about being put in such a category, whether getting labeled as a literal cuck or a spiritual one. Even if we’ve lost much of a definition of the word, it continues to dominate us. The frequency of the cuck conversation borders on obsession. Whether it be Bezos or this fantasy of comparing women to used cars, cucking has invaded our brains. And isn’t that a type of being cucked, in itself?

The post The Cuck Obsession Has Cucked Our Brains appeared first on VICE.

Eyebrows furrowed, eyes narrowed to a slit, mouth pursed in an “O”: Over the last few months, the frown-to-smile expression of Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho (2002), has flooded my TikTok feed. Just like many other cult classics, the movie has been rediscovered by people on the platform, and remixed and reinterpreted into something radically different from the original. As of January 2022, his face even has its own filter.

Most videos are edits of some of the movie’s most iconic scenes, including his morning routine and his dinner with frenemy-turned-victim Paul Allen. Bateman is dissected and revered as a lifestyle model that mostly boils down to getting money and hot women without any of the strings attached.

Read Next

Blood, Boycott, and Body Bags: An Oral History of ‘American Psycho’

For those who need a recap, American Psycho tells the story of Bateman, a golden boy banker who basically succeeds in everything he does, despite slowly sinking into madness as he murders people. Based on Bret Easton Ellis’s book of the same name, its crude and graphic violent scenes all but guaranteed controversy – not that it’s stopped people from turning Bateman into an idol.

No shit: Men online are more lost than ever, to the point of turning an actual psychopathic killer into a point of reference. Bateman is hailed for not conforming to the models of masculinity that’ve arisen on the web 2.0. He’s neither an alpha (a dominant asshole at the top of the social hierarchy) nor a beta (a submissive loner who’ll never get a girl). Bateman represents a new model of masculinity: The “sigma male”, inexplicably named with another random ancient Greek letter.

According to Google trends, the “sigma male” search term first appeared in early 2021 and quickly gained popularity over the past two years. In 2023, #sigma has over 46 billion views on TikTok. Sigmas “are known as the rarest males on earth, which makes them irresistible to women,” says TikToker Sel Nakim in an explainer video with almost 900,000 likes. “They’re at the top with the alphas, but they’re outside the hierarchy.”

Instead of boasting about their status like alphas, sigmas tend to be mysterious loner types. They think outside the box; they accept themselves and are proud to be different. They attract success and respect. Basically, they’re perfect. And Bateman – a man sophisticated enough to wear a suit to murder a homeless person – is their aesthetic king.

Read Next

The ‘Quarter-Life Crisis’ Has Become a Milestone for Millennial Men

“I didn’t know about sigmas until I came across the videos about Bateman a few months ago,” says Fred, 26. “I can understand why people think it’s disturbing that our role model is a serial killer, but what inspires us is everything else about Patrick Bateman. It’s just fiction.”

Before Fred fell down the sigma content wormhole, he was watched personal development videos on YouTube and TikTok, and discovered his favourite role models in the lead characters of Peaky Blinders, Mad Men and, of course, American Psycho. “They know where they want to go and they’re a bit different from other people,” he says. “They aren’t popular – they’re a bit like me.”

But film critics debate the sigma interpretation of Bateman’s character. In the movie, the identity of the Wall Street banker is a lot more complex. Although Bateman’s bloodlust is largely seen as a critique of capitalist greed, the character is also enthralled by consumerism and power. He might have antisocial tendencies, but he also constantly seeks validation from others and is terrified at the idea of losing his social status.

Read Next

Men Deserve Mental Health Media That Isn’t Patronising

Besides, the core message of this boys’ club is sadly familiar – life is a permanent struggle between those who dominate and those who are dominated. Sigmas are still falling for the same narrative – they’re just trying to cheat-code their way to the top with cunning strategies and supposedly independent thinking. They long for a world where men are in charge and their communities are filled with misogynistic and homophobic exchanges.

But if the internet has taught us anything, it’s not to look for meaning in the shitposting world. Much of the content about Bateman is also to be taken lightly – most people just use it as motivation to go to the gym or dress well. The people who take his character seriously are in the minority, and might havefound other avenues for their anxieties. (I mean, you’d hope.)

Back when the movie was released, poor Christian Bale struggled to believe it when a bunch of bankers un-ironically told him they loved the movie. Let’s just hope he hasn’t downloaded TikTok yet.

The post The Rise of the ‘Sigma Male’, a New Kind of Toxic Masculinity appeared first on VICE.

The text recounts a 2011 experiment: Researchers tested 136 healthy young men’s testosterone levels, asked them about their political party affiliations, then gave them either a placebo or ten grams of AndroGel one percent, a high-end dose of a common form of testosterone often used in hormone replacement therapies. The next day, they tested the men’s T levels and asked them about politics again. Their baseline measurements found that staunch self-identified Democrats had lower T than anyone else in their sample pool. And after dosing the guys, they found that men who’d previously expressed weak affinity for the party felt even less connected to it—and warmer towards Republicans. (They observed no change in firm Democrats’ or any Republicans’ stated positions.) 

Alogaily and the paper’s co-authors argued that this is “evidence that neuro-active hormones affect political preferences”. And perhaps it implies, they added, that “political advertising depicting emotional themes that raise T could influence swing voters and perhaps elections.” 

Given how many people twist this generally reasonable premise into sinister knots, the concept is worth grappling with.

Several experts on testosterone who weren’t involved in this study told VICE it’s too weak to base meaningful conclusions on. The sample was small and narrow. The experiment was brief. And the potential confounding variables were numerous. Paul Zak, Alogaily’s Ph.D. advisor and the paper’s designated corresponding author, didn’t reply to a request for comment. Neither did Alogaily. But the text of the study acknowledges its limitations openly. It also offers alternative explanations for the results of the experiment, such as the possibility that weak Democratic party supporters secretly preferred the GOP to begin with, and rather than altering their politics, T just made them more honest about their views.

Of course, none of that has stopped the far right from jumping on the paper. In recent years, many in this world have become obsessed with the idea that conservative guys are jacked, masculine, high-T GigaChads while liberals are weak, emasculated, low-T Soy Boys. That progressive men are literally sick—victims of a hormonal pathology. That addressing this supposedly widespread hormonal deficit will halt the world’s alleged liberal degradation. These testosterone thumpers have repackaged and exaggerated the study, with a credulity born of zealotry, into articles with shitposty titles like “Trust The Science: Study Links Left-Wing Politics to Lower Testosterone,” casting it as hard proof of their hormonal theories of healthy politics. 

The far right’s testosterone hot takes are, unsurprisingly, utter nonsense. “I treat thousands of men for low testosterone every year in Los Angeles,” says Jesse Mills, a urologist with expertise in T-related health issues and director of the Men’s Clinic at UCLA. If boosting men’s testosterone levels did shift their politics towards the right, he adds, “the red wave Republicans were hoping for would have crashed on the shores of Malibu. But it didn’t.” 

Between its methodological weakness and apparent appeal in the world of far-right gender panic and pseudoscience, it’s tempting to write this paper off as the academic equivalent of outrage clickbait. But the premise of the experiment isn’t actually farfetched. There’s a small but growing body of research on how our biology (and changes in it) can affect our politics. And we know testosterone plays a notable role in shaping our overall moods and behaviors. Might it not also influence our political behaviors to some degree? Given how many people twist this generally reasonable premise into sinister knots, the concept is worth grappling with. So rather than dissect one anemic and overhyped study on the subject, VICE decided to dig into all we know about how T might affect people’s politics. 

Spoilers: The hormone almost certainly doesn’t cause a reliable “red shift”. And any effects it does have are likely weak, contextual, and easily mitigated.

The Simple Story of Testosterone and Politics

Humans drew a connection between testosterone and masculinity long before we knew what hormones were, by observing the effects of injuries like a horse kick to the testicles—where testosterone is produced—and procedures like castration. Testosterone plays a major role in the development of male sex traits during puberty, so without it, people don’t develop body and facial hair, a deep voice, or a conventional male frame and muscle-and-fat distribution. And when people with testes lose most or all of their testosterone, they often lose energy, stamina, muscle and bone strength, libido, and a degree of competitiveness. In other words, they lose their virility. Hence, when researchers first identified testosterone (as part of a larger project to identify and define the essence of masculinity), they called it the “male sex hormone”. 

As we learned how to manipulate and dose people with T, we learned more about its behavioral effects. Experiments seemed to show that reducing T levels increased empathy, whereas increasing T levels seemed to increase appetites for risk, novelty, and strenuous activity—while decreasing sensitivity to stress and anxiety. “There was a fun study years ago that looked at floor traders,” Mills recalls. Researchers found they could “predict how risk-taking they’d be based on their T levels, and traders with higher T levels made bigger-risk investments”.

Modern American politics “have always been ‘gendered’”, says Michael Kimmel, a sociologist and expert on the intersection of politics and ideas of masculinity. Party values and priorities have shifted over time and vary between different intra-party factions, but most Republicans have traditionally painted themselves as advocates of militarism, individual freedom, and competition. Republican men stereotypically try to project their party’s ostensible core values via explicit, aggressive macho-man posturing. On the other hand, Kimmel explains, commentators often characterize Democrats, who’ve traditionally branded themselves as the party of equality and social safety nets, as competition and risk-averse – as soft and feminine. All that has led to a longstanding seed of obsession with testosterone in certain GOP circles, where it’s used as a concrete metric of and justification for their supposedly innate and healthy masculine-conservative values.

“Can you paint the stereotypical behavioral effects of testosterone into a picture of you being more likely affiliated with one party or another? Sure,” acknowledges Justin Houman, a urologist who treats men with clinically low testosterone levels. “But it is a stretch.” 

Like many other worrisome latent trends within American politics, the 2016 presidential election season turbocharged the depth, salience, and visibility of popular connections between T, masculinity, and conservatism. As he leveraged American misogyny by flinging gender-based attacks at Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Donald Trump bolstered his masculine bona fides by going on The Dr. Oz Show and smirking as the eponymous host rattled off and praised the T levels recorded in candidate Trump’s medical records. A doctor ran ads suggesting men thinking of voting for Clinton might be suffering from low T and offering to test and treat them to uncloud their judgment. And Americans learned a whole new lexicon of testosterone and virility-based insults as the worst elements of the right moved from the digital fringe into the mainstream. 

Associations between T, masculinity, and hard conservatism only grew more pronounced after that. Far-right voices now bash people they don’t like as “low-T”—one congressman even used this term to describe and disregard Trump’s first impeachment. Conspiracy theories about supposed plots to emasculate American men into small-dicked, liberal servility by pumping them full of estrogen and systematically suppressing their testosterone moved from the confines of paranoid outlets like InfoWars and into mainstream public awareness. And last year Tucker Carlson released a full “documentary” about the supposed testosterone crisis in America and its threats to men, promoting pseudoscience like sunning your balls as so-called solutions. 

“The complexities of true science, even political science, do not easily reduce down to one variable.” —Jesse Mills

A couple of studies do suggest that Americans may be experiencing a widespread drop in their average T levels over time. But the ongoing dip they describe is far more modest than people fearmongering about a T crisis make it out to be, and likely due to lifestyle factors like sedentariness and environmental pollutants messing with our bodies. One study’s author suggests that sensitivity of the tests used to measure T levels could account for some of this drift over time, and so could something like the widespread decline in rates of smoking, a habit that may artificially boost T levels. These studies’ authors have also explained that their findings, while worrisome, still need further testing and confirmation. 

In truth, Americans have likely grown irrationally anxious about testosterone thanks to one of the most successful direct-to-consumer medical advertising campaigns of all time: In the mid-2000s, T makers started telling men that if they had nebulous symptoms like low energy or libido, they might be suffering from low T. (Clinically low T is a real medical issue, but it often involves more symptoms than just fatigue and drop in sex drive, and it certainly isn’t diagnosed by those signs alone.) Alongside these ads, a massive pipeline of lifestyle influencers, self-help gurus, health startups, and loosey-goosey doctors emerged to funnel often self-diagnosed men towards cheap and quick T prescriptions that many of them don’t really need. 

The FDA has tried to push back on this marketing, and the rush on T scripts has slowed somewhat. But America’s seemingly unique, existential, and deep-seated cultural fears of a loss of testosterone, virility, and masculinity may have primed some folks to lend credence to talk over the last decade of a supposed T crisis and its effects on people’s politics . 

However, most of these fears—and in fact most popular ideas about the intersection between T and politics—are based on anemic understandings of the effects of what more recent research shows is actually an incredibly complex and malleable hormone. 

The Real Story of Testosterone and Politics 

Some endocrinologists argue that our core understanding of T, as a fundamentally male sex hormone, is inherently flawed. After all, ovaries produce T too—albeit usually at lower levels than testes—and it plays a vital, if less visible, role in female sexual development and general health. Labeling estrogen as a fundamentally female hormone is also suspect, given that that people born with testes produce it too, and men’s overall health depends on a good balance between it and T. 

Average hormone levels also vary wildly from person to person according to genetics, developmental and environmental factors, and a host of other variables. So a “normal” male or female testosterone level actually describes a broad range. According to experts, it’s more a rule of thumb than a hard-and-fast metric. It’s far easier than many people seem to think to find AFAB people with naturally “male” T profiles or AMAB people with naturally “female” profiles. People’s testosterone levels also swing around wildly throughout the day and move up and down in response to developments in our lives: Men seem to experience notable dips in T while caring for a new child, for example. 

Everyone’s body responds a bit differently to testosterone, thanks to natural variations in the number and sensitivity of hormone receptors, idiosyncratic developmental histories with the hormone, and the effects of natural processes like aging. It’s a threshold molecule as well, not some dimmer switch for virility and masculinity. That’s at least partially why many people with T levels consistently below “normal” don’t report any notable effects on their bodies or behavior. And why many people who take testosterone but don’t have catastrophically low T levels and related health problems don’t see much impact on their health or wellness—beyond placebo effects.  

“Efforts to find a biological cause for political behavior are usually doomed to fail. But that doesn’t mean that people will ever stop trying!” —Michael Kimmel

Recent research also suggests that early findings and common knowledge about testosterone’s role in aggression, competition, and risk-taking don’t hold up to scrutiny. On its own, T can also boost altruism and even interest in cuddling in some situations. And T almost never acts alone. Other biological agents and processes, as well as culture, upbringing, and conscious choice, can modulate its effects. Recent research notably suggests: That people who take big risks in one realm of their lives, like gambling, are often risk averse in another context, like investing their savings. That, compared to men, women in America likely take fewer career risks on average—are less ambitious and assertive—not because of their hormone profiles but because they often face backlash for engaging in what many people still consider stereotypically male behaviors. And that in more gender-egalitarian countries, like Sweden, on average, men and women take on a similar approach to risks and competition. 

So drawing direct lines between natural T levels and any behavior or proclivity is dubious. As are explanations for any change observed in people after they take a dose of T. Pointing back to Alogaily and her colleagues’ paper, Mills noted that a dose of T could have brightened some men’s moods and made them generally “feel warmer to puppies and apple pie as well as Republicans”. 

T’s complexity may explain the squishy ambiguities in the handful of studies on the interplay between the hormone and personal politics. For instance, two studies examined the effects of watching your preferred candidate lose an election on your T levels. They monitored men’s testosterone before and after the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, respectively, and found that John McCain supporters’ T levels dropped after he lost, while Romney supporters’ levels did the opposite after his presidential bid tanked. It’s entirely unclear what factors might account for that difference. 

“Everything is unclear!” Mills says when asked what we do and don’t know about how T might affect people’s politics. To get to the bottom of this question, Houman adds, you’d need to account for so many factors, like people’s individual hormonal and behavioral baselines and all the variables in their lives that might modulate their T levels and responses—not to mention precisely what a given person means when they say, for example, they identify with one party over another. “Age, overall health, sleep, genetics, medications,” he rattles off. “The list goes on.” 

(The incredible complexity of studying hormones’ multi-faceted and malleable effects on our bodies and behaviors may explain why most of the science on the intersections of biology and political views and activities focuses on static factors, like genetics and brain structures.)

None of this means that T has no bearing on our politics. It likely does—but the nature and scale of these effects may vary wildly according to an individual’s context and over time. Given the number of factors that affect our political views and actions, Houman also says he’d expect any testosterone effects to be relatively weak. And the impact of a single dose of T, or environmental factors like political ads that cause a spike in T, are usually short-lived. 

Even if we could nail down one or two clear and reliable, if minor, effects of testosterone on people’s political lives, Mills cautioned against paying them too much heed. “The complexities of true science, even political science, do not easily reduce down to one variable,” he says. 

“Efforts to find a biological cause for political behavior are usually doomed to fail,” Kimmel agrees. “But that doesn’t mean that people will ever stop trying!” The appeal of finding some sort of biological button for swaying people towards our views—or of finding some root pathology behind theirs—is intoxicating, after all. 

Intoxicating, but moronic. 

The post Does Testosterone Affect Your Politics? appeared first on VICE.

People of all ages and genders go bald, but it’s mainly something we associate with older men. By age 50, between 40 and 50 percent of men will have lost at least some of their hair. Often, that moment comes even earlier – 16 to 30 percent of men experience severe hair loss before reaching their 30s. For some, balding starts as early as high school, a pretty early age to be confronted with the inevitability of ageing.

Read Next

Hey Man: ‘Am I Becoming My Dad?’

I spoke to three young men who’ve partially or completely lost their hair, about how they feel about their balding and what it’s meant for their social and romantic relationships.

‘The moment that hair clipper went across my head, I thought: “Shit, I should’ve done this a lot sooner!”’

“The quality of my hair has never been any good, really. When I was 17, my hairline began receding around my temples and by 18, I was clearly going bald sooner rather than later. I’m sure it was genetics – my uncle has the same hair – but it was also just a bit of bad luck.

In the beginning, I really hated it: Friends would go to the barbers and get stylish haircuts while I couldn’t. I’m lucky I have good friends who never bullied me – though, they’d make jokes occasionally. I was fine with that mostly, but once it happened several times in a day and it really hurt me.

I felt a bit helpless when I lost my hair: I lost a piece of myself against my own will, basically. At 18, I cared a lot about how women saw me and thought I’d be seen as less attractive. Back then, I’d almost always wear a hat.

Luckily, I was able to talk about it with my parents. They even offered to pay towards a hair transplant, but I didn’t end up taking that step. I couldn’t help but think, ‘Was this procedure really the solution?’ and ‘How long would it even look good for?’.

A few years ago, I started going really bald at the back of my head and decided to shave it all off completely. The moment that hair clipper went across my head, I thought, ‘Shit, I should’ve done this a lot sooner!’ It suited me well and I got nothing but compliments – my friends were supportive, too.

Now, I just shave once a week so it looks fresh. I still wear hats regularly, but just because I like them. I don’t think my shaved head has ever got in my way of dating, either – every pot has a lid and there are plenty of lids.” – Jeroen van Nieuwpoort, 28, a supervisor at a group home for people with mental disabilities

‘I’m very open about balding, I’m not ashamed’

“When I was 20, my brother went bald and my family said it’d happen to me, too. Baldness runs in the family and my brother even went to Turkey for a hair transplant. Personally, I don’t want that – my hair loss hasn’t had a huge impact on my self-image anyway.

Up until I was 23, though, I had very thick hair – then it began thinning. In the beginning, it wasn’t very noticeable, but a bald spot started forming in the middle of my head, at some point. Consciously or unconsciously, I started adjusting my haircut.

Read Next

The ‘Quarter-Life Crisis’ Has Become a Milestone for Millennial Men

For years, I went to the barbers every month to keep my haircut neat: Where my hair grows – on the sides – it grows fast. The barber gave me tips on how to hide my bald spot with cover spray. I tried it once, but I didn’t think it was cool to pretend I had hair there.

Six months ago, I bought a hair clipper and trimmed my hair to just a few millimetres in length. Then I borrowed my roomie’s favorite beard trimmer to use on my mustache. A split second before I did it, I thought: ‘I don’t think I’m cool with this.’ But now I’m happy with it and it saves me money, too, now I don’t have to pay for a haircut every month.

I’m very open about balding, I’m not ashamed. I want to show society that it’s OK for men to talk about their looks.” – Vinoud Douglas, 26, a project manager and industrial designer

‘During the process of going bald I felt so insecure, but now I see it as something unique’

“When I see men wearing a hat and I notice they’re partially bald, I feel a bit sorry for them. I totally get it, everyone goes through their own process, but I think it’s a relief to shave your hair off and just rock the look.

At 19, the hair on the crown of my head began to fall out, which was very intense – I became insecure about it. I found comfort in the fact that I had a friend who was already bald, so I knew I wasn’t alone. I looked around to see what my options were, and learnt there was basically nothing I could do – except a hair transplant.

When you go bald, your hair follicles die: You can slow down the process with drugs, but there’s a lot of nasty side effects. For a while, I sprinkled some sort of powder on my hair to make it look thicker – a kind of miracle solution – but I knew I was just postponing the inevitable.

Read Next

The Age Your Voice Will Start to Sound ‘Old’

When friends joked about my hair, it was OK, but if a stranger said something I’d be furious. Once, I was flirting with a girl all night at a party: Then a guy came over, stood next to us and – in a deliberately belittling tone – started talking about the bald spot on the back of my head. The girl and I were stunned.

I did everything I could to disguise the bald spot – I’d wear my hair to the back even though I didn’t like it on me. At 23, I was on holiday with friends and decided to spontaneously shave it all off. It was shocking at first, I really had to get used to it. I got good responses, but just couldn’t see it for myself. Over the next few months, I let it grow back, but I knew there was a limit – my hair was no longer looking good.

At some point, my girlfriend said, ‘Let’s shave it off,’ so we did: I felt liberated. During the process of going bald I felt so insecure, but now I see it as something unique – my girlfriend actually thinks it’s sexy.

I don’t even think about it now, apart from when remembering to put sunscreen on my entire head in the summer.” – Rens Peters, 26, MA student and teacher

@Miloudeelen1

The post How to Deal With Baldness – From Men Who Know appeared first on VICE.

“I would say that belonging is an important part of wellbeing. And that the guys that do feel they belong to a tribe of people who display this behaviour says Jo Ryder, an integrative psychotherapist from Dublin.  “The penis is a strong symbol of masculinity, and all men want that department to be working well. That’s the message. The people who come to see me,  they are full of anxiety. Putting your hand on your penis is cocky, [it] shows confidence in one’s masculinity.”

According to scientific evidence, says Dr Andras Kolto, a senior postdoctoral researcher at NUI Galway, low-intensity physical touch releases oxytocin in the brain. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that plays a role in social connections and regulating our mood. “It has many beneficial effects on our health and well-being,” he explains, “for instance, it reduces anxiety.”

Most of us know that oxytocin is produced when someone who we love touches us, either in a sexual or non-sexual way. But does that extend to touching yourself? That’s what Joe – a 30-something year old who, like all the men I spoke to, wanted to talk anonymously so they could be honest about their love of grabbing their crotches – says. “I never do it in public, there are men that do. I’m not one of them,” he says in an Instagram DM. “I do it unconsciously during the news, a film. It isn’t sexual at all. Like a special blanket.”

Read Next

Why Do Some Men Hate Hot Drinks?

Joe’s explanation isn’t too far from the truth, Kolto says. “Given that it concerns their genitals, it does have a sexual overtone – but the aim of the behavior, on the conscious level, is not related to erotic stimulation. It rather seems to be a quick check that your ‘treasures’ are not stolen –or they might be itchy.”

According to Ryder, another theory is that people do it to engage with their own masculinity, it has a ‘tribal aspect to it, and only certain groups do it.

“Psychologists see this as self-soothing behaviours,” says Kolto. “I don’t know of any statistics, [but] I believe many men do touch or play with their private parts, although the majority would only do it when they are alone, or maybe when surrounded by an all-male company where they won’t be frowned upon.”

Joe agrees it is a self-soothing behaviour – like biting your nails, sucking one’s thumb, or smoking a cigarette – partly conscious and partly automatic. “I’ve never had the compulsion to do it outside. I could get in trouble.”

But what if you just can’t stop yourself from doing it?  “It isn’t me having a wank in public,” confides Ron, 29, who works in the filtration industry. “It is a habit I can’t break.”

Andras offers the following advice: “In psychotherapy, we often teach clients struggling with such a tenacious habit how to recognize when they are doing it. This is the first step to get rid of such habits.”

He says the phenomenon might attributed to toxic masculinity. “It concerns the male genitals, after all. Some men, especially those who are insecure about their masculinity, or those who feel under pressure by unrealistic expectations about how you should behave to be seen as sufficiently manly, might experience terrible anxiety.’

Martin, a civil servant in his 30s, from Cavan, Ireland, offers a more pragmatic reason why he enjoys having his hand dangle an inch shy of his scrotal sac. “You would use the string on track suit bottoms, tie it around the drugs and let the package rest around the balls. So if you get a body-search they can’t touch your balls, as that is considered a strip search.”

Still, Martin regularly admits to doing it for non-drug related reasons. “Others who don’t sell drugs do it too, as a status symbol. Like I’m the man… If done in public or when at home, it’s a comfort thing.”

So if you rule out drug smuggling, how do you know when the urge to scratch, fondle or otherwise play with your dick in public tips over into unacceptable territory?

“If you notice yourself with your hands in your trousers in public, or if someone warns you about it, first I would like to reassure you that it is a normal urge – unless it’s getting compulsive,” says Andras. “However, it is not okay to walk around in the public fidgeting with your private parts.”

The post Why Men Touch Their Crotch So Much, According to Experts appeared first on VICE.