Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Announces Mandatory Testosterone Testing, Medical Experts Shake Their Heads

Welp, for someone who was dead set on banning trans people from the military last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sure seems to be all about gender affirming care all of a sudden. This is the only plausible reason he announced Wednesday that he has implemented a mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually, a move medical experts say is unnecessary and likely to do more harm than good.

Also, Hegseth continues to appear desperate to prove to the nation and probably himself that he’s a great, big manly-man of super macho “warrior ethos.” He is the poster child for “Thou dost protest too much.”

“Our most decisive tactical advantage will always be the individual warfighter,” Hegseth said in a video he recorded from his office in the Pentagon, according to the New York Post. “We have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage.”

Hegseth also captioned his video “The High-T Department of War.” I’ve written before about how “the Trump administration and the MAGA-fied GOP that enables it are full of weak men who are deeply insecure about their manhoods.” Hegseth is consistently the clearest example of this.

I mean, just look at this man.

Anyway, let’s see what the medical professionals think of Hegseth’s initiative to test testosterone levels on adults who have not exhibited symptoms of having testosterone deficiency, and do so on a yearly basis, shall we?

From the Washington Post:

Hegseth’s promotion of testosterone comes amid a broader embrace of the hormone and the contested idea, particularly among younger men, that maximizing testosterone levels can boost your health and fitness.

Some physicians and researchers questioned the move and said some of Hegseth’s statements on testosterone Wednesday were not backed by research. Testosterone levels vary naturally over time, and it is unusual to screen patients for low testosterone unless there are symptoms, they said.

“This is non-evidence-based and could cause harm,” said Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor in the department of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University.

Testosterone naturally declines with age, and low testosterone has been associated with fatigue, loss of muscle mass and low sex drive in men and women.

It affects physical performance, too, which could impact a service member’s ability to pass new fitness standards that Hegseth is requiring of anyone in combat roles.

The Washington Post asked the Pentagon whether any service member, male or female, who failed the combat fitness standards and had low testosterone levels could seek treatments and then retest. The Pentagon had no immediate answer to that and other questions.

Stuart Phillips, a professor kinesiology at McMaster University, said testosterone replacement therapy is usually prescribed after a patient exhibits symptoms and is diagnosed with hypogonadism, where their testosterone levels are abnormally low.

“People go to their doctor with symptoms … and then get a testosterone-level test and then that informs whether they receive the treatment,” said Phillips. “So [a] blanket [policy], like, we’re going to screen everybody over the age of 30, is kind of a ridiculous notion.”

Adrian Dobs, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who researches testosterone replacement therapy, also told the Post that the policy Hegseth is implementing makes little sense, because a wide range of testosterone levels can be considered normal, and regardless, the idea that more testosterone automatically equals better and healthier is plainly wrong.

“The normal testosterone levels can be, usually people would say between 300 and 800 [nanograms per deciliter],” Dobs said. “So it doesn’t mean that the person who’s 700 is any better or stronger or smarter than the person that’s 300.”

Fugh-Berman also noted that testosterone levels also vary over time, even hour by hour, which could easily complicate the consistency and efficacy of the Pentagon’s screening program.

“There’s a wide range of testosterone levels at every age, and they vary hourly, daily, weekly and seasonally,” Fugh-Berman said. “Testosterone levels go up if you hold a gun, they go down if you hold a baby.”

So, basically, Hegseth doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s putting MAGA ideology over the health of military personnel, just as he did when he ordered an end to mandatory annual flu vaccines, calling the policy an “absurd, overreaching” mandate, which — oh, I don’t know — may have had something to do with the flu outbreak at Air Force basic training that came two months later, causing hundreds to get sick, one trainee to die, and the U.S. military to reverse Hegsteth’s stupid-ass policy change.

Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, pointed out the hypocrisy of Hegseth’s policy including the provision of hormone therapy for troops who are deemed low-testosterone, when he and President Donald Trump considered it a problem for transgender troops, prompting Trump to sign an executive order banning what the administration characterized as “radical gender ideology.”

“Mr. Hegseth’s recommendation that male service members take testosterone makes crystal clear that the policy banning transgender troops for taking the same medication is pure bias,” Minter told the Times. “This is a blatant double standard and underscores the irrationality of the ban.”

Actually, it was Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) who really hit the nail on the head regarding Hegseth’s obsession with what is honestly pseudo-masculinity.

“I think it is indicative of the fact that there are so many people in this administration that have some weird, intense, homoerotic, feelings towards men while also being incredibly homophobic, and not just homophobic, but like hate-mongering, fear-mongering about the LGBTQ community,” Balint said. “So, let me be clear. I don’t think the homoeroticism is the weird part. The weird part is that they pretend that that’s not what it’s about.”

Our federal government is being run by imbeciles who don’t trust or understand science or listen to medical professionals, and spend their days trying their best to project masculinity, while being sad, little men who are as weak mentally as most of them are physically.

And at this point, they’re all just being weird.

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