Testosterone is not what you think it is, and it is decidedly not a \u201cmale sex hormone.\u201d Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready explanation for innumerable social phenomena, from the stock market crash and the overrepresentation of men in prisons to male dominance in business and politics. It\u2019s a lot to pin on a simple molecule.\u00a0Yet\u00a0testosterone levels don’t in fact predict one’s competitive drive or tendency for violence, appetite for risk or sex, or physical strength or athletic prowess. It\u2019s neither the biological essence of manliness nor even \u201cthe male sex hormone.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their new book,\u00a0Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography,<\/em>\u00a0sociomedical scientist Rebecca Jordan-Young\u00a0and cultural anthropologist Katrina Karkazis write a debunking life story of\u00a0a molecule, prying it loose from over a\u00a0century of misconceptions that undermine science even as they make myths and legends about this hormone seem scientific.<\/p>\n T’s story didn’t spring from nature: It is a tale that began long before the hormone was even isolated, when nineteenth-century scientists went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. This molecule\u2019s outmoded, authorized life story persisted, providing a handy rationale for countless behaviors\u2014from the boorish and the belligerent to the exemplary and enviable.<\/p>\n In their book and in this discussion,\u00a0Rebecca Jordan-Young\u00a0and\u00a0Katrina Karkazis\u00a0will focus on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting, allowing us to see the real T for the first time.<\/p>\n Books will be available for sale from independent bookseller Word Up Community Bookshop\/Librer\u00eda Comunitaria. <\/span><\/p>\n RSVP TO ATTEND<\/a><\/p>\n About the Speakers\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Rebecca M. Jordan-Young<\/b>\u00a0is a sociomedical scientist whose research has been supported by grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Science Foundation, and others. Jordan-Young is Professor of Women\u2019s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at\u00a0Barnard College, Columbia University<\/a>, and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in top science journals (Nature<\/a>,\u00a0Trends in Cognitive Sciences<\/a>), The New York Times<\/a><\/em>, and the\u00a0Guardian<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Katrina Karkazis<\/b>\u00a0is a cultural anthropologist who spent fifteen years at the\u00a0Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics<\/a>, working at the intersection of science, technology, gender studies, and bioethics. She is Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at\u00a0Brooklyn College, City University of New York<\/a>; Senior Research Fellow with the\u00a0Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School<\/a>; and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times<\/a><\/em>, the\u00a0Guardian<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0Wired<\/a><\/em>, and the\u00a0New York Review of Books<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Helena Hansen <\/strong>is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology at New York University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In their new book, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, sociomedical scientist Rebecca Jordan-Young and cultural anthropologist Katrina Karkazis write a debunking life story of a molecule, prying it loose from over a century of misconceptions that undermine science even as they make myths and legends about this hormone seem scientific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6155,"template":"","tags":[1221,1219,1220,1218],"class_list":["post-6154","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cultural-anthropology","tag-feminist-science","tag-sociomedical-science","tag-testosterone"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/6154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/event"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/6154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6156,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/6154\/revisions\/6156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/staging\/2435\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}