Isn’t that sweet? Pete Hegseth is imposing mandatory testosterone testing, but is not requiring testosterone supplements, yet. As we all know, good soldiers are in a constant roid-rage, and can be recognized by their chronic bacne.
This policy is being enabled by the ongoing corruption of science by our government.
Hegseth’s announcement comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump administration officials are moving to make it easier for doctors to prescribe testosterone. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed easing prescribing limits on testosterone gels, pills, patches and injections.
…
Last year, the FDA removed a boxed warning about possible risks of heart attack and stroke from the drugs.
Let’s ignore all our prior medical knowledge!
…current medical guidelines generally recommend against blanket testing of testosterone levels. Typically, doctors are advised to discuss testosterone therapy with men who have troubling symptoms and documented low levels of the hormone on two separate blood tests.
Testing for testosterone is challenging because levels of the hormone fluctuate throughout the day. Accurate testosterone readings are typically measured in the morning after fasting.
I have never been tested for my testosterone levels. I know that, for sure, they have almost certainly declined since my 20s, because that’s typical, but I have never experienced problems of the sort that might prompt testing. You can tolerate a wide range of variation without noticing any effects, so barring real symptoms, doping with T is just coping with diminished masculinity of a psychological sort.
But OK, let’s test everyone, new recruits and old generals, and let’s test men and women alike. Pete might be surprised when he discovers that trans men are already pumping themselves up with testosterone, maybe making them better soldiers than AMAB men.
Don’t bother testing Pete, though. He’s so insecure that he’s probably taking testosterone supplements already. Also, he’s a pig, scarcely human.
Hegseth has previously said he does not believe women should hold combat roles and that those positions should be based on the “highest male standard.” He has blocked some military promotions for women or fired female leaders since becoming Pentagon leader.
That alone warrants firing him.
There are so many interferences and variables with testosterone testing in cis men… heterophilic antibodies, fatty liver, high sex hormone binding globular, daily fluctuations, ejaculation frequency, T2DM… that it’s essentially useless to monitor unless there is some underlying pathophysiology. Supplements will also make the good ol’ gonads smaller too.
Someone should tell Hegseth that if he wants big balls, supplements are the complete opposite of what should be done. Although it does explain a lot with him…
So, then, the East German track and field teams of the 1980s should be on recruiting posters, right? Oh, wait, many of them were women so they’re not appropriate role models even for this distorted vision of what makes for “good soldierin’.” And long-term side effects? We’ll just exclude those from the future VA budget by denying service connection, since making up for one’s “organic inadequacies” is not related to military service, right?
One wonders if there’s going to be a sudden rise in “chemically-sophisticated fitness consultants” right outside base main gates.
pigsbreath is such a manly man. Someone should make him watch the video of Monty Python’s Lumberjack song!
Wait, on second thought, lets have all pigsbreath’s ‘war fighters’ load up on supplements and steroids. Maybe, then, we can test whether or not they really do cause heart attack and stroke! OOH, sciencey!
I suspect this is a further step in Hegseth’s program of removing women from the military, particularly from combat and command positions, and building a corps of male pigs who will dutifully do the bidding of the fascist leaders.
Perhaps they do, but I’m surprised they aren’t prominently citing the Israeli meta-analysis that was just released indicating that male testosterone levels have declined 54% in the last 50 years.
Reportedly, the most commonly performed gender-affirming surgery is treatment of gynecomastia.
Will Hegseth release figures on occurrence of enlarged male breast tissue in our troops and veterans? Or will such stats be kept Top Secret!!! to protect US national insecurity?
We are being governed by overgrown children who want their tree fort with a “no girls!” sign.
The Commander in Chief’s test results are in. Highest testosterone level ever. The doctors were amazed. Never seen anything like it. Big burly men were coming up to Trump with tears in their eyes saying “Sir, I wish I had your T levels”.
Does Kegsbreath know T is a treatment for sexual dysfunction in postmenopausal women? Someone should really let him know its a girly drug known to spread girl cooties.
Also, you gotta stop insulting pigs. They are way smarter and more fun than these walking billboards for toxic masculinity. Insult squirrels instead. :D
From the OP article:
Cheryl Rofer: “Along with all the other things wrong with this, it’s a mistaken understanding of the function of testosterone in human bodies. A quicker fix to what he seems to want would be amphetamines, something that previous rulers discovered.”
Wait, does everyone have the same sensitivity to testosterone as each other, rendering circulating T levels a proper measure of what ever Kegsbreath thinks T should be doing for soldiers? Or can soldier A be significantly higher in T than soldier B, but soldier B be more androgenated due to higher levels of receptors or stronger signaling pathways? Or am I just being too much of a scientist for these ‘alpha men’?
@9 Iris Vander Pluym said, ‘you gotta stop insulting pigs. They are way smarter and more fun than these walking billboards for toxic masculinity. Insult squirrels instead’
I reply: you are absolutely correct about pigs’ intelligence putting the sec. of war to shame. His name just fit the parody so well, I used it. I need to find a silly animal for his parody name. But, I’m a fan of Rock the Flying Squirrel, so that’s out. Maybe, horrid hedgehog hegseth or poisonous peter parrot. I’ll work on finding a better name ‘in my spare time’, right after I load up on testosterone boosting supplements. That should help me find a better name.
I’m fond of Kegsbreath, but I worry about insulting innocent alcoholics who are just trying to recover control and sobriety.
I mean, “Hedge Breath” is right there…
Recursive Rabbit and cartomancer, thanks for the additional name ideas. Keep them coming folks.
nomadiq @11:
(These are from the trans women in sports discourse circa 2019 I had bookmarked.)
[YT video] The Bad Science Behind the Caster Semenya Ruling (8:49)
[Twitter thread] Dr Veronica Ivy (Trans cyclist, philosopher):
Or, maybe, testing for estrogen levels would be more appropriate:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/12/how-to-build-an-elite-servicewoman-british-military-top-scientists-look-to-unleash-oestrogen-advantage
Oh, wait, that assumes that women are going to remain in the military. Never mind; we can just do without the fired Chief of Naval Operations who achieved her rank by being measured against all of those more-warrior-like men, and everyone like her. We’ll just ignore that women handle high G-forces better than men do, in particular in recovery from any vision greyout. And, of course, this is just the first step; right after absence of a Y chromosome will come absence of a cross on a pendant, followed by exclusion of those who have excessive melanin levels…
Does anyone else hear echoes of white, Aryan ubermensch>/i> in Hegseth’s plans. Goes with his tattoos, I suppose, along with his cartoonish Rambo concept of what makes a good soldier.
So simple a test to pass; take a dose the day before the test.
Instant macho!
I wonder if Hegseth has any shares in those companies that market testosterone-boosting supplements,
*sigh* Speaking of the sports discourse…
After pushing anti-trans laws to ‘protect women’s sports’, Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation now wants women’s sports gone to ‘assist fertility’
What sports discourse, CA7746? Nothing whatsoever to do with anti-trans laws, here.
“Our troops will be getting gender-affirming care” is the title.
Ahem.
You introduced the ‘sports discourse’.
Now you are speaking of the discourse you yourself introduced as though you were contributing, instead of derailing.
(Obs, women’s sport is some strange attractor for you, though this is about the military and about men)
I hadn’t been following the discourse. My parenthetical indicated that the links were dated but what I had readily available. In the time after that comment, I happened to scroll past an article published yesterday on the change in rhetoric from one of the instigating think tanks. And so I followed up with a single sentence, sans pull quote to minimize derailment here.
[meta]
I know. You also posted that on the infinite thread.
But this is about the military, and the talking-face specimen who claims to be the Secretary of War, when really he is the Secretary of Defense.
cf. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/09/05/trump-renames-defense-department-to-department-of-war-is-it-legal-heres-what-to-know/
(Right? All about image and posing and preening, fuck actual competence)
Look, Hegseth doesn’t cate about all that woke, godless science stuff which is all made up anyway. All he knows that American soldiers aren’t manly (i.e. prone to violence and willing to commit war crimes) enough to enforce American power and juicing them will make them the steely-eyed warfighers our country needs to conquer the world.
The key to understanding Hegseth is realizing he’s just like Trump. Not superficially but in a lot of the ways that actually matter to any of us.
You see, they both have two superpowers. Now most real people, if you consiider them to have superpowers at all, you tend to think they’re unusually competent. Or they’re very good at dealing with some very difficult situations. Not so with Hegseth & Trump. In fact, their superpowers are the exact opposite.
Not the Brightest: No matter how dumb you think Hegseth or Trump are, they’re definitely dumber. And they will find a way to prove it to you that you’ll find difficult to ignore.
Panic: Hegseth & Trump can panic over literally anything as long as it’s a normal part of everyday life. It’s really kind of amazing, I don’t know anyone who can panic so readily over nothing whatsoever. You can see this is true by how Hegseth loses his mind every time he notices someone is in the military without being an insecure cis-het male who makes up for their many failings with delusions of grandeur. And with Trump you can tell by how fequently he declares an emergency. Mind you, give them both a real emergency like a war and suddenly they’re feeling fine. They know they aren’t getting shot at and it makes dodging uncomfortable questions about their competency even easier than normal.
Whiskey-dick Pete is going to personally inspect every nut-sack in the US armed forces.
In modern warfare, the most effective soldier is basically a nerd with a tablet and good reflexes, so naturally Pete Hegseth has hit upon the strategy of finding 300 Spartans to stand between America and danger.
@^ Smith: Spartans were well organized and disciplined. Kegsbreath’s ideal is a mob of Viking berserkers. Kegsbreath claimed that his son wouldn’t want to fight alongside a female trooper. Maybe not, because he’s probably as much of an idiot as his father. On the flip side, no female trooper, who’s likely (much) smarter than Kegsbreath Jr, would get her squad shot up by pointless macho posturing.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3mqv6dsn7p22y
if you can’t view it there try here:
https://xcancel.com/cwebbonline/status/2078227817305944173
Ridana, that’s perfection.
But it’s a “short” Morales! I thought you had assured us you were far too sophisticated a personage to ever watch a short!
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/07/12/do-not-taunt-the-bison/#comment-2306117
The above was very funny BTW. But you’ll never know.
In the news:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/doctors-question-evidence-behind-pentagon-plan-testosterone-screening-2026-07-18/
↓
Doctors question evidence behind Pentagon plan for testosterone screening
By Nancy Lapid July 18, 2026
The mandate is one of several recent healthcare policy changes implemented by Hegseth and other Trump administration cabinet officers that have sparked debate among experts and raised questions about what scientific basis, if any, supports them.
Hegseth has also reversed the military’s long-standing flu vaccine mandate, a decision that was walked back after a flu outbreak, while the Department of Health and Human Services removed 17 members from its vaccine advisory panel and altered its vaccine recommendations.
Five of six men’s health experts contacted by Reuters for this story said they were puzzled by the announcement on testosterone testing and concerned it may lead to unnecessary — or even harmful — treatment.
[etc]