Cyborg Masculinity: Testosterone, Technology, and Politics

Derek “More Plates More Dates” Monroe and Joe Rogan are just two of the many influencers spreading the gospel of testosterone to young men online (Credit: Instagram @MorePlatesMoreDates)

"It's real simple,” declares Joe Rogan, the most-listened-to podcaster in the world. “If you're fine with not feeling as good—good! But if you're not fine with it... hormone replacement therapy exists for a reason, and that reason is it makes you feel way better.” Over on YouTube, Derek of More Plates More Dates, a channel with over two million subscribers as of November 5^th, 2025, says that "testosterone is not just about sex drive or muscle size; it is a hormone that touches almost every aspect of our health.” The neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, patron saint of the “biohacking” movement, tweets to his audience of millions that "the major effect of testosterone on the brain (of both males and females) is to make effort feel good.” Far from isolated remarks, these are the ever-growing liturgy of a movement that seeks to reclaim lost manhood through chemistry.

Testosterone is having a bit of a cultural moment. Younger men, especially Gen Z and millennials, show declining levels of testosterone compared to their fathers and grandfathers. Research shows that age-specific testosterone levels in men have been slowly and consistently declining for the past several decades, correlating with overall poorer health on average. Low testosterone is associated with excessive weight, a lack of strength-building exercise, poor diet, chronic drinking, poor sleep, and exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, all of which have been on the rise among younger men. It also contributes to health issues such as fatigue, weakness, and reduced libido.

A video posted on August 14^th, 2022 on Instagram claims that testosterone levels have decreased by about 1% every year since 1980, with other videos, some with hundreds of thousands of views, also found on TikTok. While this specific datapoint is false, research has indicated that testosterone levels are declining, with numbers ranging from a 15% drop from 1988 to 2003 and a 25% decline between 1999 and 2016.  Alt-right activists believe that low testosterone has resulted in the current “crisis of masculinity” and argue that being a left-leaning man who supports feminism is the result of a “chemical imbalance.” One source, a clinic offering testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) blames endocrine disruptors, obesity,  sedentary lifestyles, chronic stress, poor sleep, poor diet, and “reduced social hierarchies and competition” for this trend of moving away from “natural” masculinity.

Testosterone, the male sex hormone, responsible for aggression, libido, and strength, is a shorthand for “real manhood;” its lack therefore makes one “unmanly.” In response, a cottage industry of influencers, DIY TRT-ers, and biohackers has exploded across the internet, an attempt to reclaim men’s lost vitality. Fitness influencers on Instagram sell branded supplements to their audiences of thousands. Podcasters like Andrew Huberman and Joe Rogan provide advice to men on optimizing testosterone levels through lifestyle, exercise, and supplementation (use their code for 20% off your first order!). This coincides in a rise in pro-traditional-masculinity views among younger men, especially Gen-Z men and those who are politically conservative; Gen-Z men are more likely than previous generations to hold traditional views on gender. This creates a paradox where traditional masculinity is seen as “natural,” but men go to great lengths to make themselves “naturally” masculine. It raises the question: What makes a man, when a man can so easily re-engineer his own manhood?

The feminist scholar Donna Haraway provides us the tools to find the answer. In her 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway outlines her conception of the cyborg. Here, the cyborg is not necessarily a literal being of flesh and metal, but rather is discussed as a metaphor. Just as a literal cyborg represents a rejection of the rigid boundary between the human and the machine, this metaphorical cyborg represents a rejection of other rigid boundaries, especially those separating humans from animals and humans from machines, as well as the idea that women (and men) have a single, inherent, and fixed set of properties; that is, she is anti-essentialist. Haraway’s manifesto criticized the liberal feminists of her day for failing to incorporate race and class consciousness, the ecofeminists for falsely gendering technology as masculine and nature as feminine, and the radical feminists for rendering women “nonexistent except as a product of men’s desires.” Haraway’s feminism is anti-essentialist and intersectional, a decade before Trina Grillo identified those very tools as those that would dismantle “the master’s house.” For Haraway, the cyborg represents a plastic identity and highlights the limitations of socially imposed identities, such as “man” and “woman:” reject purity, embrace hybridity.

But what happens when men, not women, become cyborgs? Haraway only had womanhood in mind when she wrote her manifesto, but the arguments apply equally well to manhood. Today’s man is already technologically augmented: TRT, hair transplants, ED medicine, steroids, grooming devices, cosmetic surgery, dating apps, fitness wearables, the list goes on. Modern man embraces a Haraway-esque cyborg hybrid between the human and the machine, even if most men do not self-identify as cyborgs. But while Haraway’s feminist cyborg is anti-essentialist and liberatory, today’s masculine cyborg uses technology to reassert control, vitality, and dominance in accordance with traditional masculinity. While Haraway’s cyborg rejects purity, control, and hierarchy, the masculine cyborg reasserts them under the guise of self-optimization. 

Haraway wrote that she’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess. Today’s men are making themselves cyborgs to become like gods.

The large size of the testosterone market is a testament to growing concerns for gendered health issues  in men. (Credit: The Business Research Company)

TRT is marketed today as a form of empowerment for cisgender men, a way to shape a god-like body, the latest in consumer wellness. Today, testosterone is big business, with the industry valued at about $2.07 billion in 2024 and projected to grow to almost $3 billion by 2034. Pharmaceutical companies, TRT clinics, supplement manufacturers, diagnostic services, and online retailers all work together to get this hormone to the (allegedly) weak and effeminate masses. Advertising frequently highlights non-specific symptoms like decreased libido, weight gain, and reduced muscle mass, associating them with the vaguely defined condition known as “low-T.” Products claim to “boost T or free T,” “build lean body mass,” or “increase sex drive,” despite over 60% of testosterone supplements on the market having no scientific research to back up their claims. Despite this, the ads are effective, with studies showing an association between ad exposure and increased rates of new testosterone testing and initiation of therapy.

Yet access to testosterone is heavily restricted, particularly for transgender men and other trans-masculine persons – the same chemical gets opposite treatment, depending on who asks for it. Steep economic and social barriers exist to accessing hormones; clinics, prescriptions, and supplements are expensive and often not covered by insurance, assuming one even has insurance. TRT’s costs depend on the method of delivery and other factors, with injections being cheapest at between $30 and $150 per month, and pellet therapy costing upwards of $1,500 per month. Access to TRT requires a doctor’s prescription, as testosterone is a controlled substance in the United States; while testosterone supplements are less regulated, this lack of regulation opens up the potential for contamination with potentially dangerous ingredients. In practice, many men bypass this regulation through telemedicine clinics offering quick online screenings, overseas pharmacies shipping without prescriptions or the unregulated market of “natural” T-boosting supplements. Influencers act as informal sales channels, promoting clinics and brand partnerships that skirt oversight. The question of who gets to inject their way to apotheosis is a political one – the state exerts control by defining who can, and cannot, be “enhanced.”

This mythic masculinity, for such a masculinity has never really existed, can be contrasted with the embodied masculinity of queer and transgender men and masculine-aligned persons. Their mere existence already unbalances the “testosterone = domination” equation. Queer and trans people embody a masculinity that is broader, more fluid, and more self-defined than the traditional form, and which exists alongside, or even in place of, the traditional. Queer masculinity, as found in gay and bisexual men, exists outside the heterosexual-normative construction, and transgender masculinity is a broad spectrum encompassing trans men and trans-masculine persons who identify with the masculine. Trans-masculine people may freely adopt traditionally manly traits, but they are equally likely to consciously define masculinity on their own terms If the influencer’s cyborg masculinity seeks to master, queer and trans masculinities (note the plural) seek to integrate. They seek coherence, not domination, between body and identity.

Why do men even bother, given the difficulties and the risks? The manosphere calls traditional manly men “high T” and everyone else “low T.” This view is culturally reinforced through popular media, whether that is Huberman Labs or one’s favorite fitness influencer. These cultural ideals drive the supplementation industry, which reaffirms the high-T idea, which further drives the supplementation industry in a feedback cycle, to say nothing of the irony of using advanced technology to try to restore “natural” masculinity. High-T thus becomes secularized moral language, testosterone a signal for one’s manly virtue.

But when you get down to it, what is more manly? To define your manhood for yourself and yourself alone, freely adopting or discarding what does and does not suit you? Or chasing material success, dominance, emotional suppression, physical strength, and sex with women just because the bald man on your phone told you to?

The efforts to RETVRN to mythic masculinity are based on fiction: all bodies are hybrid, male and female and intersex (itself a hybrid state), so “natural masculinity” does not exist, nor has it ever. What is called “natural” or “traditional” masculinity is, in reality, based on a neoliberal, hyperindividual solution to collective existential angst among men – optimize yourself or risk falling behind those who do. This existential angst follows from other modern fears, especially the fear of obsolescence in a world of automation, shifting gender roles, and declining faith in church, state, and other traditional institutions. Influencers monetize this anxiety by promising to restore lost meaning through the optimization of the self. The cyborg lens can liberate us from this view; with the same technologies men use to optimize themselves, we can decouple masculinity from domination. We can rethink health not solely as an individual issue but a civilizational one – mental health, access to necessary drugs, and inclusivity are the responsibility both of the individual and the society in which the individual lives.

In her manifesto, Haraway wrote that “to be a cyborg is to accept responsibility for one’s evolution.” The advanced technology with which we have been blessed has given us far greater freedom than our ancestors, provided we use it right. Men, all of us really, have access to tools to modify our own bodies in ways our fathers and grandfathers could not imagine, to build a body that makes us, as individuals, most comfortable. Will we use these tools to transcend archaic notions of what makes a man, to build a world where health-tech, mental health apps, and hormone therapy are tools of empathy rather than status? Or will we use them uncritically to dominate ourselves and others?