The New York Times has an
interesting
piece on testosterone:
Studies have also shown that men in long-term marriages see their testosterone
levels progressively fall and their sex drives subsequently decline. It is as
if their wives successfully tame them, reducing their sexual energy to a level
where it is more unlikely to seek extramarital outlets.
Men who are excessively testosteroned are not that attractive to most women.
Although they have the genes that turn women on ... they can also be
precisely the unstable, highly sexed creatures that childbearing,
stability-seeking women want to avoid. There are two ways, evolutionary
psychologists hazard, that women have successfully squared this particular
circle. One is to marry the sweet class nerd and have an affair with the
college quarterback: that way you get the good genes, the good sex and the
stable home. The other is to find a man with variable T levels...
Those qualities associated with low testosterone -- patience, risk aversion,
empathy -- can all lead to excellent governance. They are just lousy qualities
in the crapshoot of electoral politics.
What if parents committed to gender equity opted to counteract the effect of
testosterone on boys in the womb by complementing it with injections of
artificial female hormones? That way, structural gender difference could be
eradicated from the beginning. Such a policy would lead to "men and women
with normal bodies but identical feminine brains," Matt Ridley posits.
"War, rape, boxing, car racing, pornography and hamburgers and beer would
soon be distant memories. A feminist paradise would have arrived."