Testosterone is Not the Problem

All right, and welcome back. On today's episode, I want to talk about something that bubbled up here in the mainstream culture that is super interesting to me for a number of reasons.

So I'm a big film nerd. I love, love, love cinema. And one of my favorite working directors is absolutely James Cameron. Makes big blockbuster, action oriented films and does it with an incredible craft. He's a very skilled director, hands down. However, in promoting his new film, he was getting interviewed by the Hollywood Reporter and was quoted as saying, I always think of testosterone as, as a toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system.

Now, here's the deal. Testosterone is not the problem. I think this is a great example of what's wrong with social media and how fast things fly around. Now, if we really talked to him, would he think testosterone, the hormone itself, is a toxin? No. Testosterone is incredibly important in the building blocks of life. Men need testosterone and in fact, women need testosterone.

It's an important part of ovulation each month. If women didn't have testosterone, they wouldn't ovulate. And testosterone is the go hormone. It helps us get stuff done. It helps us create life. Now, I think the more nuanced thing of what he's pointing to here is it's not that testosterone is the problem. It's that when men are disconnected from their hearts, they are often dangerous and destructive.

That's it. And if you've listened to this show before, you know, I don't believe in toxic masculinity. I do believe in pathological masculinity, which means masculinity that has grown awry through developmental trauma, through lack of training, through all the many things that cause men to disconnect from their bodies, to disconnect from their hearts. Now, pathology is different than toxic.

Toxic means it's bad. No matter what pathology means, something has gone wrong in its development. And there is no doubt that there are instances of the masculine and instances of men who have gone very wrong. What I specifically mean by this is that disconnecting from the heart, testosterone is like a energy of moving forward, getting what I want, pushing, taking risks.

Its benefit is it moves things forward, but when it's disconnected from the heart, it loses any relational association. All of the Bad shit that people hammer men for these days is almost exclusively the result of that disconnection from the relational space. Relational space, meaning impact on other people and even impact on the planet.

That's when really bad stuff happens. That's when wars are started. That's when the environment is decimated, polluted and destroyed. That's when people are abused. That's when women are sexually abused. That's when other men are bullied. It's when there's the disconnection in the heart space from the relational space. Testosterone is not the problem.

It's testosterone, AKA men, the masculine, disconnected from their hearts, that is the problem. Now, a lot of men don't want to be in their hearts or don't know how to be in their hearts. By heart, I mean in their emotional center, feeling and connected to the feelings of others. Why? Well, it can be painful. Emotions live in our body, something I've talked about before.

And when we don't know how to process them or be with them, we want to avoid them, we run away from them, we disconnect from our bodies. Or sometimes we just don't have the training of how do I do this? How do I move my anger in a healthy way? How do I connect to my lust in a healthy way? There are healthy ways to do all of these things that the masculine is often beat up for. And that, yes, there is a bit of a cultural pendulum swing to the side that's been really presencing all the different ways the masculine has caused harm throughout history.

That's not a bad thing. That's actually a really important thing. We want to evolve. We don't need to reclaim or rediscover our masculine. We want to keep growing the masculine into an even more powerful and sensitive force inside ourselves and inside the world. The world needs the masculine. The part of us that notices, witnesses, tracks and then acts.

The part of us that serves, part of us, that makes things, protects people and teaches things. Those are all deep gifts of the feminine and the masculine, but particularly the masculine. Testosterone isn't the problem. It's the unevolved, pathological masculine that is the problem. Now, I think if I had James Cameron here and we sat down and talked about it, he'd probably agree. His latest movies show people fiercely protecting the environment, their family and each other.

And that is not possible without testosterone. That is not possible without the energy of go, act, react. We need healthy masculine energy and we need testosterone. We just need it integrated into an actual open, sensitive body. That is the thing. It's not the masculine that's the problem. It's the disconnected masculine that causes school shootings.

It's the disconnected masculine that abuses women. It's the disconnected masculine that causes so much harm in the world. The process of cultivating a healthy, conscious masculine is the work for men in this day and age. The world doesn't need us to just be providers anymore. They need us to show up with open hearts, sensitive, aware and connected to our power. It doesn't work to be a macho caveman.

It also doesn't work to just be a pushover nice guy. We can't do the things we need to do to make, protect and teach in the world when we don't have access to both. When we're not sensitive and we're not strong. We need to do the things in our lives to cultivate that strength and sensitivity. That is the work of an evolutionary man. That is the work of taking all the gifts that came before in our biology, in our culture, in our personal development and moving forward, the best parts and growing up the parts that need to be grown up.

It's no longer okay to just be an asshole who does what you want. We're in the last throes of that crap. Our culture's getting to the point where it's saying, you can be an amazing artist, you can be an amazing tech entrepreneur, you can be an amazing thing, but you don't have to be an ass. You got to grow up. We've seen so many examples of what happens when the masculine goes pathological, when it grows off center, when the heart closes down.

It's so important to do the deep inner emotional work, to learn to stay open and connected, no matter what is going on in the moment, in your environment, or with whoever you're relating to. I think this is really the point of so much men's work these days, is to bring these two things open. Sensitive, heart grounded, connective power.

We need to be able to use force in the world when necessary to create safety. And we can't do that without the masculine part of all of us, without the testosterone that causes this drive, this action. We don't want to throw that out. That's not a toxin. The toxin is the culture of disconnect that has been embedded in so many men for so long.

Long, and, and it's time we change that. Guys like you listening to things like this are the ones that are going to change it. Interaction by interaction, man to man, parent to child, spouse to spouse. We get to grow this idea of what the healthy masculine is in our culture. We get to show that it's okay to be in our power and be exquisitely sensitive to the needs and wants and safety of people in the world around us.

When we can do that, when we can hold our awareness of the system, keep our heart open to others around us, move things forward with the power and drive inside of us, we're an amazing gift to the world. You are an amazing gift to the world whenever you embody these things, whenever you embody this healthy, conscious, masculine, whenever you use your testosterone in service of making, protecting, teaching, loving.

So again, testosterone is not the problem. It's not a toxin. The problem is pathological masculine that is disconnected from the heart. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. If they do drop into your heart, connect with them in love. Show them that there's another way that's not domineering, that's not aggressive, that is present, open, grounded and available.

If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men. Apply.