This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
We have crossed the Rubicon: reality is satire and truth is dead.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth purged the United States military of transgender servicemembers last year, arguing that our dire medical condition (which the government also believes we shouldn’t be allowed to receive treatment for) and inherent lack of honesty and integrity make us a detriment to military readiness. Then, they spent the last 17 months arguing in court that their almost certainly unconstitutional purge is very cool and very legal.
Now—and I swear to you I’m not joking—Pete Hegseth has declared that United States military personnel can receive free hormone replacement therapy if they want.
Long the obsession of toxic men on the internet, Hegseth believes a significant number of American fighting men may be suffering from low testosterone, and says that they will soon be able to opt into testing and, if necessary, free T injections. Now, if you want to read a more informative take on the science behind taking supplemental testosterone, check out this article we published yesterday by Jules Sherred. I’m not here to be informative.
I’m here to make fun of Pete Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth is former army, an ROTC National Guard butter bar dipshit who spent a large portion of his military career stationed at Guantanamo Bay, preparing him for a career in an administration that loves to ship innocent undocumented immigrants to fucking Salvadoran death camps. Hegseth has also been accused of rampant, violent alcoholism by his former sister-in-law, who said in a sworn statement to Congress that he made her sister, his ex-wife, fear for her life by going on drunken rampages that inspired her to hide in the closet from him and establish a safe word with family members in case she needed them to come rescue her from him.
None of that mattered to our congressional representatives, of course, who confirmed Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense anyway, because apparently you can do exactly whatever you want and still hold key government positions as long as you’re Donald Trump’s butt buddy.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Once Hegseth actually took office, he proceeded to blast classified military information to an unwitting journalist, nepo railroad his family members into important government positions, and breach common security protocols in the name of personal convenience. To say nothing of the fact that a ton of his private data was just available for free on the internet.
This guy sucks! He’s an incompetent rube. He’s a buffoon, easily fooled by junk science cobbled together to defraud simpleminded men, like—just as an example—the idea that large numbers of men are experiencing low testosterone, and need supplemental testosterone to max out their manly meter.
Here’s the truth: Testosterone is useful for building muscle mass, maintaining red blood cell count, and sustaining typical energy levels. Among other things. Low testosterone, or hypogonadism, can cause erectile dysfunction and low libido, depression, and an increase in body fat. Among other things. Mostly, hypogonadism affects men older than 45 who have medical complications like obesity, poorly managed diabetes, and obstructive sleep apnea.
How many men are actually impacted by low testosterone? It’s hard to be sure. Depending on the age range you sample and what you actually consider to be low testosterone, the number can be in the low single digit percentile, or as high as 80%. Typically, men over 45 are most likely to experience low testosterone.
Yet, for some reason, Hegseth wants to offer testing to military men over 30, and allow troops under 30 to receive testing upon request. That specific demographic—physically active men under 45—is likely to yield an incredibly small number of people who actually experience testosterone levels low enough to warrant medical intervention. And when, inevitably, some handful of troops do have low T and could benefit from supplemental shots, they aren’t going to become Rambo style super soldier killing machines.
They’ll just feel normal again.
For men who don’t need these treatments, but are pressured into them so that they can become the ultimate soldier, risks include worsening existing sleep apnea, developing acne, exacerbating the risk of prostate cancer, limiting sperm production or causing the testicles to shrink, and forming blood clots from excess red blood cell production that could lead to a fatal pulmonary embolism.
These are serious risks that nobody should take on to appease a ruddyfaced boozer with the most devastating M-shaped hairline you’ve ever seen. If, against the odds, you are reading this and happen to be a military man… well, first of all, get out as soon as you can. Immediately, if at all possible. But while you are in, for the love of all that is holy, do not start taking testosterone supplements at Pete Hegseth’s recommendation.
