Reflections on 2024: Testosterone, Collaborations, Language, & Authority

As my third birth approaches, I felt inspired to gather and reflect on my writing, research, and teaching experiences of the past year

I’m going to share a reflective and somewhat personal post today. At the end of September I began maternity leave (baby #3 expected in a few weeks). If you noticed a lack of writing back in the spring, I was too busy laying on the couch vomiting to think or write! The first half of pregnancy is extremely challenging for me, and the surprise nature of this pregnancy added to the struggle.

Now I sit with a very pregnant belly in sweet anticipation of baby’s arrival! I very much appreciate all of you readers here, as I slowly slowly build this collection of writings.

This Substack is very meaningful to me, as it represents one avenue through which I can independently earn wealth and share ideas about human evolution, women’s health, sex, and gender (with no demands or limits on how I write or what I write about). In this spirit, I thought I’d share about the various research, teaching, and communication activities that filled my year.

TESTOSTERONE

Through my part time research work with my PhD mentor (we’ve been collaborating for 14 years!), I’ve contributed to four projects.

Firstly, our small team developed a comprehensive review of the roles for prenatal and postnatal testosterone levels in shaping female morphology, reproductive physiology, behaviour, and reproductive strategy. The key idea from this project is that female mammals meaningfully vary in testosterone levels, and that these levels have predictable and lifelong effects on key outcomes, such as strength, dominance, immunity, and reproductive output. 

We included data on multiple species, including rodents, ruminants, and humans. Overall, the patterns indicate that relatively lower testosterone (prenatally and postnatally) guides a female mammal toward a strategy that favours increased investment into reproduction, such as earlier onset of sexual maturity, increased attractiveness to males, and greater parenting effort. By contrast, females exposed to relatively higher levels of testosterone tend to mature later, may grow larger, express more dominant behaviours, and may fare better in particularly competitive or resource-scarce environments.

This project is important because the bulk of work on testosterone has been conducted in males, with testosterone being ‘the male sex hormone’. But it is present in relatively high quantities in the female body, and forms the precursor to the estrogens. Furthermore, testosterone has important roles in multiple aspects of female physiology, including ovulation and uterine dynamics. 

I’m pleased to share that this project has been revised once and is currently with an editor of a suitable journal. 

GRANDMOTHERING

The testosterone work unexpectedly flowed into a second project where we sought to explain the evolutionary and endocrine origins of grandmothering. Lower testosterone levels predict earlier onset as well as cessation of reproduction in women. I began to wonder if this pattern that we observe now could have also been at play during much earlier phases of human evolution.

The basic hypothesis, which I describe and discuss with Kimberly Ann Johnson on her impactful podcast here, suggests that women with relatively lower levels of testosterone started reproducing comparably earlier than women with higher testosterone. These women had more children at a younger age and were more motivated to parent and mother (given the general negative effects of testosterone on social cognition and infant care). Such women may have shifted toward grandmothering behaviour, which may be supported by lower testosterone through the hormone’s effect on ovulation speed, ovarian aging, and parenting behaviour. 

Positive effects of grandmothering involve higher survivorship and benefits to daughters receiving grandmothering care, so this strategy, underpinned by comparably low testosterone (which has prenatal roots), appears to have been under strong enough selection to sculpt human women toward our triple nature (maiden/mother/grandmother), with menopause ‘written’ into our physiology and lifespan.

This project has been submitted for publication, and is taking a rather long time to be reviewed.

FEMALE ANOGENITAL DISTANCE

I spent most of the year coordinating a research project and collecting data on women’s ability to self-measure the distance from their anus to clitoris and anus to fourchette, with the help of Jenel Maruk. This distance is affected by prenatal testosterone exposure. Stay tuned for a future publication (I’ve turned a rough draft and the dataset over to the rest of the team!)

SEX-BIRTH

This project has been both my labor of love and thorn in my side since ~2017. Pardon the cliches. When I first began my doctoral studies, I was obsessed with this idea of a linkage between female orgasm and childbirth. It was an intuitive idea, one born of a personal experience in my own body.

It has grown and mutated in many directions. I’m no longer caught on the initial premise, but I see the value in making connections between multiple phases of female reproduction. My friend and colleague and birth support, Jenel, has shared with me so many anecdotes about how the romantic and sexual components of a couple’s relationship influence the later birth process.

Anyway, you can check out this older post about my sex-birth project for more details. An exciting development was receiving a very thorough but fairly positive review from a widely read sexuality journal. I spent months revising the project (for the 12243250829th time) and re-submitted it for another round of review.

Will it get published? I don’t know.

Do I care? I’m not sure.

I started this project with the misguided hope of making a groundbreaking discovery, of bridging some women’s secret with the world of science. I dropped the naive hope of being some impressive pioneer, and came to realize that the two worlds I was trying to bridge are quite distinct and perhaps even content to operate separate from the other. I think I was wrong to assume it would be a good think to connect ‘women’s wisdom’ with science, but I’m still pondering this. Like many people, I’ve come to some level of disillusionment with the world of medicine. I know so many women’s health practitioners who know female biology and help women so much more than OBs and gynaecologists. 

Kimberly’s question still hangs fresh in my mind: is more research [into women’s diseases, and childbirth, etc] really the answer? 

SEX-BASED LANGUAGE

A collaboration that I’m spectacularly proud of is one with Dr. Karleen Gribble, a professor of nursing & midwifery based in Australia who has done excellent work drawing attention to, and explaining the harms of, de-sexing language. She wrote this paper on the subject, describing how language like ‘chest-feeding’ or ‘birthing person’ is dehumanizing, ableist, culturally-imperialistic and confusing.

I got to share my experiences of demands from reviewers and ethics boards to de-sex my own research writing as part of a collaborative paper with her and a few other engaged women. Stay tuned!

However, I have also been challenged to not outright dismiss work of people who use language I find off-putting or offensive. I had an interesting argument with a person on X earlier this year, who complies information on body literacy and women’s health. Her work looks great to me, and very important, but I was so offended by her lack of willingness to use the word ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ in any of her writing. She serves a different group, I suppose. Another example is Holistic Abortions on IG - I do not like the language they use as I clearly see abortion as a WOMEN’S health topic, but it is not worth dismissing the incredible wisdom and knowledge and service they provide to people.

I’m trying to observe myself when I get agitated about these issues, and to return to the matter at hand: serving women. I remain committed to using sex-based language in my work, but other people may have their own reasons for not doing so (and I wouldn’t want to ignore or misrepresent good work and genuine service because of differences in ideology).

INDEPENDENT TEACHING

I was thrilled to teach a 3-hour lecture to a private women’s health school (Ma School), led by Carly Rae and Andrea. These two women who lead the school are visionaries, deeply committed to serving women and women’s thriving.

The women taking the training were curious, intelligent, and keen to learn about how evolutionary pressures shape women’s health and reproduction. We talked about survival-reproduction tradeoffs, and how male-female interactions and maternal-offspring interactions create dynamic tensions in our biology. 

The opportunity to teach this class also shone a light for me on how I might be able to teach and share outside of the university classroom. I am very grateful for this opportunity, and look forward to referring my friends and community to Ma School practitioners around the world.

WHO IS THE AUTHORITY?

A key theme I’ve been embracing all year, and one that I see reflected in the astrological worldview as we embody the Aquarian archetype collectively, is the question of who gets to be the authority?

People are increasingly wary of ‘trust the science’, skeptical of doctors and medical research, and so on. I am one of these people too. The capacity for corruption and hierarchy based on the wrong principles is just far too widespread and obvious at this point.

I do not make fun of people for ‘doing their own research’. I find that type of attitude by academics or whoever repugnant. Anyone can learn and research; the decentralization of knowledge is a gift of this era.

However, I do see the need for expertise and discernment. I was following an interesting amateur researcher earlier this year who I had to unfollow as she kept spreading these bold claims with NO substantiation (such as, hunter-gatherers never experienced starvation, or pre-eclampsia is only a modern condition).

My evolutionary background has taught me that adaptations to cope with starvation as well as pre-eclampsia are deep in our biology, and this would only exist if our ancestors had faced such threats.

The ability to get lots of attention on social media with the right words, reel, video, or look is certainly an issue and there is a big problem with massive misinformation. 

How do we seek out the true experts? Those who are practically experienced, and grounded in solid, relevant theory? How do we bridge Earth & Air? We are in a transitional time, so I suppose we are learning this sort of alchemy, and such alchemy goes hand-in-hand with personal responsibility. No longer can we blindly blame our doctor or OB or whoever for our medical issues and experiences.

With access to information and diverse practitioners, we become authorities over our own experiences and health. Aquarius, as opposite to Leo, represents the de-throning of central authority. Consider all the areas of life this is happening.

Before I made some notes about my work life this past year, I was feeling a bit dejected and unsure of what my research and teaching future holds. This process of reflecting has reminded me of how personal connections and openness leads me to interesting collaborations and job opportunities.

Goodbye for now

I am very grateful to all the people who invited me to collaborate this year, as well as the people who challenged rigidity in my own thinking. And I’m grateful to YOU for being a reader. Consider upgrading to a paid membership - buy me a symbolic cappuccino once a month and support my continued journey into these topics and questions. Please leave any comments or questions, I love the back-and-forth dialogue!