Richard Reeves Missed The Mark In 'Of Boys And Men'

Doctors today don’t even know their patients are testosterone deficient, and they wouldn't know from Reeves's book.

I just finished Richard Reeve’s latest book, “Of Boys and Men” painting a grim picture for men today.

Reeves, a scholar at the liberal Brookings Institution, chronicled the issues that face modern men in the fallout of the contemporary feminist movement.

Men are missing in the classroom, with just a 35 percent four-year graduation rate among those who enrolled in a traditional public bachelors’ program, compared to women at 46 percent. Men are already less likely to graduate high school and have lower grade-point averages. Men are missing from the workforce. More than 9 million prime working-age men were out of a job just before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Men who are working today that began in 1983 are making about 10 percent less than their parents. Men are also just, missing, gone by “deaths of despair” that claim three times more men than women.

Reeves’s book offers a blockbuster examination of how gender roles have largely reversed in ways both pundits and policymakers overlook. Reeve’s analysis however, failed the comprehensive test.

I don’t think you can have a complete diagnosis of the problems men face without even an assessment of plummeting testosterone levels. Reeves acknowledged the importance of testosterone in the desire for sex and reproduction but made no reference to their steep decline in men today. Even while he criticized the American Psychological Association for the organization’s failure to even mention testosterone in 2018 guidelines for working with boys and men, any mention of their levels in freefall was absent from his book.

Testosterone levels have collapsed by double digits since the 1980. According to the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, levels are falling across the board with each generation. Follow-up studies connected generational drops of testosterone to weight gain and accelerated aging. But doctors today don’t even know their patients are testosterone deficient after the ranges, based on current population averages, dropped 42 percent since 2006. If only someone were to write a book on boys and men!

Testosterone is the primary male hormone that regulates metabolic and sexual function. A steep rise in men who are hormonally deficient previews disastrous implications for fertility that Americans are already bearing witness. Men deprived of testosterone are more likely to become the jobless and depressed apathetic dope-smokers that Reeves described.

The book is contrarian for Reeves’ acknowledgement that biological differences matter. But it’s incomplete for Reeves’ failure to assess hormone deficiencies make those differences matter.

Links:

The Post Millennial: Trans teen died from vaginoplasty complications during landmark Dutch study used to justify child sex changes

Wall Street Journal: Weight-Loss Drugmakers Lobby for Medicare Coverage

The Federalist: Woman Whose Chemical Abortion Has Haunted Her For 23 Years: ‘Don’t Make The Same Mistake’

New York Times: An Extreme Risk of Taking Ozempic: Malnutrition

New York Times: The Yoga Regimen That Keeps an N.B.A. Forward Centered

Washington Examiner: Chemicals in drinking water contribute to obesity: Study

<a href=“Marcus Aurelius | The head of Marcus Aurelius found in the P… | Flickr“>Bradley Weber / Flickr  </a> / <a href=“https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/“>CC BY 2.0</a>

<a href=“Colorado Morning Afterglow (Explored May 2022) | WEBSITE Flu… | Flickr“>G. Lamar/ Flickr </a> / <a href=“https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/“>CC BY 2.0</a>