Usage
References to testosterone poisoning are often used to criticize men. Magazine editor Tina Brown uses the phrase thematically in a 2005 Washington Post essay about the downfall of Harvard University president Larry Summers and the problems of Disney's former embattled CEO Michael Eisner.8 Beth Gallagher's Salon.com essay "Road Sows" about the drawbacks of sports utility vehicles describes those vehicles' growing popularity as having spread beyond testosterone poisoned men to soccer moms.9 Dr. Karl Albrecht makes testosterone poisoning a synonym for male chauvinism in his 2002 book The Power of Minds at Work: Organizational Intelligence in Action where he describes it as one of 17 basic syndromes of dysfunction.10
Occasionally this perceived moral decadence of men turns against women, as in Kay S. Hymowitz's sarcastic reference to Western feminists in a 2003 Wall Street Journal essay chiding them for neglecting the rights of Third World women in Muslim countries:
There is no need, in their minds, to distinguish between Osama, Saddam, and Bush: They're all suffering from testosterone poisoning.11
Several readers submitted "testosterone poisoning" to a 2001 Atlantic Monthly competition to find a male equivalent for hysteria (which was originally regarded as a female-only condition). 1
National Public Radio's popular show "Car Talk" has used the term repeatedly. 13 11
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