Clavicular says he’s been taking testosterone since he was 14 years old.
For the infamous looksmaxxing influencer, the hormone supplement is part of a regimen designed to give him the hollow cheeks, square jaw, and muscular build now coveted by legions of extremely online young men. Testosterone has helped him hone his appearance to the point at which — according to him at least — he can not only attract countless women, but also brutally shame other men with the power of his masculine beauty alone. It has also, he believes, made him infertile.
Lowered sperm count, shrunken testicles, and impaired fertility are known side effects of some kinds of testosterone supplementation. Doctors can help people manage or avoid these effects with the right dosage, but the rise of direct-to-consumer medicine — and gray and black market sources — mean more men are taking testosterone without close medical monitoring.
Some are likely unaware of the potential risks associated with the hormone. “I think a lot of men think that taking testosterone should not compromise their fertility and would probably actually improve it,” said Justin Dubin, director of men’s sexual health at Baptist Health South Florida and co-host of the Man Up podcast.
For others, however, fertility may be beside the point. Clavicular and other manosphere influencers are selling a version of masculinity that’s fundamentally divorced from procreation and even from having sex with women — it’s all about competition among men. And to “win” at this new form of masculinity, some men are willing to sacrifice not only their money, their mental health, and their relationships, but also their sperm.
What testosterone does in the body
All human bodies naturally produce at least some testosterone. The hormone helps drive male puberty, and in adult men, it plays a role in energy, as well as bone and muscle health, said Ugis Gruntmanis, a professor of medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth who studies male sex hormones.
Testosterone levels can decline with age, and doctors recommend testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) if men have low levels of the hormone combined with bothersome symptoms, like low energy or sexual dysfunction, Gruntmanis said.
When taken under the direction of a doctor, testosterone is generally very safe, Dubin said. However, taking it as a medication essentially tricks the brain into thinking the body is producing enough on its own, so it signals the testicles to stop producing more. “Your testicles tend to atrophy; they tend to stop producing sperm,” Dubin said. (When trans men take testosterone as part of gender-affirming care, the fertility effects vary based on what other procedures they undergo, Gruntmanis said.)
The effect is reversible once patients stop taking testosterone, but it can take time for sperm production to return to normal, Gruntmanis said.
A doctor should counsel patients on the fertility effects of testosterone, experts say. But today, many men get testosterone from direct-to-consumer clinics that proliferated at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dubin said. “With better access through direct-to-consumer, we started seeing more men who are younger on TRT coming with low sperm counts or zero sperm counts not being counseled appropriately,” Dubin said.
In one study, Dubin posed as a patient seeking the medication but interested in having children. Six of seven direct-to-consumer medical companies still offered him testosterone, and only half told him about the risks to fertility, he said.
Why more young men are taking testosterone
Interest in testosterone therapy has exploded in recent years. Prescriptions for the medication have increased 154 percent since 2020, with the sharpest rise in men ages 35 to 44, according to market research data provided to the New York Times. About a third of men who currently have a prescription for the medication do not meet the medical criteria for testosterone deficiency, according to the American Urological Association.
With the rise of video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, young men are facing the kinds of pressures to “perfect the face and body” that women have long faced, said Jordan Foster, a sociology professor at MacEwan University in Canada who studies culture, media, and beauty. To achieve the muscular physiques prized on social media, many are turning to testosterone.
They’re taking inspiration from the many podcasters and influencers with large male followings who have spoken openly about taking the drug, including Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also takes it, and a Food and Drug Administration panel last year voted to loosen some restrictions on the medication.
But it’s a complicated moment for young men to take a medication that reduces their fertility. There’s some evidence that sperm counts are declining around the world, and some of the same people boosting testosterone therapy have sounded the alarm about sperm. Kennedy recently spoke of a “fertility crisis” in America, arguing that in 1970, “Men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today.”
He also spoke of the Trump administration’s efforts to address the country’s declining birth rate, a major bugbear of Republicans, Silicon Valley billionaires, and manosphere and manosphere-adjacent influencers alike. Huberman has discussed declining male fertility on his show; Rogan has warned of an impending “population collapse.”
Testosterone supplementation probably hasn’t contributed meaningfully to the falling US birth rate; experts say the decline in births likely has more to do with social changes, like rising women’s education, than with changes in sperm count.
Still, the popularity of testosterone therapy has led to some bizarre collisions of priorities. Looksmaxxing influencer Felix van der Heiden, for example, discovered the impact of his testosterone usage when he tried to participate in a “sperm race” hosted by a Silicon Valley men’s fertility startup. “Everything’s dead,” he told the New York Times, of the semen sample he provided. “Just rotten inside.”
Looksmaxxers are seeking a new masculine ideal
It’s surprising to hear someone steeped in a hypermasculine online subculture casually admit that his sperm are “rotten.” After all, having lots of kids isn’t just theoretically important to manosphere influencers and their ilk; manosphere-adjacent figures like Elon Musk have walked the walk by fathering large numbers of offspring. And sperm themselves have long been a symbol of sexual potency, as anyone who’s watched Beavis and Butthead could tell you.
But for some male-dominated subcultures, masculinity has become totally separate from reproduction, Foster, the sociology professor, said. “There’s this kind of separate conversation men are having, divorced from fatherhood, divorced from marriage, that is more about sexual conquest and virility, and that conversation is almost by default unconcerned with fertility.”
In some cases, the conversation even becomes divorced from sex. Clavicular, for example, told the Times that knowing he could have sex with a woman is in some ways better than actually doing so. “It’s a big time-saver,” he said.
For a certain segment of looksmaxxers, and manosphere adherents more broadly, there’s a sense that “we’re not doing this for women,” Foster said. “We’re doing this for men, and to show other men how powerful or competent we may be.”
There’s always been an element of male competition in male-dominated online spaces — the pickup artists of the aughts, for example, were often trying to beat one another at the game of seducing women. But there’s something especially extreme about a masculinist ethos that demands aesthetic perfection above all else — and that’s willing to destroy the very gametes that carry the Y chromosome in order to achieve it.
There are, of course, plenty of problems with traditional masculinity — I don’t mean to endorse the idea that you need to have a lot of kids, or have a high sperm count, or have sex with women, in order to be a man. But we’ve had centuries to learn about masculinity in America, and decades of practice helping boys and men navigate it in a healthy way.
Now something new is on the horizon. Young men, and everyone who interacts with them, will need new tools to deal with it.
