Abstract

SAMPAIO, Juliana Vieira; MEDRADO, Benedito  and  LYRA, Jorge. Health of man: testosterone and masculinities. Rev. Psicol. Saúde [online]. 2021, vol.13, n.1, pp. 173-186. ISSN 2177-093X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.20435/pssa.v13i1.1004.

This research aims to analyze the controversies involved in the relationship between the effects of commercial publicity about testosterone and the production of discourses about masculinities. To carry out this research we analyzed 34 videos made available on YouTube by the Bayer pharmaceutical industry. This analysis was inspired by the studies of Michel Foucault and guided by the questioning about how the uses of testosterone have been articulated with the model of hegemonic masculinity. Hormones are involved in a series of controversies. Such substances escape the function for which they were originally intended, provoking a series of subversions and intertwining with different modes of subjectivation. We conclude that biomedical knowledge and power associates testosterone with the masculine nature, producing, as truth effect, male subjectivation modes. Sex binarism is updated with the substantiation of the sexual difference. There is then an essentialization of what it is to be a man when discussing the uses of testosterone.

Keywords : hormones; testosterone; masculinities; subjectivation.

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