Category: Politics

On July 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that his department will test all military personnel over the age of 30 for low testosterone. In his video posted on X, he explained the move in terms of military dominance. It would give U.S. soldiers an “edge of lethality” and ensure they “have the biological foundation” to maximize their performance.

This decision ties into larger concerns on the political right about the need to foster manhood, emphasizing aggression and physical strength. Testosterone has long served as a cultural marker of traditional masculinity, so it’s not surprising that Hegseth would focus on the hormone. After all, he’s performed pull ups on camera and issued a DOD-HHS fitness challenge with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Yet, Hegseth’s move isn’t just a reflection of his personal priorities for the military. It’s also part of a long history of rhetoric about American manhood in military medicine that has elevated traditional ideas about masculinity and aimed to exclude gay men and women from military service. Indeed, dating back to the late 19th century, decisions about U.S. soldiers’ health have exposed fierce debates over definitions of American manhood.

At the dawn of the 20th century, disagreements over imperialism dominated American politics. Proponents of American expansionism, like Sen. Albert J. Beveridge (R-Ind.), wanted to see the U.S. acquire territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Worries about manhood and the health of military personnel were at the core of these debates. Many Americans linked military power to the male body and, in turn, the inability or unwillingness to fight or govern “dependents” to boyhood. Champions of imperialism like Beveridge associated the physical strength of enlisted men as synonymous with the strength of the nation, and they framed territorial acquisitions as a way for the U.S. to demonstrate its manliness to other nations.

Even anti-imperialists, who opposed territorial expansion, worried about American manhood. One of their main arguments against acquiring the Philippines was that it would degrade both individual and national manhood. They feared an imperial project in the Pacific would mean American soldiers would succumb to drunkenness and venereal infections in the tropics.

Army officers, for their part, argued that the military could improve the nation’s men. During the 19th century, many people had seen military service as debasing partly because low pay and harsh punishments meant those who joined the Army were men on the margins of society with few alternatives. But now, medical officers explained, through efficient military hygiene, soldiers would become better citizens as they learned discipline, cleanliness and order.

The imperialists won the foreign policy debate. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain relinquished all claims on Cuba and the U.S. gained sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands. Yet, that didn’t end the contest over manhood.

In fact, once the U.S. took over these lands and sent military personnel abroad, concerns over soldiers’ behavior and masculinity only intensified.

Gendered rhetoric saturated debates about whether enlisted men’s consumption of alcohol would improve or harm their health. Purity Reformers cheered the passage of legislation that ended the sale of alcohol at the army canteen. They saw drunkenness as unmanly. Additionally, inebriated men contracted sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at higher rates, which, the reformers believed, emasculated soldiers by rendering their bodies weak and infertile.

Military medical officers who opposed the anti-canteen law feminized their male political opponents, complaining that these “abstinence ladies” were trying to tell officers how to run the army.

These debates became especially intense over the Philippines, which U.S. troops oversaw in the years after the war. The problem was, by 1907, roughly one in three enlisted men serving in the Philippines had an STI. For those who saw the experience of military service not only as a place to prove one’s manhood but also to improve it, these rates of infection posed a problem that was at once medical and gendered.

In response, the U.S. military followed in the footsteps of European colonizers and launched a system of regulated prostitution whereby medical officers inspected women who sold sex to soldiers, sent them to a designated hospital if they found signs of infection and, otherwise wrote “free from disease” on their inspection booklets. The Army thus sanctioned a manhood marked by heterosexual sex with Asian women in a colonized territory.

When reports of this approach hit the anti-imperialist and temperance press in America, however, the public outcry pressured political and military leaders to stop the most visible aspects of this program. Progressive Era reformers fiercely opposed what they saw as government-run prostitution. They decried the sexual double standard that punished women suspected of selling sex but did nothing to stop either the men profiting from women’s sexual labor nor the male consumers. They also challenged claims that men had to have sex with women in order to be healthy.

While the efforts to regulate prostitution didn’t completely abate, the military also launched a push to divert enlisted men in the Philippines away from sex and the risk of STIs, especially by creating alternative avenues for recreation. Military authorities built boxing rings and established baseball diamonds to fill men’s leisure time with traditionally masculine physical activities marked by aggression, strength and speed.

By the time the U.S. joined the First World War in 1917, social reformers had formed the American Social Hygiene Association to fight prostitution and stop the spread of STIs. Many occupied positions of leadership in the Army, and a definition of military masculinity based on restraint held political sway.

General John J. Pershing, for example, who led the American Expeditionary Force, declared the French maisons tolérées off-limits to his soldiers. The military also enacted strict protocols requiring men who admitted to sexual activity with women in France to report to prophylaxis stations immediately following “exposure” to prevent the spread of disease.

At the same time, Raymond B. Fosdick, a Progressive reformer, served as chairman of the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) overseeing educational and recreational programming for enlisted men. He promoted competitive sports as crucial to ensuring soldiers’ health. Fosdick claimed, “it does not do any good in dealing with red-blooded young men merely to erect a series of verboten signs along the roadside; you must have something positive for them to do.”

As in the Philippines, U.S. troops constructed arenas for boxing and wrestling, along with football and baseball fields at camps in France. In 1917, the Army released Fit to Fight, an educational film for soldiers. The film’s hero Billy Hale was a former college quarterback who refused contact with prostitutes, embodying the ideal of strength in chastity.

It was a vivid example of how military leaders tried to frame the combination of athletic pursuits and sexual restraint as the key to healthy manhood and military success. They also argued that living up to this ideal was a necessity so that soldiers could become husbands and fathers after the war.

As reformers and officers openly discussed manhood and soldiers’ health they simultaneously painted a bleak portrait of womanhood. They saw women near training camps as sexual predators with dangerous intentions and as the locus of disease. Meanwhile, women at “home” had a purity that needed protection from soldiers who had worked elsewhere. In neither case were women “fit to fight.”

A full century later, testosterone testing is resurrecting many of the stereotypes that saturated these debates. It paints a picture of soldiers as masculine and virile in a way that excludes openly gay men and women. And this is coming only a decade after all combat jobs opened to women and 15 years after the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which had required gay and lesbian soldiers to hide their sexual orientation. Additionally, it links the health of male soldiers — through their sex drives and sexual activities — to the bodies of women.

Hegseth’s emphasis on testosterone follows on the heels of striking women from promotions lists in both the Army and Navy. Testosterone testing, in tandem with this move, as well as Hegseth’s criticisms of women in combat roles and his aversion to openly gay men in the military, bolsters a manhood that reserves power for cisgender, heterosexual men and relegates women to roles with less authority.

Experts have pointed out the decision’s departure from evidence-based medicine. Testosterone levels are actually poor indicators of actual strength. But the decision nevertheless has political purchase thanks to longstanding images about what constitutes the ideal soldier.

Pamela Maddock is an affiliate of the History Department at the University of Sydney and is working on a book, “Access to Women: Sex, Race, and Disease in the U.S. Army, 1853-1919,” that examines the U.S. Army’s management of sexually transmitted infections in different geographic contexts outside the US. She teaches at the Williston-Northampton School.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.