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Under a new policy from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, all military service members aged 30 and up, including women, will receive annual screenings for low testosterone. Promoting the plan to soldiers as a way to “optimize your performance” and remain on the “leading edge of lethality,” Hegseth said in a Wednesday video announcement that anyone with testosterone deficiency would be offered voluntary hormone replacement therapy.

In a post on X, Hegseth laid out a pithy ambition for the policy: “the High-T Department of War.”

The framing fits neatly within a growing trend of hormonal obsession on the right. Over the past several years, in corners of the internet, media, and politics devoted to an exacting vision of masculine supremacy, testosterone has become a substance of mythical importance. Calling a political opponent or message-board adversary “low-T” is the new “soy boy,” “beta,” or “gay.” Right-wing influencers are touting dubious pills that promise to increase testosterone production for more energy, bigger muscles, and better boners. The Trump administration is bragging that the president has the highest T level Dr. Oz has ever seen in a man over 70.

All this is befitting of a political movement that wants to eliminate gender-affirming medical care and gets its health advice from the supplement ads on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. In the eyes of Hegseth and his peers, testosterone isn’t just a sex hormone present in most human beings or a potential gauge of underlying health issues. It’s a magic manly potion, an indisputable indicator of sexual power, a tool for turning matcha-swilling weaklings into musclebound superheroes incapable of expressing any emotion but rage.

The Defense Department policy comes amid a slew of other changes Hegseth has made to emphasize the aggressive aspects of the military: calling soldiers “warfighters,” defunding efforts to protect civilians from harm, reverting to the “Department of War” moniker that hadn’t been used since the 1940s. And it adds to other actions the administration has taken to get more men on T. Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to ease restrictions on testosterone to make it easier for doctors to prescribe for a greater number of health concerns.

The arc of testosterone in today’s politicized marketplace contains echoes of the rising popularity of beef tallow, which began as a saturated-fat-laden craze among fringe health nuts who believed misinformation about seed oils. Soon, it turned into a MAHA obsession and the star of the new food pyramid; it has since been adopted by major food brands, including Utz and Conagra. Likewise, testosterone, once the domain of bodybuilders and men with actual medical disorders, became a favored elixir of the masculinity-worshipping right and is now a sought-after treatment for the general malaise of midlife.

“A lot of men think this is the fountain of youth,” said Nelson Bennett, professor of urology at Northwestern University. “They think if they take it, they will be 25 again: virile, strong, hop out of bed, do whatever you need to do, stay up all night, that sort of stuff. And that’s just not the case.” Though some men’s health clinics will pump men up with unusually high doses of the hormone, doctors who give patients just enough to restore normal levels will often find men disappointed in the results—or dismayed by side effects, which can include mood swings, hair loss, and acne.

Testosterone mania has even infiltrated the mainstream consumer sphere. Manly, an Australian brand marketing deodorizing body wash to adolescent boys and the moms who smell them, is claiming that the “hidden reason teenage boys are struggling more than ever” is personal care products with synthetic fragrances and chemicals that suppress testosterone levels. According to the company, today’s teen boys “cannot build muscle, are constantly exhausted, and are struggling with their mood and confidence” because of their low T.

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about testosterone. It is an important biomarker of men’s health, and when it’s too low, it can indicate some health issues (diabetes, sleep apnea, stress) and cause others (low bone density, fatigue, erectile dysfunction). A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies performed in five different countries recently found that testosterone levels in men had shrunk 54 percent between 1972 and 2019. Researchers attribute the decline to rising rates of obesity and diabetes, both of which can lower T levels, as well as those endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in common household products that Manly says are impairing teen boys.

For this reason, Helen Bernie, director of male sexual and reproductive medicine at Indiana University, supports Hegseth’s new regimen. “Things that can help us screen proactively to identify reversible or preventative health problems early is a win,” she said. While the American Urological Association does not recommend routine testosterone-level screenings for men without symptoms of low T, Bernie encourages every man to learn their baseline level in early adulthood to compare future screenings against later on.

Bernie is something of a testosterone evangelist. She appeared last year on a panel the Food and Drug Administration convened to hype up the importance of testosterone for the American male. And she understands why Hegseth would want to increase troops’ access to the hormone. “Low testosterone is a true medical condition,” she said. “It can lead to decreased energy, focus, cognitive ability, strength, and I think that if we have people that are in jobs that require certain characteristics and traits of them, it’s good to screen for these things.”

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But the correct remedy for low testosterone is not always more testosterone. Not everyone with objectively low levels of testosterone will experience negative symptoms, so they don’t need treatment at all, Bennett said. (That’s one reason why routine T-level screening is not something most doctors offer.) And often, low testosterone is a sign that there’s another strain on a patient’s health that is probably affecting more than his sex hormones, and a good doctor would address the root cause rather than the follow-on hormonal effects. There are also downsides of testosterone supplementation to consider. After a few months on topical or injectable testosterone, the body stops making its own, which shuts down sperm production. For some men, infertility induced by testosterone therapy is reversible; for others, it’s permanent.

None of this complexity is reflected in Hegseth’s screening policy, which Bennett calls “extraordinarily expensive for something that doesn’t actually need to be done.” (While the Defense Department has not released a cost estimate, adding a new annual blood test for hundreds of thousands of people will not be cheap.) But it’s no surprise that an administration invested in, say, banning trans women from athletics has a skewed sense of what this humble hormone can do. Testosterone squarely sits at the intersection of three of the right’s favorite fixations: extremist gender performance, cure-all medical promises, and opportunities for hucksters to bilk money from underinformed people with legitimate problems. It used to be that manosphere-podcast devotees were the ones shelling out for unnecessary testosterone treatments promising ultimate male gender conformity. Now, if Hegseth’s policy comes to pass, taxpayers will start footing the bill.