New crackpot theory: The Daily Caller argues that lack of testosterone causes school shootings

Luis Ramirez has a new theory about school shootings: they’re caused by a lack of testosterone. The freelance journalist, writing in the Tucker-Carlson-founded Daily Caller, offers a confused and confusing theory of mass shootings as the result not of toxic masculinity or the easy availability of guns but of wimpy, testosterone-starved kids gone wrong. “[T]here seems to be a correlation between the diminishing of testosterone volumes,” he writes, “and rise in mass shootings.”

Unfortunately, all the “evidence” for this theory, such as it is, is pulled straight from Ramirez’s ass. Yes, testosterone levels have been dropping in men old and young in recent years. And yes, mass shootings are on the rise.

It’s when Ramirez tries to connect the two trends that he runs into trouble. He simply assumes that mass shooters have low testosterone because, he says, they tend to be

markedly weird, emasculated, depressed, or all three. [Orlando] Harris was self-admittedly miserable and complained he didn’t have a girlfriend. Robert Crimo wore women’s clothing, and sported grotesque face tattoos. Salvador Ramos was the epitome of a joyless goth kid.

First, three people do not constitute all or even a significant number of mass shooters. Second, there is no actual evidence that being a goth kid, or having face tattoos, has anything to do with the amount of testosterone coursing through your veins.

Moreover, it isn’t just school shootings by teenage incel types that are rising. Mass shootings in general have increased dramatically in recent years, and most of them are perpetrated by men who bear little resemblance to incel stereotypes, many of them older men angry at their loss of control over their wives or partners (or ex-partners) and taking out their rage on the women and sometimes children in their lives. In other words, men poisoned by toxic masculinity and empowered by their access to guns.

The fact is that the amount of testosterone coursing through the blood has very little correlation with violence. As one recent meta-analysis notes, there is only a “weak” (though statistically significant) relationship between higher baseline testosterone and aggression, and only in men; there is no statistically significant evidence that higher testosterone causes aggression. There is, however, evidence that winning a competitive sport (or even a chess match) increases testosterone, at least temporarily.

Of course, no studies that I’m aware of — or that Ramirez is aware of — demonstrate a causal relationship between a lack of testosterone and aggression.

By contrast, evidence shows that toxic masculinity is correlated with aggression and violence. The problem is that people hearing this assume that only big macho lunkheads are the toxically masculine ones who are violent.

But the real issue for many poisoned with toxic masculinity is the vast gap between the realities of their lives and the toxic masculine ideal — of dominance, power through violence, rampant sexual success with women, and so forth. Incels are acutely aware that they’re not Chads, yet they have internalized the notion that only Chads live up to the masculine ideal.

Thus their bitterness over their own celibate lives and lack of girlfriends. Hence their desire for revenge on the world that they think glorifies the unattainable toxic male ideal. Even those incels who don’t go on shooting sprees are often aggressive and threatening towards women; they talk about following women on dark streets at night just to scare them; they sometimes (like Elliot Rodger did) even physically assault Chads and Staceys.

Ramirez comes close to realizing this but attributes incels’ feelings of inferiority to a lack of testosterone rather than the incel ideology’s embrace of toxic masculine ideals.

And then there is the question of guns. Ramirez sniffs that “pointing fingers at an inanimate object is an oversimplification of the matter.” But his own analysis suggests that access to guns can make the difference between impotent rage and mass murder. He quotes psychologist Francis McAndrew, who notes that low-T men get a rush — and an increase in testosterone — when they pick up a gun. “In other words, the firearm was never really the problem,” Ramirez somehow concludes. “It was outcast, gloomy, and damaged young men getting their hands on one.”

Well, if that’s the case, why can’t we try to make it harder for “outcast, gloomy, and damaged young men” — or any angry men, for that matter — to get their hands on guns? By Ramirez’s own logic, this would help to reduce the number of mass shootings.

It’s not surprising that Ramirez’s crackpot theory falls apart on closer examination. But it is a little surprising that even the Daily Caller would allow such a muddled and self-contradictory mess of an argument into their virtual pages.

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