Does the Pill Make Women Less Attracted to High-Testosterone Men?

Can it make women tend to be more politically liberal?

Don’t know about you but we are not impressed with the soft, man-bun-and-skinny-jeans-wearing beta guys running around these days — a very visible demonstration of the dropping testosterone levels in young men. Meanwhile, it’s interesting that only 53% of Gen Z folks were married in 2020 (Statista; there seems to be a lack of interest on the part of young women to pursue long-term marriage relationships. Could these things be related?

Dr. Sarah Hill, author of “Your Brain on Birth Control” and an evolutionary social psychologist / author studying women’s health, has found that young women on birth control pills (dosing their bodies with artificial progesterone) are less attracted to high-testosterone men and are becoming more politically liberal.

What does this mean? Hill’s studies show these women have an inhibited cortisol response, meaning they mismanage stress. This may be a fundamental reason for why Gen Z women are turning away from traditional relationships and also why they are trending to more politically liberal than conservative.

As Connor Tomlinson says:

When women are on the pill, their morning cortisol peak is lower and their daily cortisol curve is flatter than what is observed in most healthy adults …

Because they respond less to stress, this may be why they are less phased to support policies such as defunding the police, or allowing illegal immigrants to enter their countries without identification -- because they do not process the elevated risk they face of becoming victims of violent crime. …

The pill also, by neutralising the high-estrogen phase of a woman's fertility cycle, makes them averse to men with markers of high testosterone This includes:

- Finding scents with higher concentrations of testosterone metabolites less appealing
- Finding faces with higher testosterone features (such as jaw and brow definition) less attractive
- Choosing partners who are more agreeable while on birth control than those they have chosen while off it

Pill-taking women also don’t experience increased activity in the reward centers of their brain when looking at pictures of their partners. So they are less likely to oxytocin pair-bond with the men they partner up with.

Young women have been dosing themselves with artificial progesterone since the 1960s when the birth control pill was invented, and testosterone levels in young men are continuing to drop. Gen Z women are showing strong politically liberal tendencies while young men are trending more conservative.

Hormonal birth control is doing a lot more to us than allowing unlimited sex, supposedly with no consequences. Are those consequences and the way our relationships are changing worth it?