There are not many things that you can make fun of directly or laugh at these days, but one thing that still seems to be an easy and acceptable target is teenage boys’ behaviour.
They suddenly grow inches and become wildly clumsy, the voice breaks but is still occasionally squeaky, the skin may suddenly break out into acne.
And then the desire for sex starts.
At no point in a male’s life would they be more ready to have sex at the drop of a hat, but at no point are they less likely to have it – remember alot of this is in full effect at 13 -14 years of age.
Erections will pop up and down without any effort from the boys, it literally takes a view of anything vaguely sexual, to a touch, and we are ready to go.
And in a society where sexual imagery is everywhere and many women it is the ultimate frustration.
At these ages, in hunter gatherer/nomadic tribes, boys are taken away to train to be warrior and indeed, men via initiation.
Men are not just adult males.
To be a man, you need to be more than that, as we talked about here in episode 👇:
https://www.academyofchiropracticnutrition.com/choose-your-sacrifice/
But in modern society, we have extended childhood well into what would have been adulthood.
These raging desires to be with a female are, of course, 100% normal and natural. It is the reason we have humans still on earth, we evolved to want it.
And it is all thanks to one tiny molecule called testosterone.
The desire for sex (and connection) can be so strong and yet so hard for many to find, especially in an era of unlimited online pornography.
Unless you have been a teenage boy, it is hard to understand just how strong this drive is.
I cannot comment on the female teenage years, but to illustrate the point, consider Griffin Hansbury, a trans-man, that is to say, a biological female that started to take testosterone.
She was always attracted to females, and could admire women, and then when she became a he & started testosterone, he was suddenly swept up into a change in libido that shocked him.
“The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido & change in the way I perceive women & the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone….I would see a woman on the subway, and think, she’s attractive, I’d like to meet her. What’s that book she is reading? I could talk to her. That is what I would say. There would be a narrative. Thre would be a stream of language. It would be very verbal.
But after testosterone, there was no language whatsoever. It was just…aggressive, pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn’t turn it off. I could not turn it off.”
Hansbury said he “felt like a monster a lot of the time” but he gained a great deal of compassion for men and boys.
“it made me understand adolescent boys a lot”
The shame that can be cast onto boys is exceptionally toxic.
Boys need to be taught how to be men, it is not just a natural process without help.
This is not to say in anyway that boys and men are not responsible for their behaviour.
Quite the opposite, they are 100%, but they need to be taught how to be men and part of that is taking responsibility for their actions and consequences, both intended and unintended.
But the pathways to making testosterone are long and complicated.
They start with (shock horror) CHOLESTEROL, that pesky fat your liver keeps making.
Then, via a long line of enzyme conversions, all needing vitamins and minerals, you eventually get testosterone.
If you have not got the building blocks or co-factors, your end product goes down.
So, while healthy levels can give challenging behaviour, so to can low testosterone, something that is more common in all ages of males.