Mastodawn

RE: https://flipboard.com/@lgbtqnation/lgbtq-nation-c65vn37sz/-/a-R9kjh0X7R_6U6xPciOIKIw%3Aa%3A3220327925-%2F0

Yup.

Like I've said: roid rage isn't a real thing. It's not. Anyone that tries to tell you that it is a real thing, is probably trying to justify violence by petulant man-babies.

If you're thinking "But steroids can make you irritable!🤡" I don't care. All women get irritable. All women know how guns and knives work. But they don't shoot and stab and beat people every time they get irritable. Part of being an adult, is learning how to regulate your emotions. Keep your hands to yourself.

Steroids don't make big men angry. Steroids make angry men big. What would've been a 150 lb twerp, is now a 200 lb twerp. Steroids give them the opportunity to try to live out their violence. When I worked as a bouncer in college, I often had to hulk-smash roided out dudes that don't understand that steroids won't help them against me, and that fighting is a skill, and that they didn't have that skill.

I've never taken steroids. I'm an elite level natural powerlifter. Many powerlifters and bodybuilders aren't natural, which means that they do take steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. They don't rage on people.

I don't judge people who take steroids for sports. I certainly don't judge people who do gender affirming care. I am pro-gender affirming care. What I'm against, is violent people that try to blame steroids as their excuse for hurting people that they perceive as smaller than them.

No.

It's not the steroids. It's you.

@mekkaokereke Reminds me of a study I read about many years ago where participants had to play a typical psychology-study game where had to make a choice to be more fair or more selfish. Control group got placebo. The three experimental groups got:

* placebo, but told it was testosterone
* testosterone, but not told what it was
* testosterone, and told it was testosterone

@mekkaokereke The ones who got t. and not told what it was played somewhat more fairly than the control group, which is interesting. But much more interesting was that the ones who were _told_ they were given testosterone played much more selfishly, whether it was placebo or not. The conclusion was that people's _idea_ of what hormones do completely overrides their actual effects on behavior.

@mekkaokereke found the study! https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/testosterone-leads-to-fairness-not-aggression-researchers-1.796578

Testosterone leads to fairness, not aggression: researchers | CBC News

Testosterone doesn't cause people to become aggressive or risky as many people believe but actually encourages fairness, European researchers say.

CBC

@mw @mekkaokereke "Researchers at the University of Zurich and Royal Holloway, University of London conducted a study of 120 women and found that testosterone promoted fairness in a bargaining game."

120 is interesting, not proof. :)

@CStamp @mekkaokereke Yeah, statistically not huge, and psychology-study games don't always translate well to the real world. But there are lots of other related studies if you really want to dig into it. This is just the one I remember hearing about :-).

For me, the big thing isn't so much the hormone effect, but the effect of people's _ideas_ of the hormones, which in this case were opposite to the actual ones.

@mw @CStamp @mekkaokereke The same thing has been shown to happen with alcohol. As much as 50% of "drunk behavior" happens when you give people quinine and tell them it's vodka. This effect has been shown to be true across cultures, where different cultures have different ideas about what "drunk behavior" is. People act more like a stereotypical drunk for their culture, specifically.

In America, people talk about alcohol reducing inhibitions, but most of the inhibition reduction, specifically, happens when people just think they have alcohol. The alcohol just gives them permission to drop their inhibitions.

This does not mean that alcohol doesn't impact the mind. It does. It just doesn't as much as people think it does, or necessarily in the ways that people think it does, but people behave as if it did.

Jeff Atwood Mar 8

@Azuaron @mw @CStamp @mekkaokereke as I recall, there's a similar effect with "feeding children sugar makes them hyper", e.g. telling them this is part of it

Jeff Atwood Mar 8

@Azuaron @mw @CStamp @mekkaokereke see also Jimi Hendrix, who was an incredibly gentle man, but per Wikipedia citation, "turned into a bastard when he drank". Alcohol I would rank in the top 3 most dangerous substances, under meth and opiates, in that specific order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix

Luke Kanies Mar 8

@codinghorror i think you’re misreading the study referenced above.

Alcohol doesn’t make people into assholes. Assholes use alcohol as an excuse to behave the way they want.

@codinghorror Again, different people react differently. I met someone who said he was a mean drunk when he specifically drank tequila. I know someone who turns into a teddy bear when drinking. Some people are boisterous, some introspective. Etc. Some have addictive personalties, some don’t.There are more shared things such as motor skills being affected, so no one should drink and drive. @Azuaron @mw @mekkaokereke

Jeff Atwood Mar 8

@CStamp @Azuaron @mw @mekkaokereke that is definitely true; the radical distortions in behavior depend on DNA/physiology. There are "happy drunks". But as my therapist said to me, ask bouncers if they'd rather work a concert where alcohol is on tap vs. THC and the response is almost unanimous

Jeff Atwood Mar 8

@CStamp @Azuaron @mw @mekkaokereke this is also somewhat true of opiates, if you are a "rapid metabolizer"

BoredomFestival Mar 8

@codinghorror @CStamp @Azuaron @mw @mekkaokereke The annual Behavior Training at Google had an episode where an off-site with people having wine etc was ok, but the guy sneaking a joint got the finger wag, and I remember thinking this same thing: internally, you know HR would prefer the stoned to the drunk ten out of ten times.

@Azuaron Alcohol affects people very differently. @mw @mekkaokereke

@Azuaron @mw @CStamp @mekkaokereke

Do you have a link to that paper? I remember reading it like 10-15 years ago and then being completely unable to find it again.

@gbargoud Sorry, college was a long time ago, and I think I read this straight out of a text book.

Damn, well at least one other person having seen that study tells me it's not something I imagined reading even if you don't have a link to it either.