By declaring ‘Men get hormonal too’, Voy’s campaign positions itself as a progressive step towards normalising male hormonal health. While the message appears affirming, it exposes a familiar reality: hormonal health is only taken seriously once it belongs to men – after centuries of women being denied the same recognition.
When Voy plastered the London Underground with adverts bearing the message ‘Men get hormonal too’, the intention was clear: to normalise conversations surrounding male hormonal health and to encourage testosterone testing. This aim is credible. Testosterone deficiency is a real condition and, as cited by the NHS, can cause symptoms like mood changes, irritability and fatigue. It is undoubtedly an area of men’s health that deserves exposure and medical attention.
Intention aside, it is the word ‘too’ that has sparked controversy. In framing itself as progressive, the campaign’s language exposes an irony that men’s hormones are being legitimised by leaning on women’s struggles.
The cruciality of ‘too’
The word ‘too’ implies addition. As if parity has finally been reached; as if women’s hormones have long been respected, and it is only now that men are joining the conversation. The reality is the opposite.
For centuries, women’s hormones have been used, not as a reason for medical curiosity or care, but as justification for dismissal, exclusion and degradation. Female biology has been framed as a flaw, too unpredictable and too complex for serious responsibility.
This logic has historically been used to bar women from leadership, politics and science. A particular case can be seen in a 1970 Time article titled ‘The Sexes: Hormones in the White House’, Dr Edgar Berman (personal physician to Hubert Humphrey) argued that women are limited in their leadership potential through physiological and psychological factors. “Suppose” he said, “we had a menopausal woman President who had to make the decision of the Bay of Pigs or the Russian contretemps with Cuba at the time? She might be subject to the curious mental aberrations of that age group.”
This bias persists today. A 2025 Textio study cited by People Management found that 78% of women were labelled ‘emotional’ in performance reviews, compared to just 11% of men; a near-identical pattern to the same study in 2014, when 76% of high-performing women had received negative feedback, compared to 2% of men.
Female politicians are easy and consistent targets for this scrutiny. Kamala Harris was labelled ‘hysterical’ for questioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017; a word originally coined from the ancient Greek word ‘hystera’, meaning ‘uterus’. Rachel Reeves was described by the Daily Mail, after becoming upset during a PMQ, as having ‘a hormonal collapse from another femme failure who can’t cope when the going gets tough’, describing her to ‘a woman who wilts like a stick of damp rhubarb at the first sign of trouble’.
Compare this to John Bercow becoming upset during his PMQ in 2019, where MPs from across the chamber applauded and commentators described the moment as a heartfelt and human display of gratitude.
The asymmetry, sadly, is clear: male emotion is contextualised and validated, whereas female emotion quietly confirms a biological flaw. So, when a modern advertising campaign suggests that men’s unpredicted emotion, irritability or fatigue might be hormonal and, therefore, deserving of empathy, it raises an uncomfortable question: why has this empathy been so selectively applied?
Male as default, female as deviation
This dismissal of women’s hormones isn’t just cultural, it’s structural. Science and medicine have long treated male physiology as the default baseline and women as deviations.
For decades, male mice dominated lab research. A PubMed analysis found that the ratio of male to female mice used in neuroscience and biomedical research was 5.5:1, justified by the idea that female hormones would ‘skew’ results. This carried into human trials, until 1993, U.S. policy legally allowed women to be excluded. Even after inclusion became mandatory, women of ‘childbearing potential’ were routinely discouraged from participating.
Neglect extends across women’s health. There have been five times more studies on male erectile dysfunction (which affects 19% of men) than on premenstrual syndrome, which affects up to 90% of women. In 2019 alone, there were 1,003 studies related to male sexual performance compared to a mere 178 studies dedicated to female infertility.
A 2021 University College London study found women’s pain is ‘continually underestimated,’ while a 2024 Gender Pain Gap Index revealed that 62% of women feel their pain has been ignored by healthcare professionals. This is the legacy behind the word ‘hormonal.’
Research by UCL also shows that pain assessment bias is worse for women of colour; reporting that ‘disparities in reporting of pain, with higher pain scores reported by Black and Hispanic patients when compared with White patients. Black patients were also less likely to receive equivalent analgesic medication doses when compared with White patients.’
What the campaign misses
To be clear, men absolutely should be encouraged to test their hormones; men deserve recognition of their biology. The real issue is how the system that this recognition stems from: male biology is treated as inherently legitimate, while female biology remains a deviation and a problem to manage rather than a subject deserving of care.
This disparity is embedded in research, healthcare and culture. Policies, studies and social narratives are designed around men as the baseline, meaning women’s experiences are repeatedly treated as exceptional. The result is measurable inequality: whose pain is taken seriously, whose emotions are validated and whose health is prioritised.
Viewed through this lens, Voy’s campaign exposes not just men’s need, but the enduring absence of care for women. A truly progressive conversation about hormones would start with those who have been historically ignored, asking why systems of concern have always been calibrated around the male experience.
Men getting hormonal is not the controversy. The controversy is that women have been hormonal; loudly, painfully, visibly, for centuries, and the world has rarely noticed.
If we are serious about hormonal health, the conversation cannot begin with men. It must finally include women.
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