Testosterone poisoning is a popular term used to explain behaviors that are deemed excessively masculine. Origins An early printed reference to "testosterone poisoning" came in 1975 from actor Alan Alda. In a parody of self-help writing, Alda diagnosed the "ailment" of masculinity and offered methods for its "cure". He wrote: Ten years later, that same sentence from Alda's article was quoted in the 1985 book A Feminist Dictionary. Carl Sagan gave the phrase more publicity when he praised Moondance magazine writer Daniela Gioseffi's American Book Award winner Women on War as follows: "A book of searing analysis and cries from the heart on the madness of war. Why is the half of humanity with a special sensitivity to the preciousness of life, the half untainted by testosterone poisoning, almost wholly unrepresented in defense establishments and peace negotiations worldwide?" A Los Angeles Times op-ed piece accused Sagan of "pompously inform[ing] us that the whole planet is imminently endangered by 'testosterone poisoning'". Bruce Tremper used the term in The Avalanche Review, stating that being "a man" is best proven by dying "a stupendously violent death". Psychology A 1996 Psychology Today article referred to the phrase as "only a joke", but noted that a study about testosterone and male employment had shown that testosterone levels were lower for successful new male employees at a southern U.S. oil firm than they were for new male employees who had quit their jobs or been terminated. Berenbaum et al. (1997) stated that exposure to high levels of androgens in utero is associated with higher levels of adult aggression. Mazur et al. (1998) stated that males with higher testosterone levels tend to be slightly more aggressive than other males. The authors suggested that higher testosterone levels were a result of aggressive behavior, not a cause of it. In Family and Friends' Guide to Domestic Violence, Elaine Weiss wrote that "deadly testosterone poisoning" (DTP) is one of "many misunderstandings about abusive men". She continued: "[This] is not a war of the hormones, an inevitable biological clash between estrogen and testosterone. If it were, then there would be more of it; every heterosexual relationship would be abusive". McDermott (2007) found a significant positive relationship between levels of testosterone and aggression. However, the link between testosterone and aggression was questioned in a 2010 study published in Nature. According to that study, "a single dose of testosterone in women causes a