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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Many of them young. One acquaintance of mine, a trans man who works in health care, wittily described these new practices as “gender for men.” He meant that the act of modifying one’s body chemistry based on sex had previously been associated with women (birth control) and the trans community (estrogen and T). There was another drug I heard about often: minoxidil, the active ingredient of Rogaine. My friends were not buying Rogaine-branded products, because having a bottle of Rogaine in the shower was not a seductive quality in a young male. Rogaine suggested the kind of guy who, standing in front of the mirror each morning, made a pistol with his finger and shot at his reflection while clicking his tongue. But here was Noah, a contemplative sound engineer in his late 20s, sitting across from me at a bar in East Williamsburg telling me his minoxidil tale. “I was complaining about my hairline, and my iPhone heard me,” he said, “and a couple days later, I’m getting bombarded with these ads.” I studied his hairline. Receding. He was typical of the new minoxidil customer: a man who wouldn’t walk out of a drugstore with a Rogaine bottle but was willing to buy it on an app. While researching minoxidil, Noah had considered a stronger drug, finasteride, one of the most popular prescriptions in the States for older men. Finasteride raises the level of testosterone in such a way that promotes hair growth. But Noah had read online that finasteride could have sexual side effects. His situation resembled one of those puzzles presented in an undergraduate ethics class, where you find yourself at the wheel of a train that’s on track to run over six people if you do nothing — or you can actively divert the train and
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