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- Convenors:
-
Nayantara Sheoran Appleton
(Victoria University of Wellington)
Celia Roberts (Australian National University)
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- Chairs:
-
Nayantara Sheoran Appleton
(Victoria University of Wellington)
Celia Roberts (Australian National University)
- Discussant:
-
Celia Roberts
(Australian National University)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Online
- Transfers:
- Open to transfers
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
While there is scholarship on the plasticity of human bodies, vis-à-vis hormones, this panel makes new space(s) for ethnographically informed papers highlighting narratives of cis, trans, and intersex bodies that experience/experiment with hormonal malleability in light of the environmental crisis.
Long Abstract:
It is well established anthropologically that our ‘plastic bodies’ (Sanabria,E.) do and undo amazing things with hormones – sometimes intentionally, and at other times unintentionally. Societally, we are offered daily doses of sex hormones to use as contraception, to reduce the symptoms of menopause, or for living a ‘well-balanced’ life. On the other hand, young trans and intersex women continually struggle to get access to or information about the appropriate hormones for their wellbeing and sometimes survival. This, in a society where we are aware of our exposure to environmental and food hormones and asked to buy BPA-free plastics to prevent ‘reproductive toxicity,’ eat meats that are hormone free, and pay attention to sporting controversies where ‘gender’ is determined through hormonal level testing.
There is indeed a complex relationship between body purity/body pollution/body panic when it comes to hormonal management and acknowledging hormonal malleability.
For this panel, drawing on previous scholarship on sex hormones in STS, queer studies, and anthropology, we seek out papers that are willing to walk a ‘middle-ground’ (Roberts,C) which acknowledges the biological material of sex hormones but also the social possibilities made visible through hormonal management – especially now in light of the environmental crisis. Seeking ethnographically rich papers/presentations that bring forth narratives of cis, trans, and intersex bodies as they understand, live through, and make space for new embodiments, articulations, and relationships to/with environmentally impactable/impacted sex hormones.
Chair and Discussant will be invited later (based on collective discussion with the participants in the panel).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Ylenia Baldanza (Università degli Studi di Torino)
Paper short abstract:
Through the methods of digital ethnography, I describe the daily practices of care taking place in a Telegram chat group of Italian transgender women who undergo DIY HRT. I intend to show how this small community redefines its relationship with endocrinological knowledge and biomedical authority.
Paper long abstract:
The literature about hormones shows how hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a useful tool to change the body according to gender identity. But the withdrawal of welfare, the costs of medications (even in countries where healthcare is state funded) and the definition of transgender individuals as disordered or ill depict a scenario of institutional abandonment, precarity and stigma. Although in Italy there have been important steps toward a new and mutualist approach to transgender care by grassroots transfeminist groups, HRT is still not accessible to most.
Do-It-Yourself Hormone Replacement Therapy (DIY HRT) is a well known practice among transgender communities, yet it is often antagonized or ignored by specialists. Unsupervised assumption of hormones is regarded as non compliant and reckless, which contributes to the stigmatization of these unorthodox practices. In this sense DIY HRT is mostly silenced and secretive. Those who decide to undergo it, often benefit from the anonymity of the web to share their experiences and knowledge. Using the methods of digital ethnography, my proposal aims to describe how the transgender women of a Telegram chat group weave a network of “mediated intimacies”, creating a context of emotional, material and medical support. Although the members of this specific group claim to not have a political agenda, they find themself using often illegal and disobedient means to re-shape “cure” into “care”. In this sense, I intend to show how these care praxis challenge biomedical authority, shaping a more horizontal, accessible and promiscuous approach to care.
Maria Conceição da Costa (State University of Campinas - UNICAMP) Jonatan Sacramento (University of Campinas)
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to discuss communicable diseases such as smallpox, zika and covid from the point of view of gender relations. This is a study that aims to be comparative between Brazil and France and highlights women as actors in refusing and fighting vaccination because of hormones issues.
Paper long abstract:
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines vaccine hesitancy as the delay or refusal, despite availability, in the administration of recommended vaccines (WHO, 2014). Hesitation comprises a wide spectrum of attitudes, from fear to total refusal, with different degrees. It is a complex social phenomenon, as it concerns a collective ideal, a group of people who express in their questions dimensions such as individual freedom, for example (Sobo, 2016).
In these gradations of refusal, we can point out the fear regarding new medicines for reasons ranging from religious to ideological to scientific. In the literature on there are two aspects that we consider pertinent and that interpose: gender relations in research on these diseases and women as subjects who stand out in this movement of refusal and in the movement of actions in favor of mass vaccinations.
This paper intends to discuss communicable diseases such as smallpox, zika and covid from the point of view of gender relations. This is a study that aims to be comparative between Brazil and France and highlights women as actors in refusing and fighting vaccination. These differences are related to women's resistance due to speculation about future pregnancy problems/problems with menstrual flow caused by the vaccine (RNa vaccines), papers and research on possible hormonal problems caused by vaccines, studies that precede Covid19 vaccines.
Nayantara Sheoran Appleton (Victoria University of Wellington)
Paper short abstract:
In Aotearoa New Zealand, there have been robust conversations around the environmental crisis and its impact on our bodies – including on our hormones. This paper draws on the STS concept of ‘lay pharmacology’ to focus on lay collective knowledge of/about hormonal management.
Paper long abstract:
In Aotearoa New Zealand, there have been robust conversations around the environmental crisis and its impact on our bodies – and in some spaces around the impact of ‘environments’ variously understood on our hormones. Drawing on survey data and interviews collected in 2024, I propose the concept of ‘lay collective endocrinology’ as a way to think about hormonal management that deepens our understanding of how women (cis, trans, and Intersex) navigate hormonal shifts in light of the environmental crisis (and other non-climatic environments).
In this paper, I build on the STS concept of ‘lay pharmacology’ to focus on lay collective knowledge of/about hormonal management and suggest ‘lay collective endocrinology’ as sites of potentially exciting spaces for progressive political and medical futures. Looking at the various narratives of/around hormonal management – I wish to make space beyond the individualised hormonal management regimens (curated in logics of neoliberal ‘self-care’).
While scholarship aplenty shows us that hormones, sex hormones in particular, have been mobilised to suit particular biological, medical, environmental, commercial, and political projects – I wonder what a new ‘lay collective endocrinology’ makes possible for science, medicine, and our bodies as they live through the environmental crisis!
Maria Carolina Vesce (University of Macerata)
Paper short abstract:
Based on an ethnography of trans refugee’ reception in Italy, the paper focuses on hormones as subject activating substances, lightening the merges and frictions between the medicalised model of gender affirmation, and the practices, body representations and gender models of trans refugee
Paper long abstract:
Dozens of trans, intersex and non-binary people leave their families and villages every year because of persecution due to their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression perpetuated both by state agents, and by more widespread social, political or religious agents. In Italy, thanks to a Court of Milan decision, they are granted access to public care treatment for gender affirmation, i.e. to hormone replacement therapies and to sexual surgery.
Drawing on an ethnography of the reception of trans and non-binary refugees conducted in northern Italy between 2018 and 2022, in this communication I will consider the mergers and frictions between the medicalised model of gender affirmation, and the practices, body representations and gender models of trans refugee hosted in a reception’ shelter dedicated to them in Bologna. As my ethnography shows, in hormones lies the very possibility of doing and undoing gender that influences trans refugees’ practices and desires and that often collides with the institutionalised care paths defined by specific regulatory acts and therapeutic practices. Messengers of sex that activate a technical know-how, sexual hormones are considered magic substances that shape and mould the desired body. Nonetheless the trans subject affect HRT efficacy through their behaviours and practices. They also produce knowledge and representations about the body and the gender production work that hormones do in the body.