Paper short abstract:

I am focusing on testosterone as ‘the essence of masculinity’, i.e., as an increasingly prominent somatic figure of masculinity. Staying open to testosterone’s disruptive qualities, its subversion of nature/culture, body/environment, and female/male, I am analyzing how it con- and dis-figures Man.

Paper long abstract:

Past feminist research on sex hormones has primarily focused on how femininity has been reshaped by hormones. However, there is a rising tendency to figure masculinity in hormonal terms: Feminists speak of ‘testosterone fueled’ politics to call out the unduly influence of men, while manospherians insult liberal men as ‘soy boys’ who have been feminized by phytoestrogens. Older men, ‘fueled’ by the marketing strategies of the burgeoning global testosterone replacement market, urge their doctors to tend to their declining testosterone levels; meanwhile trans men face their own battles with the medical system to access testosterone.

The association with testosterone has ambivalent effects for masculinity. While testosterone provides another somatic anchorage for masculinity, hormones are also slippery entities troubling the modern ontology masculinity relies on. Hormones live in the borderlands of nature and culture. They turn bodies into leaky vessels, blurring the boundary between body and environment. Sex hormones are furthermore not stable entities loyal to gender binarism; testosterone may become estrogen through the biochemical process of aromatization.

Haraway, feminist materialism, and a touch of Latour in my backpack, I venture out to follow the well-travelled path of testosterone as the ‘essence of masculinity’, all the while staying open to being lured sideways and off the beaten track to discover testosterone, the trickster, capable of dis-figuring Man. How does the translation of masculinity in hormonal registers transform masculinity? How does hormonal masculinity handle the leakages described above? But also, what other stories is testosterone telling us if we listen in closely?

Paper short abstract:

We explore how steroids become gender markers and what stories they tell in the Danish news? Steroids often cues associations of athletes and bodybuilders on doping. But what kind of masculinities are narrated in steroids stories, in the Danish news?

Paper long abstract:

We explore this, as well as, who gets to tell these masculinity stories through steroids? In contrast to the hypermasculinity associations which steroids often create many of the news stories strive to position men using steroids as mentally vulnerable men who suffer from muscle dysmorphia or megarexia. That is, these steroid-using men who strive to be read as macho, are in many of these news stories interpreted, through a pathological lens which categories them as mentally vulnerable and in need of care. These men (and their expressions of masculinity) are narrated, by experts and journalists a like, as in need of medical interventions due to their unique vulnerabilities. Some articles even explicitly labelled these men victims of substances abuse. Researchers and the Anti-doping agency recommend that the growing use of steroids amongst these men (both inside and outside of elite sports), is addressed through a creation of substances abuse centers that would specialize in their unique vulnerabilities. That is, men who are expressing their masculinity through steroid use, are interpreted as if they are in a mental crisis. The news stories do not invite us to heil the macho men’s masculinity. On the contrary, the media and the experts seem to dethrone the macho men by framing them as vulnerable victims with mental health challenges which the healthcare system ought to (but often fail to) address.

Paper short abstract:

This paper triangulates testosterone, gendersex, and religious education by exploring amenorrhea and disordered eating among Orthodox Jewish women's yeshiva students. Linking my hormonal body with theirs, I argue that hormonal ethnography can show how normative and non-normative bodies are related.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores what happens to the gendersexed bodies of Orthodox Jewish women’s yeshiva students who participate in a religious educational practice of residential Torah study that for thousands of years has produced Jewish masculinity. Highlighting amenorrhea and disordered eating within these institutions, the paper traces my ethnographic search for hormones and bodies out-of-bounds, in a religious environment that is focused on textual knowledge and conformity. Starting with my own testosterone, I follow this hormone across time to other related bodies that participate in this practice some fifteen years later to explore the relationship between yeshiva, amenorrhea, gendersex and T. Linking my re-search with students' own attempts to decipher their changing hormonal bodies, I highlight the intersecting forms of religious and medical embodiment and authority that we engage in negotiating our shifting bodily states and their gendersexed meanings. While I start with testosterone, I follow as T is rerouted to cortisol (stress) by authority figures, and how this deferral redirects students’ attention away from their bodies. Along the way, I highlight my own hormonal re-routings in my search to understand the hormonal impact of yeshiva on bodies like mine. Drawing on feminist science studies, queer/trans situated biologies and auto/insider ethnography, I ask what is at stake with “finding” or not finding hormones for different interlocutors of my research: students, their communities, physicians and me. This paper considers how a hormonal ethnography can help us understand the impact of religion on gendersex, linking non-normative and normative bodies to demonstrate their relatedness.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the hormone progesterone, and specifically its conceptualization related to endometriosis treatment and research.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine the ways in which the role of progesterone is described in the treatment and biomedical research of endometriosis, a chronic inflammatory disease in which cells alike those in the uterine wall form lesions in different parts of the body. Progesterone offers an interesting focal point to study gendered conceptualizations of hormones in endometriosis. It is mostly considered the hormone that prepares and helps the womb to maintain pregnancy. In biomedical research, progesterone is frequently coupled with estrogen as an example of female “sex hormones”. Still, recent research argues that progesterone has not received adequate attention. Through examinations of clinician interviews and biomedical research publications I ask how the role of progesterone is perceived in relation to endometriosis. While endometriosis is often defined as an estrogen dependent disease, knowledge about progesterone has been central in shaping its medical treatment. Designed originally to mimic pregnancy, progestin-based hormonal treatment continues to be standard medication for endometriosis. However, there is increasing interest in the ways in which endometriosis lesions become resistant to progesterone, demanding more systemic approach to hormonal interactions in the body. In this paper, I will (1) map the ways in which the reference to progesterone in endometriosis treatment and etiology has changed in the late 20th and the 21st century and (2) consider how these changes relate to shifts in understanding of the intertwined hormonal relations, as the research moves further in considering endometriosis as a systemic disease.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation asks how this insulin-as-villain story is not only a product of postindustrial metabolic science (Landecker, 2013) but also a story that gains its popularity in a postindustrial condition, and in the case of Korea, in a milieu where eating is digitally mediated in many ways.

Paper long abstract:

For most ordinary Koreans at the turn of the 21st century, insulin was known as an agent for blood sugar control, and something that people with diabetes would need to control their blood sugar levels. In recent years, since the late 2010s, insulin is increasingly narrated as a villain, a fattening hormone which, if repeatedly secreted in excess, will lead one to obesity and diabetes in the future. This insulin-as-villain story is based on the carbobydrate-insulin model of obesity and the notions of “blood sugar spikes” and “insulin resistance”, and has become popular in combination with diverse forms of unconventional dieting methods such as low-carb-high-fat (LCHF), intermittent fasting, and more recently “blood sugar diets”. This presentation asks how this insulin-as-villain story is not only a product of postindustrial metabolic science (Landecker, 2013) but also a story that gains its popularity in a postindustrial condition, and in the case of Korea, in a milieu where eating is digitally mediated in many ways.

Paper short abstract:

Using my speculative instrument for a collective investigative practice called the Endocrine Disruption Tracker Tool, I examine the likely influence of hormonally active chemical agents on our emotions and the possible role of these emotions in opposing the chemical violence.

Paper long abstract:

In a world saturated with industrially manufactured chemicals, understanding their impact is crucial. This inquiry focuses on endocrine-disrupting chemicals, exploring how these pervasive substances influence our brain chemistry, shaping thoughts, feelings, and motivations. The Endocrine Disruption Tracker Tool (EDTT), a speculative instrument I designed, delves into the emotional effects of hormonally active chemicals. Modeled on a tool for diagnosing premenstrual symptoms, EDTT expands its scope to cover emotional symptoms stemming from the production and interplay of both hormones and hormone-disrupting chemicals. By employing this tool, I investigate the potential role of chemically disrupted emotions in resisting the systemic chemical violence that impairs life. Developed to navigate uncertainties caused by involuntary chemical exposure, EDTT aids in confronting the complexities of our chemically influenced lives. Drawing on insights from workshop participants and visual cues from my short film, “The Sadness of the Anthropocene,” this paper considers the possibility of our emotions being impacted by anthropogenic chemicals, including the prospect of affirming these emotions, as they are affected by hormonally active chemical agents. In our chemically altered world, EDTT provides a collective investigative approach to comprehend and respond to the intricate interplay between emotions and pervasive chemicals.

Paper short abstract:

Through a patchwork of four stories about contraception, gender hacking, birth, and autism-specific horse therapy, this paper offers a new materialist examination of how and why hormones remain vital protagonists in the constitution of bodies, affects, environments, places, politics, and selves.

Paper long abstract:

Hormones are complex biosocial objects that provoke myriad cultural narratives through their association with social activities and identities, and these narratives have the power to shape people’s lived realities and bodies. While hormones were historically conceptualised as ‘master molecules’ capable of controlling various life processes, their explanatory potential has now been overshadowed by technoscientific developments like omics- and gene-based biotechnologies that have reframed how human bodies and behaviours are understood. Considering these shifts, this paper asks what roles hormones perform and what stories they are arousing today. Through a patchwork of four hormone stories about contraception, gender hacking, birth, and autism-specific horse therapy, we show how hormones remain vital protagonists in the constitution of bodies, affects, environments, places, politics, and selves in the contemporary period. Building on new materialist approaches, we adopt and extend the notion of ‘emplotment’ to encapsulate how hormones act as key characters in our plots. They are working to complicate dominant understandings of what bodies are and can be in new ways as they mediate different plots of bodily experience, in ways showing the ongoing powerful salience of hormones and their ascendancy in the present.