Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how trans persons account for hormone treatment effects and risks and problematize the conventional medical understanding of risks as pertaining to chemical effects within bodies.

Paper long abstract:

Hormone treatment is conventionally understood to consist of matters such as pills, patches or injections that have chemical effects in bodies. From this perspective, the materiality of risk is regarded as confined to potential adverse effects of pharmaceuticals within individual bodies. By discussing Finnish trans persons' accounts of hormone treatments this paper contributes to a rethinking of both the materiality of risk and how gender figures as part of the effects and risks of hormone treatments. The majority of this study's trans participants perceived the risks of hormone treatment as related to the healthcare system rather than to the pharmaceuticals' effects per se. Based on this result, and drawing from feminist histories of hormone treatments, trans/feminist studies and material feminisms, this paper argues that hormone-treatment risks can be seen as phenomena that materialise contextually within particular 'treatment apparatuses' and the power relations that saturate them instead of merely as chemical effects within individual bodies.