Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores how tinkering with insulin, estrogen, and testosterone during menopause and andropause complicates biomedical sex and gender binaries. Drawing on ethnographic research with people living with Type 1 diabetes who undergo HRT, it unwrites metabolism as a site of queer disruptions.

Contribution long abstract:

Feminist approaches have long demonstrated how sex hormones are constructed as stable markers of sex, perpetuating gender binary frameworks (Oudshoorn, 1994; Fausto-Sterling, 1999; Roberts, 2007). Yet they inspire us to ask different questions: What happens when we unwrite hormones as isolated substances and reimagine their biosocial entanglements?

In bodies, hormones do not exist and act in isolation. For example, biomedical evidence points to hormonal effects of (declining) testosterone and estrogen during meno– and andropause on insulin resistance (Lambrinoudaki & Armeni, 2023) or insulin sensitivity (Lindheim, 1993). Drawing on my ongoing ethnographic research with medical professionals and individuals living with Type 1 diabetes who undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT), I examine metabolic hormonal transitions (Nappi, et al., 2022) as experimental spaces where gendered hormonal categories can be unsettled. Using the notion of tinkering (Mol, et al., 2010) I attend to practices of hormonal tinkering to observe experimental spaces of insulin/HRT adjustments. How do practices of (self)care balance out different hormonal supplies that are meant to prevent, slow down, or tackle metabolic changes?

By attending to the entangled flows of insulin, testosterone, and estrogen as biosocial agents, I explore how these hormones co-enact (de)stabilizations of gendered embodiments and metabolic health. In dialogue with feminist science studies, I argue that such "hormonal tinkering" offers a lens to unwrite biomedical narratives that reinforce normative and binary understandings of gendered bodies. Rather than stabilizing bodies into normative ideals of health and ageing, these experimental practices open up possibilities for "doing" gendered metabolism in queer ways.