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Hormonal Interventions: Undoing “Sex Hormones”
Are “sex hormones” becoming obsolete? This special section examines how contemporary feminist, trans, and queer scholarship is reshaping our understanding of hormones beyond traditional ideas of sex and sexuality. By viewing hormones as interventions in bodies and worlds, the contributors invite us to rethink established scientific categories and assumptions.
Abstract
The concept of “sex hormones” is unravelling. Scientifically and socially, we are beginning to better understand that the group of steroid hormones commonly associated with sexual development, sex differences,and sexuality intervene in many ways across human and nonhuman bodies, interacting with a wide range of other actors. This piece situates this Special Section, “Hormonal Interventions: Undoing ‘Sex Hormones,’”in a history of feminist, trans,and queer work on hormone-related science and introduces the notion that the actions of hormones are always interventions, in bodily processes, in lives,and in worlds.Celebrating existing scholarship and introducing the paper, wealso acknowledge that the project of ‘undoing “sex hormones’’ is far from simple and is very much a work in progress.