9. Endocrine Economies. Living in a Sea of Hormones
Charlotte Kroløkke, University of Southern Denmark; Karen Hvidtfeldt, University of Southern Denmark; Anne Nørkjær Bang, University of Southern Denmark;
At a moment where new anxieties and hopes connected to the decades old, but ever 'revolutionary' invention of hormonal birth control surface in the mainstream media alongside public debates on gender-affirming treatments, sex segregation in sports, and hormonal environmental pollution; it is safe to say that sex hormones are everywhere. Yet, the ways in which they are valorized and the emotions they seem to evoke are not the same across contexts.
This panel will explore how sex hormones circulate to regulate, optimize, and disrupt gendered bodies. As such, we seek for the panel to make a timely contribution to feminist science and technology studies (STS) understandings of what our notions of sex hormones look like and how these, materially as well as discursively, shape our understandings of gender, age, race, ethnicity, health, and sexuality. We invite contributions that explore issues and themes related to, for example, andropause, body building, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, gender affirmative treatments, hormonal contraception, hormone replacement therapy, menopause, queer and feminist practices. We encourage feminist STS and intersectional approaches where gender is investigated as interrelated with, among other areas, questions of sexuality, ethnicity, class, age, disability, nationality, and race.
