Bodily Desires and Epistemological Struggles: Experiences of Patients and Clinicians with Hormone Replacement Therapy

• In Event: 40451 - Hormones, Biology, and Embodied and Reproductive Justice

Abstract

How does knowledge impact access to hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? This extended abstract looks at how patients and clinicians navigate access, distribution, and use of HRT through looking at the experiences of cisgender women (hereafter cis women) taking HRT for menopause, transwomen and nonbinary people (hereafter transfeminine people) seeking HRT for gender-affirming care, and clinicians who prescribe this medication. Using data from interviews with cisgender women going through menopause and transfeminine people (n=20) and ethnographic observations of medical conferences, this paper proposes that hormones are a site for epistemological struggle. This struggle is comprised with the following components: patients’ embodied knowledge and desire to modify their bodies and medical “nonknowledge” of hormones. This struggle operates within the context of broader scientific, medical, and legal practices that posit that sex is a fixed, biological category. These knowledges construct this form of struggle, which in turn informs and shapes access to HRT and broader understandings of sex and gender.

Author

• Gwendolyn Marie Berumen, University of Texas at Austin