Gendering time through hormone therapy: differences in embodied gender ambiguity

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. Embodiment, Medicine, and Health

Abstract

This article uses the experiences of cisgender and transgender women who take feminizing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to theorize nostalgic and future femininities in the context of embodied change. I interview twenty one people—ten cisgender women (hereafter cis), ten transgender women (hereafter trans), and one nonbinary person—to understand their experiences with these sets of medications. I find a stark difference in the experiences of these interviewees, marked by differing relations to time, sex, and gender above all else. This difference reveals a paradox: despite HRT’s formulation as a biomedical technology to address signs of medicalized aging (menopause) for cisgender women, it is trans women and nonbinary people who are more well-versed and comfortable discussing their bodies and HRT. Cis women are less likely to feel comfortable with transition and embodied gender ambiguity in comparison to trans women. Furthermore, I highlight how HRT is integral to managing femininity as a “body project” and how the use of HRT elucidates differences in how cis and trans women orient to time.

Author

• Gwendolyn Marie Berumen, University of Texas at Austin