Making testosterone matter in motivations for steroid injecting

• In Event: Investigating drug transformations through an ontopolitical lens

Abstract

Anabolic-androgenic steroids are synthetic derivatives of testosterone. They are thought to be the most commonly used performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. The motivations for men’s use of steroids and other PIEDs is a key area of interest for researchers. Established ways of understanding these motivations highlight men’s performance and/or image-related concerns, such as the desire for increased physical size and strength, or body-image dissatisfaction, in the context of contemporary masculinities and gender norms. Although testosterone consumption is associated with the politically freighted social practice of injecting, researchers have paid little attention to how the social and political features of testosterone shape and transform steroid use. Instead, testosterone tends to be taken for granted as a ‘messenger of sex’ that acts on the body in predictable and routinised ways (e.g. increasing muscle mass and size, adversely affecting mental health). This paper takes a different approach, drawing on interviews conducted for a new Australian research project that focuses on men who consume PIEDs to consider how their understandings of testosterone co-produce their consumption patterns and practices. Drawing on feminist science studies, I investigate how the cultural and symbolic meanings assigned to testosterone shape the ontological politics of this consumption. Assembling an ‘ontopolitically-oriented’ account of testosterone – as an emergent social and biopolitical gathering rather than as a stable sex hormone – allows us to better understand the forces motivating and mediating men’s PIED consumption, in particular, pervasive ideas about sexual difference and the biology of gender.

Author

• Renae Fomiatti, National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University