Technologies of Self: Endocrinology in the Historical and Contemporary Medical Management of Intersex and (In)Fertility

• In Event: Hormones on the Move: Transnational Entanglements in the Everyday - I

Abstract

This paper explores discourses on hormones, racialization, sexuality, and understandings of intersex (in)fertility in relationship to the state. First, I focus on the ways that, beginning in the twentieth century, endocrinological logics have been co-constitutive of eugenic sciences, and I discuss the impact this has had on the management of intersex bodies at the intersection of the carceral state and medical industrial complex via frameworks from Feminist Science and Technology Studies. Tracing these accounts to the contemporary pharmaco-pornographic moment, I explore the treatment of Klinefelter Syndrome in which individuals, who frequently experience low fertility or infertility are prescribed exogenous testosterone. In particular, I am interested in how testosterone functions, at least in aim, as a rehabilitory proxy of male virility in light of “failed” fatherhood. Further, I examine how this phenomena might be situated in broader conversations about anxieties towards preservation of the Western, White nation-state and its perpetuity.

Author

• Mel Lynwood Ferrara, University of Arizona