Estrogen Flooding, or Botanically Trans

• In Event: Decolonial Queer and Trans Ecologies Part 2 (HYBRID)

Abstract

From the confluence of trans ecologies and critical disability studies, this autoethnographic article theorizes trans-corporeal possibilities and impossibilities connected to environmental injury and healing related to endometriosis. The paltry health sciences research on endometriosis suggests that nonbinary people and trans men may have higher rates of this under-researched condition whose pathology is related to environmental toxins. Here, the white, nonbinary author explores the bio-sociopolitical consequences of being “flooded by estrogen”—naturally and through biopharmaceuticals. This includes severe pain, fatigue, depressive episodes, suicidal ideation, and, relatedly, interactions with the police (with terrible track records in their interactions with transgender people and people with metal health issues), and greater enmeshment in the Medical Industial Complex. Moreover, endometrial tissue contains the aromatase enzyme that produces a chemical process that “steals” testosterone from the body to produce more estrogen. In effect, any additional testosterone added to the body as a therapy could be converted into estrogen—simultaneously producing a new cycle of symptoms and a sense of embodied gender impossibility. But despite the fact that “toxic environments” play a role in exacerbating these processes, other environmental interfaces help the body slow endometrial growth and heal. Holistic treatments for endometriosis involve relying on botanical elements to shed estrogen and inhibit the aromatase cycle. Through the thick description of these processes and meanings, this article gives a fuller sense of what “trans” might be(come) that does not rely on the normativity of able-bodiedness, especially in these crip times of the pandemic and climate change.

Author

• Erin L. Durban, University of Minnesota