Hormonal cascades: An Introduction

What is a hormone? At first glance, this may appear to be a question with a self-evident response. Informed by natural and life sciences and biomedicine, hormones are commonly framed as chemical entities that are foundational to biological life in that they provoke, respond to and enable bodily functions and processes. Taken from the Greek term ‘hormao’, meaning ‘to excite’, these compounds set biological processes in motion, catalysing and carrying messages through systems of the body.

Yet, hormones are also cultural artefacts. They carry meaning, cascading information between people and shaping understandings and material realities of health, normalcy, sex and gender. Testosterone, for example, is heralded as ‘the male hormone’ and oestrogen as ‘the female hormone’. These hormones act as messengers of sex and gender, carrying gendered meanings throughout the body (Roberts 2007). However, as has been powerfully detailed by science and technology studies scholars, among others, these meanings are deeply rooted in prevailing biomedical and social constructs of what male and female bodies are and ought to do (Oudshoorn 1994; Roberts 2007)....