Certain hormones, commonly referred to as ‘sex hormones’ are given key roles in the creation and regulation of contemporary biological, medical and social understandings of sex and gender. Drawing from STS and Medical Anthropology, in this presentation I will discuss the bodily experiences that arise when pharmaceutical hormones, namely oestrogen, are used, showing how the impacts of hormone use on the body can render trans bodies as ‘at risk’, and how different individuals respond to this. I will highlight the relationship between physical space and hormones, showing how the gendering effects of sex hormones are regulated and disrupted by and within different spaces. I draw on nine semi-structured interviews and four secondary go-alongs with trans women from across Aotearoa who use oestrogen, to draw attention to the ways medical providers and patients can have differing expectations surrounding hormonal actions and impacts. As I demonstrate, these differences can and does shape the care trans women receive in Aotearoa, and the ways hormonal impacts materialise in daily life, including in relation to different physical spaces. To expand on this, I further discuss individuals who choose, or are forced, to engage in do-it-yourself (DIY) HRT use, operating beyond the boundaries of the medical institution. DIY hormone users centre their bodies as important sites of experimentation, and within this process, centre non-medical spaces as key sites for trans knowledge production and sharing. I argue that DIY hormone users experiences could offer alternative ways of conceptualising hormone risk and efficacy and understanding hormone use.

The gendered logics of prolactin require a sustained (re)doing – because, while emerging research makes clear that it is needed in human growth and development for all bodies and not just lactating bodies at point of lactation – it is still an often overlooked as a ‘growth hormone.’ Because often seen as a reproductive and/or lactation related hormone, its other contributions to human wellbeing and development are overlooked. In tracing the research on prolactin in Aotearoa – this paper is an attempt to story prolactin to highlight all the interesting ways prolactin is being (re)done in labs, on social media, in midwives offices, and in endocrinologists offices. Drawing on and contributing to debates on Hormones in Medical Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and Gender Studies, this paper is an attempt to make visible the socio-cultural and scientific-economic entanglements that prolactin makes visible.

What do hormones do in menstrual and fertility tracking apps, in digital tracking practices, in app users' bodies and more-than-human relations?

In this panel, I ask these questions with and through digital diaries and interviews with app users in Aotearoa, interviews with app creators, and autoethnographic engagement with my own digital tracking practices and objects.

I situate hormones within wider menstrual ecologies, and consider some of the roles hormones play in material and affective flows within these ecologies. What roles do hormones play in producing embodied and bodily knowledge? In drawing boundaries around experiences and understandings of normal, or excessive, bleeding and pain? How are hormones present and absent in negotiations of illness and health in GP and sexual health clinics? How are they tracked, measured and monitored, inferred and interpreted?

Hormones are powerful bio-techno-social actants in these menstrual ecologies, with the ability to disrupt, shape and influence productivity, sociality, and mood; to penetrate bodies and provoke strong material and affective reactions. Hormones are also vulnerable to material-discursive forces, with the potential to be shaped and influenced by, for example, medications, food and te Marama.

In this panel, I will discuss some of the ways hormones are entangled with, produce, and are produced by apps, data, bodies, blood, cervical mucus, skin, food, testing strips, thermometers, memories of school health classes, and the menstrual cycle.