OK so it feels suuuuper cliche to write a piece on estrogen as a transfemme who recently started HRT but the politics around the representation and technology of it are utterly fascinating to me.
Everyone produces estrogen â so it being called âthe female hormoneâ by literally everyone including the NHS is kind of weird before we get started. But also I get totally where this comes from: there is obviously a direct correlation between the effects of estrogen on the body and things considered feminine, or no-one would bother to take it. Itâs the same with testosterone for men â women produce testosterone too. And in fact some produce so much theyâre not considered women by racist international athletics competitions!
This is not to get sidetracked by the whole âtrans people in sports debateâ but rather to point out how these two single hormones have come to be the single markers that define femininity and masculinity. As always itâs worth reminding people that the primary users of testosterone therapy are cis men, and the primary users of estrogen are cis women, by a fairly gigantic margin. But tracking a direct correlation between hormone levels and femininity or masculinity is clearly as daft as creating one between say, height and gender. On average men are taller, sure, but to say that all masculine people are tall and all feminine people are short is obviously absurd.
Gender is always co-constituted with power and class and race â not a binary either/or but rather plural masculinities and femininities that are in relation to each culture that produces them. Taking hormones for cis people explicitly allows them to stay inside the socially acceptable boundaries of their present habitus. So we end up in this silly situation where the NHS shows different information and side effects for the same drug to cis woman and trans women, trying to encourage the former and discourage the latter, even tho it creates similar affects in both.
As basically any trans person what makes âa genderâ though and it gets a bit more complicated. Theyâll probably make a sound and sort of groan a bit because the reality is the answer is too complicated, too personal, too embodied, too detailed and specific. Itâs everything: how you dress, act, smell, what you do, how you talk, how you relate to others, how you feel inside. At the moment I am most inclined to say that gender is a lobster, riffing on Deleuze & Guattariâs famous quote:
âGod is a Lobster, or a double pincer, a double bind. Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers) [âŚ] The first articulation chooses or deducts, from unstable particle-flows, metastable molecular or quasi-molecular units (substances) upon which it imposes a statistical order of connections and successions (forms)â\
- D&G, A Thousand Plateaus
The gender lobster has two claws: one for expression of form and one for expression of thought. These could be thought of as the current state of the body, and the current feeling of onesâ gender identity. Each claw is then articulated again and again, expressing different divisions of these. The (real) front of the lobster is nibbling at the (virtual) tail, constantly reconfiguring and redirecting the âdirection of genderâ we could call it. Gender is a constant becoming affected by both form and thought. Gender is an ongoing process of âdoingâ gender.
As someone who for one reason and another avoided medical intervention for gender most of my life, the idea that HRT would help me access ways of being outside the directly obvious ones was a huge surprise. The most amazing thing for me, as someone who has spent a life doing grassroots politics is that i didnât realise how much my endocrine balance was a bad fit for the kinds of work I like to do. Collaboration and cooperation and mutual aid in general requires a lot of slow emotional work and capacity to deal with difficult situations and discussions from a position of powerlessness, and willingness to constantly learn and know when to put aside your own frustration and anger and when to highlight it. Taking HRT literally made this easier. I found myself still getting angry or annoyed with things, but the rage and heat associated with testosterone was muted. I have become more able to deal with difficult emotional situations. The cost of this though is now the ongoing existential dread feels way stronger, but oh well swings and roundabouts, a challenge for another day.
So yes â estrogen is a representation of femininity. But itâs also very real and levels of it are enforced in certain circumstances. Itâs just not real in the way we are meant to think its real: a direct marker of a gender, as everyone has it to differing degrees that sometimes correlate with identity and sometimes donât. Rather itâs just one part of the infinite lobster claw of self expression, and just expresses itself.