Making Space for Risk: Sex, Gender, and Trans Women’s Use of Oestrogen in Aotearoa

<p><strong>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. Taking risk as both a material reality and conceptual framework, this thesis examines how one of these hormones, oestrogen, operates as a socio-cultural and biological object, expanding on the relationship between hormones, sex, gender, physical space and social life. I draw on nine semi-structured interviews and four secondary go-alongs with trans women from across Aotearoa who use oestrogen, examining how these women navigate and rework the risks they encounter accessing and using pharmaceutical oestrogen and highlighting how these risks are shaped by the physical spaces they occur within. Drawing together literature from Science and Technology Studies, Medical Anthropology, and Queer Studies I interrogate how medical systems render oestrogen (as a synthetic hormone) as ‘risky’ and how this idea of risk is mobilised as a regulatory force to ‘manage’ trans bodies in different spaces. I show how the management of risk intersects with the ways physical space operates as a regulatory, structural force for sex/gender presentation in the trans community. In queering risk, I posit that when risk is imposed on trans bodies, embracing risk can become a necessity. It is in agentively choosing to take on certain medical risks that trans women can live the lives they desire.</strong></p>