In this epilogue it is time to reflect on what sex hormones have brought us. Clearly, hormones have changed our world. The quest for sex hormones exemplifies the dreams of modernity. The promises of the new science of sex endocrinology mirror the modernist claim that “a progressive growth of scientific knowledge will uncover the natural […]

Beyond the Natural Body shows that the power to control sex and the body is embodied not only in scientific theory, but also in materialities. This is why I suggested that it is crucial for feminist studies of science to take into account this materiality of the scientific enterprise. The suggestion that science is primarily […]

The chemical model of sex was a rather radical model because it reduced the differences between the sexes to one hydroxyl group: men and women differ only in the relative amounts of their sex hormones. This does not mean that sex endocrinology did not emphasize differences between the female and the male body. In addition […]

What intrigued me most in writing this archeology of sex hormones is the very complex and multileveled impact of the hormonally constructed body concept on our understanding and treatment of the body. The story of hormones exemplifies the transformative power of science and technology. Or to quote Giddens: “Knowledge does not simply render the body […]

As I have indicated, the transformation of scientific body concepts into natural phenomena requires a second activity: the concealment of contexts. Beyond the Natural Body shows that the decontextualized status of scientific knowledge is the result of specific scientific activities. I have described how knowledge claims about sex hormones acquired the status of context — […]

Let us first look more closely at how scientists have tried to create contexts in which their knowledge claims about sex hormones could be transformed into natural facts. The history of sex endocrinology shows both successes and failures, which can best be understood in terms of the notion of networks of knowledge. In this perspective, […]

Since its introduction in the early decades of the twentieth century, the hormonally constructed body concept has gradually developed into a dominant mode of conceptualizing the body, even to such an extent that we are encouraged to assume that the hormonal body is a natural phenomenon. But what exactly is required to transform a scientific […]

Science, more than any other investigative and descriptive activity, creates and conceals the contexts from which it arises. (Duden 1991c:20) We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and bodies that have a chance […]

The way in which the oral progestins were finally approved as contraceptives is a rather intriguing story. Based on the Rio Piedras trial and a handful of small — scale clinical trials in the continental USA, the FDA approved Enovid in 1957, not as a birth control pill but only as a treatment for menstrual […]

In February 1956, Pincus approached Edris Rice-Wray, medical doctor of the Associacion pro Bienestar de los Familias in San Juan (the Puerto Rican Family Planning Association) about the possibility of undertaking progestin trials in their birth control clinics. Rice-Wray, who held an appointment at the University of Puerto Rico and was medical director of the […]