In the previous sections we have seen how sex endocrinologists gradually transformed the prescientific idea of a sexual duality located in the gonads into a conceptualization of sex that became more and more remote from common-sense opinions about sex and the body. In the paradigm of sex endocrinology, the essence of femininity and masculinity was no longer located primarily in the gonads, but extended to the adrenals. Moreover, the control of sexual characteristics was not resticted to the gonads but was conceptualized as a complex feedback system between the gonads and the brain. This conceptualization meant a definitive break with common-sense opinions that the essence of femininity and masculinity was located in the gonads, a cultural notion that could be traced back to early civilization. That sex endocrinologists were aware of this break is shown in the following quotation from The Sex Complex: A Study of the Relationship of the Internal Secretions to the Female Characteristics and Functions in Health and Disease:
It used to be thought that a woman is a woman because of her ovaries alone. As we shall see later, there are many individuals with ovaries who are not women in the strict sense of the word and many with testes who are really feminine in many other respects.
(Bell 1916:5)
The major question that emerges now is: what were the consequences of this new approach to the study of the human body? What was the impact of the introduction of the concept of sex hormones on the conceptualization of sex? A comparison with other fields in the life sciences reveals that the introduction of sex hormones generated a revolutionary change in the study of sex. For the first time in the history of the life sciences, sex was formulated in terms of chemical substances in addition to bodily structures such as organs or cells. Prior to the emergence of sex endocrinology, the
study of sex differences had been traditionally the domain of anatomists and physiologists. In the sixteenth century, only the organs directly related to sexuality and reproduction were sexualized. In the course of the eighteenth century, the study of sex differences became a priority in scientific research. Since then, the sexualization of the body has been extended to anatomical structures not related to sexuality and reproduction, such as the skeleton, the blood and the brain.26
The introduction of the concept of sex hormones as chemical messengers controlling masculinity and femininity meant a shift in the concep-tualization of sex from an anatomical entity to a chemical agency. Instead of identifying which organ was considered as the seat of femininity and masculinity, sex endocrinologists looked for the causal mechanism which regulates the development of the organism either into a male or a female. With the emergence of sex endocrinology and genetics the study of sex differences focussed on the causality rather than on the identification of sex. Sex endocrinologists claimed to provide the basic mechanism of sexual differentiation, a knowledge considered far more fundamental to a thorough understanding of sex than that which anatomists had provided.
The introduction of the concept of sex hormones not only meant a shift in the study of sex away from an anatomical identification of the body to a causal explanation of sexual differentiation, but also entailed another major change in the study of sex. Instead of locating the essence of femininity or masculinity in specific organs, as the anatomists had done, sex endocrinologists introduced a quantitative theory of sex and the body. The idea that each sex could be characterized by its own sex hormone was transformed into the idea of relative sexual specificity. Sex endocrinologists suggested that, although female sex hormones were more important for women (especially during pregnancy) than for men, their potency was the same in both sexes. Male sex hormones were thought to be of greater importance for the internal and external phenotype of men, but this was regarded as only a difference of degree. In The Annual Review of Physiology published in 1939, the American physiologist Herbert Evans postulated this theory as follows:
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It would appear that maleness or femaleness cannot be looked upon as implying the presence of one hormone and the absence of the other, but that differences in the absolute and especially relative amounts of these two kinds of substances may be expected to characterize each sex and, though much has been learned, it is only fair to state that these differences are still incompletely known.
Or as Robert Frank suggested:
The explanation naturally suggesting itself is in favor of the theory of a quantitative and fluid transition from male to female.
(Frank 1929:115)
With this quantitative theory, the endocrinologists introduced a new conceptualization of sex. In the earlier anatomical definition of sex individuals could be classified into two, or actually three, categories: on the basis of the type of sexual organs an individual was categorized as male or female, and in cases where an individual possessed the sexual organs of both sexes, as a hermaphrodite. However, with the new concept of relative sexual specificity endocrinologists constructed a biological foundation for a definition of sex in which an individual could be classified in many categories varying from “a virile to effeminate male” or from “a masculine to a feminine female,” as Robert Frank described it. Laqueur’s group described this conceptualization of sex in 1928 as follows:
The occurrence of the female hormone in the male body gives rise to many fantastic reflections…. It is now proved that in each man there is something present that is inherent in the female sex. Whether we will succeed in determining the individual ratio of each man, in terms of a given percentage femininity, we don’t know.
(Borchardt et al. 1928:1,028)
Other scientists joked, privately, that the new biochemistry meant the end of sex differences: “there but for one hydroxyl group go I” (Long Hall 1976:20).
The new model of sex in which sex differences are ascribed to hormones as chemical messengers of masculinity and femininity, agents that are present in female as well as male bodies, made possible a revolutionary change in the biological definition of sex. The model suggested that, chemically speaking, all organisms are both male and female. Sex could now be conceptualized in terms of male/masculine and female/feminine, with the elements of these two pairs no longer considered a priori as exclusive. In this model, an anatomical male could possess feminine characteristics controlled by female sex hormones, while an anatomical female could have masculine characteristics regulated by male sex hormones.
This hormonal model of sex provided the life sciences with a model to explain the “masculine characteristics” in the female body and vice versa. In obstetric science, for example, the hormonal model was used in the 1930s to substantiate the classification of female pelves into “masculine” and “feminine” types.27 Physicians and clinicians used the quantitative model of sex to account for the purportedly feminine character of homosexual men. In the next chapter we shall see how sex endocrinologists introduced diagnostic tests to measure the degree of femininity and masculinity in the human body.
This shift in thinking was found in other fields of science as well. After 1925, the concepts of masculinity and femininity became the central focus of research in psychology, next to the study of sex differences (Lewin 1984:158). And similarly in anthropology: in 1935, Margaret Mead wrote her classic work Sex and Temperament in which she postulated the idea that masculinity and femininity are randomly distributed between the sexes by nature but are assigned to only one sex by society (Lewin 1984: 166).
CONCLUSIONS
Evaluating this case study, we may conclude that prescientific ideas are a major factor in structuring scientific development. The early history of sex endocrinology illustrates in the first place how the prescientific idea of a sexual duality located in the gonads functioned as a major guideline structuring the development of endocrinological research. At the beginning of each new line of research, scientists proposed hypotheses corresponding to the cultural notion of sexual duality. In research on the origin as well as on the function of sex hormones, hypotheses were directed by this assumption, thus producing friction between expectations and experimental data.
How science gives meaning to sex differences is thus partly shaped by cultural notions of masculinity and femininity. Scientists use cultural notions as one of their cognitive resources. This conclusion is in line with feminists’ claims that the development of knowledge is shaped by cultural norms about women and men. This does not imply that science leaves these cultural notions unchanged, as is often assumed in feminist studies. Scientists not only use cultural ideas as cognitive resources, but also actively modify these notions. This study showed how sex endocrinologists incorporated the cultural notion of a sexual duality located in the gonads, and subsequently transformed this notion into a model of sex differences that inplied a drastic change in the conceptualization of sex differences.
In this respect, the story of sex hormones deviates from Fleck’s story of syphilis. Fleck concluded that, despite the different cognitive approaches, scientists eventually maintained the cultural notions about syphilis. He described the development of the Wasserman test in terms of the ultimate realization of the prescientific idea of syphilis as bad blood (Belt and Gremmen 1988). The concept of sex hormones, however, is not simply a realization of prescientific ideas. In the case of sex hormones, differences in disciplinary styles contributed to a drastic change in the cultural notion of sexual duality. I described how biochemists approached the study of sex hormones from a perspective different from that of biologists and gynecologists. The hormone of the biochemist differed from the hormone of the biologist and the gynecologist. Gynecologists (studying dysfunctions of organs) and biologists (studying the physiological development of the organism) shared a common interest in functions. Biochemists (focusing mainly on chemical structures) were devoted to the study of structures rather than functions. Consequently, the disciplines gave different interpretations to the function of sex hormones, and they opted for different forms of classification and naming. Biochemists saw the object of their research in terms of catalysts: chemical substances, sexually unspecific in origin and function, inducing chemical conversions in the cells, thus emphasizing the manifold activities of the substances as major characteristics of sex hormones. Gynecologists and biologists interpreted their object of study as sex hormones: substances sexually specific in origin and function, thus highlighting as a major characteristic the function of these substances in the sexual development of the organism. Sex hormones thus embody the ideas and interests of different disciplinary traditions. This multidisciplinary context accounts for the changes that took place in the conceptualization of sex differences, a process in which the prescientific idea of a sexual duality located in the gonads became transformed into a chemical model of sex that enabled the construction of new meanings and practices that became attached to the human body.
This chapter focused primarily on the ideas and conceptual frameworks of sex endocrinologists. Science, however, is not just ideas. Scientists use other powerful tools in knowledge production. In the next chapter we focus more closely on one specific tool: the experiment.