Hormones

Hormones are chemical substances produced by glands for the purpose of regulating the body’s physiological and behavioral activities. Sex hormones are essential for the development of the reproductive system as well as some secondary physical and bodily characteristics. Sexual hormones are usually divided into three main classes: estrogen (estradiol, estrone, estriol), progestogens (progesterone) and androgens (testosterone, androstenedione)(1). All bodies have all these hormones, but in different amounts. Hormonal levels change either through regular bodily functions including puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, changes in digestive functions, and hormonal irregularities such as the Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome [PCOS] which is present in nearly 10% of women(2), among other factors.

Hormone levels can also be altered through medical interventions such as in the case of hormonal therapy, birth control and the contraception pill, infertility treatment, and hormone replacement therapy (in menopause, but also in the case of transgender persons who would like to transition). Transgender persons’ access to hormone therapy is legal and possible in Lebanon, but it requires a number of visits to numerous doctors first which can render it inaccessible due to the associated high costs(3). Thus, some trans* persons resort to buying hormones in the informal market and self-medicate.

Several common social misunderstandings and myths surround hormones. For example, sex hormones do not only regulate sexual and reproductive functions, but also have multiple functions in the body including for example some digestive roles and body fluid regulation(4). Further, hormones are often wrongly used to justify women’s difference from men, and their subsequent dismissal from positions of power and public life. One of the ways in which this is evident is the social use of the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) as a tool for questioning women’s competencies, abilities, and opposing opinions. Such attitudes are also practiced in the medical field, where feminist medical practitioners have long argued that classifying PMS as an illness is anti-women because “it is a way to deny normalcy to [menstrual] cycle changes”(5) thereby maintaining men’s bodily functions as the norm. This does not mean that PMS does not exist – indeed, PMS physical and psychological symptoms do vary significantly among women. Rather, these symptoms should not be used as a ground for dismissing women or justifying discrimination against them.

In feminist studies, hormones fall into a wider debate over the social use and misuse of biological sex difference(s), and the long history of justifying discrimination against women through (socially constructed) biological arguments(6). Feminist theorist Anne Fausto-Sterling(7) critiques the hormone-based sex difference approach for its biological determinism and for undermining the links and multiple interactions between biological and social factors in human bodies’ functions and behaviors. Such critiques fall into a broader push for rethinking and breaking the biological/social and nature/nurture dichotomies(8). In other words, analyzing the role hormones play in the human body and behavior should take into account the importance of one’s environment and socialization as central factors that shape these functions, as well as realize that our scientific lens is always already gendered.

In Lebanese colloquial sayings, a hormonal woman is not in control of her emotions, of the way she acts, and is unable to take rational decisions. The saying is also sometimes employed to describe and shame women who express their sexual desires openly. Such sexist framings sustain their alleged validity by invoking popularized arguments of biological sex difference which permeate mainstream discourses. This includes for example the use of the highly problematic and highly transnational term hysteria (and its derivative in Arabic “mhastra” / “مْهَسـترة”). For centuries, hysteria was a frequent diagnosis in Europe that was used to refer to several psychological disorders predominantly in women with varying symptoms including nervousness, irritability, and even sexual desire. The concept derives from the Greek term of hystera, which means Uterus. It may refer to the myth of the “wandering womb” or the “floating uterus” in the female body, which was problematically considered as the source of physiological and psychological pathologies throughout medical history(9). The widespread diagnosis claimed to offer evidence about women’s mental instability which was then used to dismiss them as unequal. In Lebanon, hysteria is still diagnosed by mental health practitioners in women who are accused of displaying too much emotion, without questioning the gendered history and sexist underpinnings behind women’s pathologization(10). Recently, feminist cultural re-appropriation emerged using the term to describe the physiological manifestation of oppression thereby a space for resistance and for reaffirming that hysteria is “patriarchy’s disease enacted in women’s bodies”(11).