Katrina Karkazis: ‘You can’t use testosterone levels to divide people into male or female’

The cultural anthropologist on why our view of testosterone as the male sex hormone skews both science and societyKatrina Karkazis, a senior research fellow at Yale University, is a cultural anthropologist working at the intersection of science, technology, gender studies and bioethics. WithRebecca Jordan-Young, a sociomedical scientist, she has writtenTestosterone: An Unauthorised Biography. It is a critique of both popular and scientific understandings of the hormone, and how they have been used to explain, or even defend, inequalities of power.You suggest that testosterone is understood as an exclusivelymale hormone, even though it ’s also found in women. But surely no scientist believes this.No, what we ’re saying is that the hormone has a century-long biography and identity that continues to be that of a male sex hormone. That language is used by authoritative sources in the US like theNational Library of Medicine, but also in many media articles. It ’s an argument that has to do with how the hormone is understood, which then shapes the kinds of research questions that get asked, what kinds of research get done or not done. There’s actually almost no research on the relationship between testosterone and aggression in women. That is a consequ ence of the framing of the hormone as having to do with men, masculinity, behaviours understood and framed as masculine. It’s the idea that because men generally have more testosterone, somehow that makes it more relevant i...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Anthropology Human biology Medical research Society Science Source Type: news