testosterone landscapes
synthetic testosterone, biopower, and industrial gender
spring 2022Testosterone is a controversial hormone. Since its chemical synthesis in 1936, it has been associated with male virility and athletic performance, but also with aggression and criminality. The production, marketing, and regulation of exogenous testosterone (hormones produced outside the body and administered via medication) are all tightly bound up with racialized and gendered notions of what constitutes a “normal” body and what role the state plays in controlling it.
In spite of its sterile pharmaceutical packaging and the very term “synthetic,” exogenous testosterone is not a purely lab-generated product; it is intimately tied to places, people, and landscapes through its material and discursive flows. From the cotton fields in West Texas that produce the cottonseed oil the hormone is suspended in to the discount pharmacies and maquiladoras in Tijuana that sparked a panic over the transnational hormone trade, the production of testosterone encompasses industrial agriculture, border policing, and the carceral system.
This project traces the history and present of synthetic testosterone through eight key sites implicated in its research, production, regulation, and marketing. To reconcile the enormous scale of the industrial systems that produce this hormone with the intimate bodily scale of its use, a series of drawings demonstrating the steps of injecting testosterone are collaged with images from these sites.
From the early days of endocrinological research (closely tied to medical eugenics) to testosterone’s designation as a Schedule III controlled substance in 1990 to present-day bans on transgender youth’s access to gender-affirming care, the history of testosterone and hormones more broadly is a story of attempted medicolegal control over what is unruly: the function of hormones in the body, the extraction of biological compounds from cultivated plant matter, the movement of people and products across borders, and ultimately the desires of cisgender and transgender people alike for gender affirmation and bodily autonomy.
produced for PennDesign course Yonder Lands: Political Ecologies and Economies of the Military, Fossil Fuel, Agriculture, and Prison Industrial Complexes in Rural Landscapes
instructor: Billy Fleming