“Hormonal Capital: Measuring Hormones, Prescribing HRT, and Reifying Gender.”

What does it mean to have ideal hormone levels? What is hormone balance and what is the social significance of this balance? Clinicians have a hard time relaying why hormone balance matters, nevertheless they rely on the language of balance and draw on hormone levels to diagnose health issues and prescribe medication. Increasingly, more telehealth companies and direct-to-consumer applications purport the ability to track levels, leading to easier hormone level measurement. This paper draws on over a year of ethnographic observations at medical and scientific conferences, as well as in-depth interviews with providers and clinicians to understand (1) how experts create the categories of “hormone levels” and “hormone balance” in measuring sex hormones; (2) what these levels signify to patient consumers who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and other forms of hormone medicine (such as hormonal birth control); and (3) how measurement creates a vocabulary for embodied gender norms. I argue that hormone levels serve as a representation of cultural and symbolic capital: hormonal capital. This form of capital relies on cultural myths about sex and gender to create an “ideal” or “balanced” quantity of hormone levels. This has consequences for health, surveillance, and family planning. Theoretically, I contribute to conversations about (bio)medicalization, cultural ideas about sex and gender, and political economy.

I will submit this manuscript for publication by October 2027. Manuscript is available upon request.