Oestrogen

This chapter explores the conceptualisation of oestrogen ‘deficit’ for women with variations in sex characteristics (VSCs), and their relationship with the biomedical replacement therapies designed to supplement or restore their hormone levels (i.e. HRT). Low levels of oestrogen may be stigmatised when social norms are not fulfilled on time, or at all, meaning that some people repeatedly ‘misfit’ with the social timing of their peers throughout the life course. We explore how the medical interventions intended to remedy low oestrogen levels can also be stigmatising, and how stigmatisation may be resisted, examining the strategies deployed to achieve this, and the way this circumvents, negotiates and reframes a sense of (mis)fitting with social timing norms.