The work of the Sci:dentity project is engaged with bio-scientific understandings of sex and transsexuality. Historically we have understood sexed identity through a medical and biological framework. Gender, on the other hand, considers the cultural phenomena or life experiences of how people attribute male and female characteristics to themselves and others.
The project was an opportunity to interrogate the perceived certainties of the science of sex and gender, and critique them through art, so challenging, for example, the presumption that one's physical sex necessarily correlates with chromosomal sex. Raising such questions affected sexual identity and self-image.
Sex is defined in various ways. Medical professionals do not consider the biological karyotype when assigning a newborn baby with its sexed identity. If we appear male i.e. have male genitalia, we are labelled 'male'.
But is this science? Has all the evidence been gathered?
What if the newborn's external sex organs do not match the karyotype? Biochemical sex is defined by the absence of the Y chromosome. The main sex hormones are testosterone and oestrogen and they make profound changes to our physiology but do chemicals make us who we are?
For transsexual and transgender people life is profoundly caught up in how the scientific and social worlds produce sexed and gendered beings. A transsexual may be born with XY chromosomes, have female genitalia, but will feel male. As a result of this, he will take hormone therapy and/ or have surgery in order that the body be aligned with the feeling. Transsexuality might be viewed as a trope for the relationship between scientific and medical worlds, and all sexed identities.
Through each transsexual person's life s/he will encounter various medical specialists in the fields of endocrinology, surgery and psychiatry. Growing awareness of transsexuality means that increasing numbers of people are identifying as trans and becoming involved in trans as a social identity rather than a medical diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder. Trans people are taking part in a range of support networks, getting involved in activism and wishing to change their sex at a younger age. Simultaneously medical practitioners are faced with making difficult ethical decisions when negotiating their treatment of a young trans person. Guidance is contained in the Harry Benjamin Guidelines on the Treatment of Transsexuals (2001). The guidance suggests caution with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of young people. Concerns include decisions whether to administer only reversible treatments such as hormone blockers to the trans adolescent rather than irreversible treatments such as hormone administration and surgery.
While the medical profession tends to delay treating young trans people, there also exists a practice of self-diagnosis and self-medication amongst young trans people who are opting out of the existing psychiatric and medical framework for understanding transsexuality. Furthermore, increased global communication has led to drugs (steroids) and surgical procedures (cosmetic surgery) becoming widely available to those that can gain access to and afford them. It is at this nexus, between medical discourses of transsexuality and a growing understanding of trans as a social identity, that this project lies.
Here's the interview two of the young people carried out with Prof. Andrew Levy - its in three parts to make it better quality for you to watch.
Below the three parts is the interview with Dr. Richard Curtis. The whole group interviewed him as part of the third weekend of workshops.
In part one, Andrew talks about how long he's worked in the field of endocrinology and about the field of medical research that involves gender and gender identity. The conversation moves on to the topic of the impact of hormones on the body.
Andrew Levy - Endocrinologist Part 1 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.
In part two, the discussion is concerned with the impact of hormones on behaviour and some of ways that the medical profession diagnoses and treats transexual and transgender people such as carrying out bone density scans on FTM patients. He talks about his belief that doctors should question why they carry out the range of tests they do on trans people.
Andrew Levy - Endocrinologist Part 2 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.
Andrew Levy Endocrinologist - Part 3 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.
Richard Curtis Gender Specialist - Part 1 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.
Richard Curtis Gender Specialist - Part 2 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.
Here are some of the questions that the young people put together during the second weekend of the project, to ask of Dr. Andrew Levy, the Endocrinologist (you can see some of his answers in the film):
1) Could you give us a detailed account of the short and long term effects of taking testosterone (on an FTM person)?
2) If you take testosterone, how and when does it effect your oestrogen production and levels?
3) Which of the effects of taking testosterone are reversible?
4) What would happen if you had been taking hormones and then couldn't get them for a while? Would you become ill?
5) Is it true that testosterone enhances qualities that are considered stereotypically male, for example loving/tenderness decreases or attention span shortens?
6) Does taking hormones change your personality?
7) What is the relationship between hormones, behaviour and environment?
8) Will hormones 'ruin my voice? For example how will they effect my singing? Does ones range between high and low increase or decrease? Is there anything I can do the help keep my tonal range?
9) What (if any) is the relationship between a GP, Psychiatrist and an endocrinologist when treating a Trans person. Do your professional frameworks for understanding gender and (trans)sex overlap?
10) What is the relationship between theories of hormones and theories of brain sex? Does endocrinology endorse 'brain sex' theories?