Since the early twentieth century, hormones have commonly been understood as 'messengers of sex'. They are seen as essential to the development and functioning of healthy reproductive male and female bodies; millions take them as medications in the treatment of fertility, infertility and ageing. However, in contemporary society, hormones are both disturbed and disturbing; invading our environments and bodies through plastics, food and water, environmental estrogens and other chemicals, threatening irreversible, inter-generational bodily change. Using a wide range of sources, from physiology textbooks to popular parenting books and pharmaceutical advertisements, Celia Roberts analyses the multiple ways in which sex hormones have come to matter to us today. Bringing feminist theories of the body into dialogue with science and technology studies, she develops tools to address one of the most important questions facing feminism today: how is biological sex conceivable?

Celia Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at King's College, London.

Introduction: Feminism, bodies and biological sex; Part I. Hormone Histories: 1. Folding hormonal histories of sex; Part II. Hormonal Bodies: 2. Articulating endocrinology's body; 3. Activating sexed behaviours; Part III. Hormone Cultures: 4. Elixirs of sex: hormone-replacement therapies and contemporary life; 5. The messaging effects of HRT; 6. Hormones in the world; Conclusion: Hormones as provocation.