the Female Body GOVERNING

Beyond X-X and X-Y 277
process the organism underwent to become a certain sex) and genetics
limiting its focus to sex determination (the cause of the biological
process). Prior to this split, various experiments had indicated that
in higher vertebrates the early embryo was morphologically female,
until the testis were formed and secreted hormones to masculinize the
embryo. Endocrinology viewed the “becoming” of female as passive
and the result of “lacking” the active ingredients testosterone. Alfred
Jost, a French developmental endocrinologist, was one of the fi rst to
describe the male’s struggle against the internal “default female” stating
“becoming a male is a prolonged, uneasy and risky adventure: it is a
kind of struggle against inherent trends towards femaleness” (quoted in
Fausto-Sterling, 2000, p. 119). The scientifi c study of sex differentiation
became defi ned in terms of the active physical processes leading to the
formation of the testis. Because the female was seen as “default,” these
masculine processes were defi ned as a movement away from the female
basic body plan, and “becoming a male” was dependent on a “chemical
messenger” produced by the testis, testosterone.
Within endocrinology, sex differentiation is an ongoing active
process—because “sex hormones” are important through out an
organism’s life—with two signifi cant stages of development: in the
early embryo and at sexual maturity. This has allowed endocrinologists
to conceptualize sex morphologies as linear, with the ideal female and
male bodies on opposite poles, and a range of morphologies in-between.
Animal experiments involving castration that illustrate this linear binary
model are well documented (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 2000), but human
examples also support the idea of the linear endocrine sex model.
During the cold war, East German sporting offi cials gave 142 female
athletes steroids to improve their performance in sporting competitions,
which resulted in many of them developing “male characteristics.” One
of the athletes who had been given steroids at age 16 later underwent
a sex change operation as a result and blamed the East German sport
doctors for “killing” her female self (Longman, 2004). Immediately
apparent from this example is that in every day circumstances sex is
important, not as a scientifi c entity, but as a lived experience where
passing for the female or male norm can be an objective. As I mentioned,
endocrinology considers that two major stages of sex development exists,
the period in the womb, which leads to an infant labeled phenotypically
male or female, and sex maturation during teenage years. During this
latter stage, separating the infl uences of sex differentiation into nature
and nurture, instead a person’s biology, is continually and dynamically
interacting with the environment, which includes social and political
factors, is impossible (Birke, 1986). As indicated by the example of the