ah-king and hayward, 2019, toxic sexes

written 20240518.

endocrine-disrupting pollution has become a worldwide problem across multiple boundaries of sexes, generations, geographies and species, and justifiably drawn media attention. however, rather than foregrounding the health and ecological risks of exposure, media coverage broadly foregrounds the effects of exposure on sex and sexuality, for example, a series of articles in natio nal geographic with titles like “female fish develop ‘testes’ in gulf dead zone.”

here, evolutionary biologist malin ah-king, and gender studies scholar eva hayward ask, “why is sex more central than cancer, autoimmune disease, and even death?”, and push back against the cisheterosexist frameworks that hyperfocus on sex and sexuality over and above other, more potentially salient issues relating to endocrine-disrupting pollution. this is an effort “to provide an alternative framework that unsettles old assumptions about sex and its transformation, while providing a less apocalyptic mode of interpreting environmental change.”

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ah-king, malin, and eva hayward, “toxic sexes: perverting pollution and queering hormone disruption,” technosphere magazine, 20 march 2019, online