Biological Behavior? Hormones, Psychology, and Sex

Abstract

Contemporary behavioral endocrinology and biological psychology claim that sex hormones play an important role in the production of sex differences in human and other animal behaviors. This article critically examines these claims, which range from simple biologically determinist arguments through to more complex attempts to theorize the connected roles of the hormonal and the social. In each case, these sciences rely on a social/biological distinction. Analyzing contemporary feminist work on the body as lived, and innovative scientific views of biology's co-action with the environment, it is suggested that this distinction is limiting and requires rethinking. Rather than accusing science of essentialism and rejecting the role of the biological outright, it may prove more fruitful for feminism to theorize the interimplication of the biological and the social in attempts to understand sex differences in behavior.