Listening to the Stories that medicine left out: SexDiversity Stories on Oral-History.digital

What do we really know about the history of sex diversity? Academic publications, clinical records and pharmaceutical archives tell us one part of the story but leave out those perspectives most directly affected: the experiences of those undergoing therapies, medical procedures and medical harm. Our project, Medicating Sex (S09), sets out to change that. We are building a collection of oral history interviews with people who experienced medical treatment during a period of rapidly evolving approaches to sex diversity, and we are making them accessible on the platform Oral-History.digital.

What is Medicating Sex about?

Based at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité Berlin, our project investigates how ideas about sex and gender were shaped by the development, marketing and use of hormonal products from the 1950s to the 1990s. During this period, hormonal treatments diversified rapidly and with them came new medical categories, new patient experiences and new forms of activism. We are particularly interested in the experiences of people who became medicalized with non-binary variations of sex characteristics, as they navigated a medical landscape that was often shaped by rigid binary norms rather than by their actual needs.

Why Oral History?

Oral History is a research method that places personal narratives at the centre of historical inquiry. Rather than relying solely on written documents, it invites people to share their experiences in their own words. For our research, this approach is indispensable. Many of the experiences we are interested in, like encounters with medical treatments (including non-consensual interventions), self-medication practices (DIY-practices), the emotional toll of long-term hormonal therapies, patient advocacy and activism, are not documented in more traditional archives.

SexDiversity Stories on Oral-History.digital

We are currently in process of making our interviews publicly available through the platform Oral-History.digital. This platform, which hosts over 5.200 interviews from 55 institutions across a wide range of topics, provides tools for searching, viewing and engaging with audio and video interviews.

At present, 12 audio and video recordings of interviews ranging from 30 minutes to six hours are available in our SexDiversity repository, with further material being added over time. The interviews were conducted in German, but English transcripts are provided alongside each recording. After registration, the interviews are accessible to all users in accordance with the respective wishes of the interviewees.

We invite researchers, educators, students and anyone with an interest in the history of sex diversity to explore the interviews.

The stories are there, waiting to be listened to: https://portal.oral-history.digital/sexdiv/de

Annalena Fuchs, Jakob Pruß & Sophia Wagemann

Copyrights:

Redaktion Projekt „Oral-History.Digital„
Freie Universität Berlin
Universitätsbibliothek / Digitale Interview-Sammlungen
mail@oral-history.digital

And Eddie Bolger