Putting ethnographic flesh on new materialist bones: Lyme disease and the sex/gender binary

Abstract

In the United States, there is heated debate over the biological reality of chronic Lyme disease (the persistence of Lyme disease beyond standard antibiotic treatment). Like other bodily conditions whose biological basis is disputed, chronic Lyme disease is perceived to be more common among women, a phenomenon for which physicians and patients often provide gender-based explanations. However, influenced by the field of sex-based biology, Lyme disease patients and their physicians are increasingly navigating how and whether to make claims to biological legitimacy through the science of sex-based differences. Drawing on ethnographic research among Lyme disease patients, physicians, and scientists throughout the northeastern United States, I explore the mutually reinforcing relationship between feminist scholarship on the sex/gender binary and emerging ideas about sex and gender in the context of health.