2 Ten percent of the population became “atrazine-induced females” that were “completely feminized” as adults: they reproduced as biological females, “mated with control males, and produced viable eggs.” 3Ī photograph in the 2010 article shows two frogs in amplexus-the mating position of frogs, where one frog clasps the lower back of another (fig. Hayes et al.’s (2010) highly cited scientific paper found that “Atrazine-exposed males” were “chemically castrated,” meaning that they could not reproduce as biological males or had such other “gender abnormalities” as decreased testosterone levels, reduced sperm production, or suppressed mating behaviors. “Atrazine discourse is imbued with cultural anxieties about the extinction of normative masculinity in an increasingly toxic world.” This essay contributes a surprising account of how this rhetoric travels into far-right media commentary about “male decline” and “white genocide.” Through analyzing depictions of Hayes’s frogs in scientific research and the media, I find that Atrazine discourse is imbued with cultural anxieties about the extinction of normative masculinity in an increasingly toxic world. In this essay, I examine the role of gendered rhetoric in scientific and popular representations of this controversy. Although the manufacturer of Atrazine, Syngenta, argues that the pesticide is safe, Hayes and other scientists have increasingly demonstrated a link between Atrazine and threats to public health and the environment. Hayes’s research ignited an ongoing political controversy over whether Atrazine causes “gender abnormalities”-such as hermaphroditism-in amphibians, humans, and other species. 1 He hypothesized that Atrazine works as an endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC), converting testosterone to estrogen in frogs. #Turnin the frogs gay series#Tyrone Hayes conducted a series of experiments that revealed that the most common herbicide, Atrazine, “feminized” male frogs at concentrations below that allowed in drinking water in the United States. Editor’s Note: This is the third post in the series, Succession: Queering the Environment, which centers queer people, non-humans, systems, and ideas and explores their impact within the fields of environmental history, environmental humanities, and queer ecology.
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