The medial preoptic nucleus (MPN) of the rat, an excellent model for understanding the mechanisms involved in sexual differentiation, is highly sensitive to gonadal hormones during both pre- and post-natal life. Progesterone receptor (PR) expression is sexually dimorphic in the prenatal MPN. Males have significantly higher levels of PR-immunoreactivity (PRir) than females from approximately embryonic day 19 through at least the day of birth, suggesting that PR may play a role in sexual differentiation. Because the MPN is still sensitive to steroid hormones postnatally, the present study investigated PR expression in the MPN of males and females after birth using immunocytochemistry. Results indicate that a sex difference in PR expression persists until at least postnatal day (P) 28. However, females begin to express PR around P10. Because oestradiol regulates PR expression in the adult brain, this study also examined the influence of gonadal hormones on PR expression in the neonatal male and female MPN. Castration on the day of birth significantly reduced levels of PRir in the MPN by 24 h following surgery. Ovariectomy on P4, before the onset of ovarian steroidogenesis, prevented the induction of PR expression in the female MPN, observed in controls by P13. In both sexes, the presence of PRir in the MPN is dependent on gonadal hormone exposure. These findings suggest that differences in steroid secretion by the neonatal male and female gonads are responsible for producing sex differences in the level of PR expression in the postnatal MPN.

Building on conceptualizations of feminist and sexual citizenship, the term intimate citizenship describes changing intimacies and new forms of citizenship appearing in late capitalism. In this new social order, public discourses of private matters circulate. There are new reproductive technologies, more sexual choices, legal recognition of previously unrecognized sexual identities, a plurality of public voices and opinions, and autonomy for those who can be classified as intimate citizens. However, the concept of intimate citizenship reproduces a liberal “progress” narrative, which posits an evolving “West” against a backward “rest” of the world. Under this rubric, the concept of intimate citizenship creates categories and boundaries, including certain intimate actors while excluding others. Although technologies avail more choices to certain actors, access to these privileges and choices is unequal. Further, intimacies are implicated in a complex global context of neoliberal capitalism, empire, and racialized disciplinary power relations within and between nation‐states. Although some intimate actors experience expanding personal autonomy through homonormative legal recognition, incorporation, and protection, state and ideology also function together to control and limit the choices of others.