Surveillance, Biopower, and Unsettling Intimacies in Reproductive Tracking Platforms

Abstract

This article turns to the relationship between bodies and selves and the phenomenon of feminine health technologies such as menstruation and ovulation trackers (known as “FemTech”) as a particularly fraught domain of the platform economy. The author explores three interrelated critiques of platform intimacy in FemTech. The author begins with a discussion of biometric surveillance, which takes on new resonance in a post– Roe v. Wade society, where news and social media have been flooded with calls for women to delete their reproductive apps. Next is a discussion of intimacy and estrangement in FemTech platforms, whereby the body no longer registers, through our own interpretation, how we “feel” but how the machine feels us. The author concludes by considering the material dangers of platform intimacy, particularly forms of tracking and violence that are potentialized through digital intimate platforms.