“Hacking Your Body”: Femtech’s Self-Tracking as a (Re)productive and Biopolitical Practice in the Neoliberal Era


by Fé Versteeg
2535 words



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“Hacking Your Body”: Femtech’s Self-Tracking as a (Re)productive and Biopolitical Practice in the Neoliberal Era




Fé Versteeg

HUM211: Late Modernity

Word Count: 2535




Abstract 


Femtech is often lauded for being a “long-overdue corrective” to a technology industry dominated and tailored towards men. Yet whilst the apps that fall under the category of femtech purport to “empower” its users, this paper argues that the apps make their users more, rather than less, vulnerable through the commodification of their data and the exclusion of certain identities. In fact, this paper argues femtech apps have the dual objective of reinforcing the existing power structures of neoliberal capitalism. It outlines how femtech apps drive capital accumulation both as a productive force, and as a supplement to reproductive labour. Finally, the paper explores the biopolitics of femtech, and how it reinforces the corporate and entrepreneurial logics of neoliberal capitalism.