Material effects of pandemic confinement on the experience of menstruation. A socio-technical analysis

Abstract

From a socio-technical approach, we analyse the effects of the first year of pandemic confinement on the experience of menstruation. The approach draws on the contributions of Bruno Latour, Vinciane Despret and Ellen van Oost to explain how bodies, artefacts and affects are intertwined from a gender and feminist perspective. It analyses the results of a virtual survey applied in March 2021 whose intentional sample was limited to the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico (n=841). Among the findings, it is highlighted how the circulation of artefacts associated with menstrual management involves material conditions (normative, economic, spatial) and corporeal-affective learning mechanisms (learning to be affected) associated with their use. It identifies how confinement implied the choice or need for new menstrual management artefacts or techniques and how the menstrual experience was also articulated with ecological controversies that impacted the use of artefacts. It concludes with a reflection that synthesises the contributions of a socio-technical analysis of menstruation, as well as its limits and the pending agenda