For our first workshop, we’re thinking broadly about “reproductive healthcare technologies.” We understand technology to mean applying knowledge and/or tools toward a specific purpose. Zines are a technology! And they’re a technology that can serve the public interest, particularly at a time when small-scale publishing and rapid knowledge dissemination are important.
We’re also thinking broadly about the other terms: healthcare means anything having to do with (human) health, and reproductive can mean anything having to do with reproduction–but it often colloquially includes things that sex-specific. (For example, treatment for menopause symptoms or prostate cancer would fall under this umbrella.)
Anthropologist Bray (1997) articulated a systematic methodology for undertaking gender-based inquiry that we may find helpful. She theorized gynotechnics, a methodology that involves recognizing “a technical system that produces ideas about women, and therefore about a gender system and about hierarchical relations in general” (p. 4). While our work does not focus specifically on women, we can look to Bray’s thinking about a “technical system” producing ideas about all our key terms to think helpfully about what information may be important to disseminate in local contexts regarding reproductive healthcare technologies.