Researcher(s):
Emily Hays
ENVS course(s): 330 Initiated: January 2018 Completed: May 2018 Go to project site
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This research seeks to contribute to existing knowledge on how institutions work within or against human-nature dichotomies and gender dichotomies. As humans are put in opposition above nature because of their ability to produce thought and create technology, and women are put in opposition under men because of their reproductive abilities being perceived as more ‘natural,’ it would be important to look at how institutions that enforce knowledge surrounding reproduction are framing such reproductive functions, as well as suppression of such functions. In this study, Planned Parenthood was a situated context as the largest and longest reproductive health provider in the United States. The methodology used was a qualitative conventional content analysis, evaluating written informational text that Planned Parenthood produced under the categorical framework of Natural, Normal, Menstrual Suppression, Choice and Control, and Gender. This method was employed to answer the question, how does Planned Parenthood frame narratives of natural and normal through text about menstruation and menstrual suppression? Conclusions include that Planned Parenthood associates the idea of natural with the image of bodies, and particular feminine bodies, but does not associate gender and social constructions of gender; normal is an ideal to obtain, but normal is only created through personal knowledge of one’s own body; menstrual suppression is positioned as a benefit, but with a larger context that any choice that an individual has over their own body is a benefit; human control over nature (the body) is a complicated and possibly not a fully obtainable process.