IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v75y2012i10p1729-1736.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From bodies to lives, complainers to consumers: Measuring menstrual excess

Author

Listed:
  • Hasson, Katie Ann

Abstract

Feminist research has shown repeatedly the extent to which medical accounts pathologize menstruation, yet there has been very little examination of how clinicians and medical researchers actually study and assess menstruation. This paper analyzes 30 US medical journal articles to examine how researchers work to distinguish the specific menstrual disorder of menorrhagia, or excessive bleeding, from normal menstruation. I focus specifically on measurement as a key process in diagnosing menstrual pathology, arguing that measurement practices construct women's bodies as appropriate objects of medical attention in ways that also shape women's positions as participants in knowledge production. I begin with the alkaline hematin method's narrow focus on physical proof of bleeding that proves or disproves women's complaints and trace the emergence of new methods that incorporate women's own assessments of bleeding. Changing ways of measuring menstruation point to shifts in understandings of the body as the object of medical treatment and of patients as medical subjects.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasson, Katie Ann, 2012. "From bodies to lives, complainers to consumers: Measuring menstrual excess," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(10), pages 1729-1736.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:10:p:1729-1736
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.07.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612005436
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dumit, Joseph, 2006. "Illnesses you have to fight to get: Facts as forces in uncertain, emergent illnesses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 577-590, February.
    2. O'Flynn, Norma & Britten, Nicky, 2000. "Menorrhagia in general practice -- disease or illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 651-661, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sweet, Paige L., 2014. "‘Every bone of my body:’ Domestic violence and the diagnostic body," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 44-52.
    2. Whooley, Owen, 2016. "Measuring mental disorders: The failed commensuration project of DSM-5," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 33-40.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:10:p:1729-1736. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.