Queering the Quantified Self

Bringing queerness to self-tracking.

Queering the Quantified Self is a project to understand our bodies with data.

Currently, period trackers and fitness and health apps are all owned by private companies who own, use, and sell individuals’ most intimate data.

Queering the Quantified Self proposes an alternative system where people democratically own and interact with their body’s data. While looking at ownership, the project explores how technology companies push a normative understanding of individuals’ bodies: who should be experiencing periods, what a “fit” body looks like, how long sex lasts, etc.

Through owning both the tools and the data, Queering the Quantified Self proposes a way that diverse communities, from women to people of color to trans people, can ask and answer their own questions about their bodies.

Looking critically to the Quantified Self movement and its alignment with hyper-efficiency and masculinity, this project explores queer approaches to self-tracking. We believe that a queer perspective can reorientate body measurements towards collectivity, subversion, and being comfortable in individuals’ bodies.

Queering the Quantified Self is an ongoing research project that incorporates multiple outputs: writing a book, workshops and the development of the digital tool Self.

The project is supported by funding from the Landecker Democracy Fellowship by Humanity in Action in partnership with the Alfred Landecker Foundation.

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