Female Spreaders of Health Disinformation and their Political Implications

• In Event: Gender and the Pandemic: Attitudes, Policy Support, and Representation

Abstract

In fall of 2022, not long after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, an investigation by Reveal, Mother Jones, and UC Berkeley revealed a new disinformation campaign against birth control, driven by anti-abortion influencers (Reveal, 2022). Anti-abortion activists’ goal is for pregnant people and fetuses to have a fundamental right to life, and they hope to achieve this not only by removing access to abortion in all forms (medication and surgical), but also to removing access to birth control that they consider to be abortion, i.e., ‘Plan B,’ intrauterine devices, or the pill.

This assault on birth control is rooted in real experiences, as women have long complained about the side effects, while men are spared (Healthline, 2018). Hormonal birth control can cause unpleasantries, such as depression, blood clots, or acne (ibid.). But these genuine embodied experiences are being weaponized to lobby and campaign for laws that limit reproductive freedom. This tension is at the heart of this paper (main RQ):

What is the connection between feminist, embodied knowledge, and the subsequent spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories? How are embodied experiences of marginalized folks being weaponized to further the spread of disinformation?

Methodologically, we rely on a qualitative, grounded theory analysis (Charmaz, 2006) of social media profiles of prominent female members of the reproductive community in the United States. We analyze observational social media data of public profiles (Moran et al., 2022) of these community members to understand how situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988) and feminist objectivity (Harding, 1992) are weaponized by women to spread disinformation with a political agenda.

Theoretically, the study agrees with existing research showing that women’s knowledge and experience have long been marginalized in the public sphere (Shapin & Schaffer, 2011). In America before 1900 and the advancement of medical technology, women were trusted in one realm: reproductive health (Holland, n.d.). Midwives delivered babies and cared for pregnant women, and abortion was legal up to the point of quickening—when the woman can feel the fetus move—which only the woman herself could attest to (ibid.). After male doctors took control of this realm, though, abortion quickly became illegal, until Roe v. Wade in 1973 granted federal protections for abortion again (Wajcman, 1991).

It is thus vital for women to have a strong situated knowledge practice. Situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988) or strong objectivity (Harding, 1992) is a practice of valuing embodied knowledge and that of marginalized folks over institutional, Westernized, and often male, knowledge practices. Knowledge grounded in individual and cultural experience (Haraway, 1988) can offer a way to reclaim control and power from those who claim objectivity merely because they are at the top of the hierarchy (historically, white upper-class men).

Troublingly, though, these knowledge practices share similarities with those of conspiracy-theory-style thinking, or what Marwick and Partin (2022) identified as “populist expertise” among followers of the conspiracy theory QAnon. Believing your own body is necessary. Believing your own research over that of experts, which is increasing among the American population (Kennedy et al., 2022), can be extremely problematic. The internet and social media, in particular, provide an avenue both for collective knowledge-sharing and knowledge-making, thus providing control over one’s life experience (incl. medical), and seeking out information that can align with any worldview, incl. a false one. Thus, we develop a framework that builds on both feminist, situated knowledge, and conspiracy-theory thinking as knowledge-making practices to identify the ways in which the embodied knowledge of marginalized folks is being co-opted to spread disinformation.

Preliminary analysis indicates several disinformation campaigns that are grounded in real experiences of marginalized folks, but have been co-opted for political and/or financial purposes: 1) that hormonal birth control is a carcinogen, causes infertility, or is abortion; 2) that abortion is an ‘unnatural’ bodily process that is dangerous for women; 3) that vaccines cause infertility and autoimmune disease; and 4) that abortion is fundamentally a devaluing of women and women’s knowledge. These campaigns are being spread by prominent women in the reproductive sphere, troubling understandings of women as primarily victims of disinformation campaigns. We thus argue for a new conception of gendered disinformation that accounts for women as spreaders and agents of disinformation and political propaganda, in addition to victims. Finally, we outline how some of these rationales are coopted by politicians and break into the mainstream of US politics.

Authors

• Zelly Martin, University of Texas at Austin

• Inga Kristina Trauthig, University of Texas at Austin

• Samuel Woolley, University of Texas at Austin