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Pheromones, feminism and the many lives of menstrual synchrony

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Abstract

Since first proposed in 1971, the theory of menstrual synchrony has been haunted by doubt while gaining greater public visibility. Based on a study of women living in a dormitory, biopsychologist Martha McClintock found that there was a greater synchronization in the date for the onset of menstruation among close friends and roommates. An analysis of newspapers, magazines and textbooks alongside the scientific literature suggests that the tenacity of menstrual synchrony is because of its circulation within many heterogeneous communities where the ambiguous phenomenon acquired multiple meanings. It was simultaneously heralded as offering the first evidence of human pheromones and demonstrating how behavior regulates biological processes. This history offers an untapped lens to explore the fraught relationship between sociobiology and feminism. This relationship has primarily been understood in terms of opposition, but menstrual synchrony’s reception reveals a more complicated and intertwined story about the simultaneous growth of evolutionary and feminist psychology. The history of menstrual synchrony illustrates late twentieth-century debates over ‘the social,’ when it could entail both the influence of affect-laden friendships and the biochemicals secreted from the body.

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Notes

  1. Databases used to identify stories included Proquest Historical Newspapers, LexisNexis News, the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, Factiva, Google Newspaper Archive. These archives undoubtedly do not contain every story depicting menstrual synchrony and many of these stories would have been subsequently syndicated. There are limitations in relying on print in an era when broadcast media prevailed. Menstrual synchrony certainly featured in television comedies (Rosewarne, 2012, pp. 23–25).

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Pettit, M., Vigor, J. Pheromones, feminism and the many lives of menstrual synchrony. BioSocieties 10, 271–294 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2014.28

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