I'm a Sex Therapist and This Is Why I Care About Period Apps

As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I am lucky to work with people throughout many life stages. Many of my clients menstruate, and understanding how their hormonal cycles do or don’t impact their therapy goals is not only deeply helpful but also incredibly important.

During these assessment conversations, I began to notice a pattern. A limited sex education about the menstrual cycle with a hyperfocus on reproduction meant that many of my clients didn’t understand their individual hormonal patterns and frequently relied on apps to tell them about their own bodies. After witnessing the challenges faced by those playing catch-up with their bodies (often during times of crisis), I joined forces with my friend and colleague, a midwife, to better understand what people who menstruate are up against.

It’s time to take action

We are accustomed to using tech to help manage most parts of our lives. Today, an estimated 50 million women worldwide use apps to track their menstrual cycles, and many more use devices, wearables, and digital communication to share and record information about their bodies and reproductive status. Period tracking apps are a part of the booming fem tech industry, with an estimated current market value upwards of 60 billion.

As tech industry leaders openly align themselves with a U.S. administration making good on its promise to cut funding and limit access to life-saving medical care for women, it has never been more essential for everyone who menstruates worldwide to take their data offline—and back into their own hands.

Alarm bells have been ringing as public health websites for women go blank, social media accounts providing reproductive rights information are censored, USAID and its many projects dedicated to women’s health worldwide are abruptly shut down, and NIH funding is cut, along with already severely underfunded research on women. Amid this, a conversation about masculinity with one of the world’s most powerful people that might have previously summoned curiosity now incites panic.

We must be vigilant.

The tech isn’t working

The heartbreaking truth is that people are taking the time and energy to put their data into algorithms that can only go so far in predicting a bodily function with a complex set of factors. Studies have shown that apps can predict cycle phases like ovulation with about 20 percent accuracy. In our practices as a sex and relationship therapist and a midwife, we have seen firsthand the high numbers of clients who have been operating with faulty data for far too long.

For many in the United States who are navigating an overtaxed medical system, still grappling with bias and now limited in its scope by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, safe care options have tanked. In states with abortion bans, access to essential medical care, including for miscarriage and routine gynecological support, has been cut off. With little other choice, many have mobilized in attempts to find their own solutions through tech, not realizing that they are potentially putting their data into the hands of those who might use it against them.

Source: Isaac N.C. / Unsplash

Our data isn’t safe

As it stands today, we already lack privacy protection for a huge amount of personal health data shared digitally. Privacy policy struggles to keep up with tech as people continue to share their intimate health information in the hopes of learning more about their bodies and taking better care of themselves. An FTC investigation and a class action suit have materialized after a popular menstruation app was accused of disclosing sensitive data without users’ consent.

Google searches, computer histories, email, Facebook, and text receipts have all been used in the United States in the past to support the prosecution of women’s reproductive rights. Many advocates speculate about increased surveillance, encouraging people to keep all reproductive data offline.

A new sex education

Your body is important. The information your body is telling you is critical, and it deserves to be heeded.

We envision a new sex education, one that teaches young people that periods are about more than just bleeding or fertility. Yet, for all of us who didn’t receive this comprehensive education about our hormonal cycles, there is still a way forward.

Hormones Essential Reads

Can High Prolactin Levels Increase Risk of Breast Cancer?

Contraceptives and Mental Health

Menstrual cycle tracking is the practice of observing the sensations you’re feeling, recording them in an organized way, and using that information to learn about yourself and your body’s patterns. The reasons people come to cycle tracking are, on the surface, diverse. However, hidden in their goals, we see a universally similar longing—to feel a sense of understanding with their bodies.

Cycle tracking has largely been relegated to the realm of people trying to get pregnant, where it can be a frustrating experience that feels like homework. But, this is a life-changing method of collecting vital bodily data. As you learn your individual cycle patterns, you arm yourself with an incredible repository of data to help advocate for your well-being and collaborate with providers.

Let’s go analog

In the ongoing fight to have agency over our own bodies, let’s track with pen and paper, taking our bodies and everything they are telling us seriously. Trust yourself, stay critical, and don’t settle.