Despite a great deal of feminist work that has highlighted its social construction, menstruation seems a self-evidently “natural” bodily process. Yet, how menstruation is defined or what “counts” as menstruation is rarely questioned. Examining menstruation alongside technologies that alter it highlights these definitional questions. In this article, I examine menstrual suppression through an analysis of medical journal articles and FDA advisory committee transcripts, paired with websites used to market menstrual suppression to consumers. Across these contexts, new definitions of menstruation converged (...) on a distinction between bleeding that occurs when women are taking hormonal birth control and when they are not. The case of menstrual suppression birth control pills provides an opportunity to study the work of redefining a biological process understood as quintessentially natural and deeply significant for gendered embodiment, as well as a challenge to consider both the social and material construction of gendered bodies. (shrink)

In this paper I draw attention to a shortcoming in Miranda Fricker's 2007 account of hermeneutical injustice: that the only hermeneutical resource she acknowledges is a shared conceptual framework. Consequently, Fricker creates the impression that hermeneutical injustice manifests itself almost exclusively in the form of a conceptual lacuna. Considering the negative hermeneutical impact of certain societal taboos, however, suggests that there can be cases of hermeneutical injustice even when an agent's conceptual repertoire is perfectly adequate. I argue that this observation (...) highlights the need to expand Fricker's account to accommodate a wider range of hermeneutical resources and, in turn, a broader taxonomy of hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, my central case of a societal taboo presses the need to recognize as a valuable hermeneutical resource an expressively free environment, in which individuals can put their conceptual-interpretative resources to good hermeneutical effect. (shrink)

The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and as a contaminant/imperfection. These apparently contradictory registers of legibility are possible due to the (...) reiteration of the non-White female body as ontologically dirty, incomplete and an imperfect representation of full humanity. The third world girl then is the constitutive outside of Whiteness, and her production as such conjoins humanitarian protection codes with penalising political regimes. The latter is reflected by new border patrolling initiatives in the US and UK, launched specifically to identify victims of FGM. Such exercises of state power craft racialised bodies for constant interrogation, prodding and, ultimately, ejection. These bodies then become the loci of benevolent necropower and experience slow social death. (shrink)

Este artículo se centra en el análisis de las características sociales, políticas y emocionales de las políticas y culturas alternativas de la menstruación, así como en los cambios que están sucediendo a ese nivel. Para ello se atiende a su intensificación y diversificación y a las diversas estrategias político-sensoriales, así como a los afectos y a las ideologías de género, salud y consumo que subyacen y se generan en dichas propuestas. La hipótesis de partida es que analizar todos estos cambios (...) puede servir para identificar y estudiar transformaciones más generales de la sociedad. El artículo concluye proponiendo algunos retos epistemológicos, políticos y sociales para seguir indagando en dichas culturas alternativas. (shrink)

The environmental and social costs of consumer societies have increasingly been recognized. Achieving sustainable household consumption requires an understanding of the underlying roots of current consumption levels. Using the case study of menstrual care practices, different theoretical frameworks—or narratives—for understanding household consumption are evaluated. The author argues that theories of consumption that focus on individual choice based on assessments of convenience or cleanliness, or only on cultural imperatives need to be expanded to take account of the wider political–economic context. Using (...) commoditization theory helps explain not only why mass-produced, disposable menstrual products are dominant in free market societies but also why certain theories of consumption are more prevalent. (shrink)