Challenging Menstrual Normativity: Nonessentialist Body Politics and Feminist Epistemologies of Health

Abstract

Guilló-Arakistain examines the ways in which alternative politics of menstruation are challenging the paradigm of sexual dimorphism and heteronormativity. She does this through consideration of discourses which challenge the ideology of menstrual normativity and the rigid, hegemonic, medical, and pathological approaches to the western biomedical vision of menstruation. Guilló-Arakistain links these discourses to specific bodies, incorporating experiences of non-menstruating cisgender women as well as transgender menstruators. It is necessary, she asserts, to dispense with the idea that menstruation is determinative of a very specific gender and social identity and the subsequent normative and reductionist take on menstrual experience (and more generally human experience).