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No AccessSpecial Issue: Public Feminisms

From Bloodless Respectability to Radical Menstrual Embodiment: Shifting Menstrual Politics from Private to Public

While menstrual activism has a robust history rooted in feminist ideals of bodily autonomy and anticonsumerism, its current iterations prioritize an anemic view of menstruation that grounds it in a neoliberal politics of respectability. As it stands now, menstrual activism has too often taken up menstrual products as the answer to “solving” menstrual stigma throughout the world while making invisible other aspects of the politics of menstruation (e.g., the importance of bodily rebellion, the perils of trans menstruation). In short, even though there are clear merits to providing menstrual products to those in need, the material focus of today’s menstrual activism has ultimately and ironically moved menstruation out of public view. In this essay, we critically examine three framings used to conceptualize the urgency of menstrual activism: public health, the water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector of global development, and the menstrual equity/period poverty movement. Finding fault with each, we argue for a new vision of menstrual activism that prioritizes what we term “radical menstrual embodiment,” a more transgressively feminist approach to understanding stigma and the root causes of menstrual negativity alongside an invigorated connection between menstruation and fertility, sexuality, and gender. By moving away from the hazardous politics of respectability and its product-focused agenda, radical menstrual embodiment can differently engage with the public sphere as menstruation moves from sanitized, clean, and “proper” to messy, intersectional, and multifaceted.