Introducing Menstrunormativity: Toward a Complex Understanding of ‘Menstrual Monsterings’

Abstract

In this text, Persdotter advances critical menstrual studies by introducing and developing the concept of menstrunormativity as a way to understand the ways normativities around menstruation affect and discipline menstrual subjects. To do so, she works with the idea of a system of multiple and contradictory normativities that order and stratify menstruation. Persdotter makes four interlinked arguments regarding menstrunormativity: (1) normativities work in clustered, complex ways; (2) the cluster of normativities that surround menstruation produce an impossible ideal subjectivity (the imagined menstrunormate), which follows that we are all actually menstrual monsters; (3) normativities are continuously coproduced by everyone and everything, which means we are all, always, culpable in creating monsters; and (4) there is significant potential in embracing ourselves as both Dr. Frankenstein and as monsters, since such a viewpoint produces more opportunities for livable lives for menstruators and the menstrual countermovement alike.