Writing Menstruation

Despite all that is known about menstruation, the biological phenomenon persists as a question repeatedly posed and answered anew. Throughout the history of Western thought and medical practice, the discourse and treatment of menstruation reflects not only the knowledge trends of the day, but also the vestiges of knowledge and fantasies of previous eras. For the individual who menstruates, the experience of and relationship to having a period changes in both dramatic and subtle ways with each cycle and each life phase, as it does within each family and culture, where different perceptions of menstruation are emphasized and denied. The variability inherent to this cyclical event further amplifies when questions like “what is a woman?” or “what makes a woman a woman?” are asked. The declaration “You're now a woman,” often made at menarche, receives mixed reception for those who aren't quite sure what that actually means. While menstruation stands as a marker of womanhood for many, singling out any one trait to determine sex or gender proves problematic, as nature and culture inevitably elide and elude attempts at categorization. A woman who has a mastectomy does not lose her womanhood without breasts. A person who menstruates may determine himself male. That the menstrual cycle is at times declared the defining feature of womanhood, but is just as often rendered insignificant, raises questions about its place and effects in the reciprocal relations between the body, the subject, and the social order—relationships that psychoanalysis addresses and transforms in theory and practice.

Mysterious, haunting, painful, destabilizing, hidden, present, irrepressible, fluid, blocked, heavy, light, forgotten, anticipated, simultaneously signaling both an ending and a beginning: this stream of words describes something of the characteristics, contours, and movement of menstruation as well as the psychoanalytic process of working through life's many ambiguities and paradoxes, of end