Menstrual Activism Discourse Community
Abstract
Around the world, menstruation stigma and the hesitation to talk about periods openly persist. This has created a culture of silence and taboos that menstruators have been living with for a very long time. Many nonprofit organizations work to fight against period stigmas and promote making periods a normal topic to discuss in public through their activism. The purpose of my paper is to understand the way menstrual organizations and its activists operate and communicate, as well as promote the importance of joining menstrual activism. I conducted interviews with two menstrual activists from different menstrual organizations. An analysis on websites of menstrual organizations, an article, a book and a survey were done to get a better understanding of menstrual activism. I found that menstrual activism uses communication in different forms to promote menstrual health, destigmatize period taboos and encourage people to join their activism. It can be concluded that menstrual activism works for a great cause. Expanding the knowledge about this can help to make progress in eradicating period stigmas because the best way to start dispelling taboos is to talk about them.
Introduction
Menstruation has been one of the most discreet and less popular topics for communication among people for a long time. There are women around the world who are still unfamiliar with adequate menstrual health knowledge, persistently living with its taboos and period poverty. For this reason, several organizations work to eradicate these problems and become a community which serves to bring about activism for periods. Menstrual activists create a mobilizing effort by communicating in forms of campaigns, movements, social media, conferences, writing books, journals and articles, and creating websites for interested activists to join their community. They aim to bring drastic change in the way people think about periods and promote menstruation heath and education. Although this community serves menstruators, it is actually the activism that makes people a part of this community. Anyone, be it the students or professionals of any gender, background and field of interest, who wish to advocate menstruation and its issues can become a part of this community.
In order to help alter entrenched social views, menstrual activists must work together with strong communication skills. John Swales, a linguist known for his work on genre analysis defines a "discourse community" as a group of people who have common goals or purposes and use communication to achieve the goals (220-222). Therefore, the community of menstrual activism is a discourse community. Using four of Swales’ defining characteristics for a discourse community - common goals, mechanisms of participation, lexis, and membership hierarchy - I will analyze how the menstrual activism community operates, what is the importance of communication for this community and how they use communication to achieve their purpose. The goal of writing this paper is to create awareness of normalizing talking about periods and promoting menstrual well-being. Understanding this can allow people to learn about menstruation, its activists and inform readers of a few ways to take action themselves.
Methods
To get a better understanding of menstrual activism organizations, I interviewed two activists, Henna Kabra and Jessica Hernandaz. Henna is a third year student at University of California, Davis. She started volunteering with the organization Davis Period when she was in freshman year after getting inspired by her sister who was once a part of this organization as well. She later joined Free The Period CA, which is a coalition of statewide student governments of universities throughout California. She is currently the Student Chair of the Menstrual Equity Task Force in UC Davis and is working actively in implementation of stocking campus bathrooms with free menstrual products. Jessica is a third year student at University of California, Riverside. She is the incoming President at one of the local chapters of the organization: PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement. She has worked on implementing free menstrual products in freshman dorms. Currently, she is working to create a Menstrual Justice Task Force that will continue to fight for menstrual equity on campus. She is also a team member for the Community Development at Free The Period CA. I performed genre analysis on the websites of organizations Free The Period CA and PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement to better understand the work, vision and goals of these non-profit organizations. Although currently I am not a part of either of the organizations, I am doing my part to contribute to the menstrual activism community on my own. I advocate for menstrual health, help girls who need prep talks about periods through community service and believe periods should not be considered as a stigma.
For my secondary sources, I read and analyzed the scholarly article “From embodied shame to reclaiming the stain: Reflections on a career in menstrual activism” by Chella Quint. Quint is a writer, performer, educator and the UK’s leading expert on menstrual literacy. She is the founder of the organization, Period Positive. I also examined the book, New Blood: Third-wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation by Chris Bobel. Bobel is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she teaches courses on Gender & the Body, Feminist Theory, Feminist Research Methods, Women in US Social Movements and Feminist Activism. Since 2003, Bobel has been engaged in the study of efforts to advance menstrual health as a matter of human rights and reproductive justice. Additionally, I used a survey called "Talking About Periods – An International Investigation," by the menstruation app Clue. This survey showed results of how stigmatized periods are by collecting popular euphemisms used for periods and statistics of participants' comfort level talking about periods with same and opposite genders. Studying primary and secondary sources helped me understand both the importance of verbal and written forms of communication which are equally important to envision the success of this activism. While primary sources show the pragmatic side in this community, the secondary sources helped increase knowledge on issues not discussed openly. Together these help me show how getting involved with organizations who work on menstrual activism will help achieve the goal to eradicate period taboos, promote menstrual health and talk about periods openly.
Results and Discussion
Genre Analysis
One of the most important tools organizations use to reach out to people about their work and objectives to promote menstrual activism is through their organization’s website. Well-designed and published websites provide a great way for organizations to attract new members and support since it can help find which organization relates to the peoples’ own interests and accessibility. Websites about menstrual activism have actually contributed to breaking a stereotype by discussing the topic of periods in public. Thus, websites have a significant role in boosting activism. This can encourage activists to create their own websites and further build the movement. For the purpose of showing what exactly a menstrual organization’s website looks like, I have displayed below the pictures of the home page of the organizations #Free The Period and PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement.
Figure 1 shows the home page of #Free The Period. It has sections of Home, About, Coalition, Take Action, Resources, News, Contact. There is a slogan in the home page of the website showing, “Let’s End Period Poverty in California!”, which provides the goals the organization wishes to achieve. The "About" section gives information concerning the organization's work, vision and team, which is a good example to show the credibility of the website. The Coalition section navigates the reader through other organizations working in alliance with them. This provides the reader with opportunities to reach out to any other organization they are interested in joining, especially if it is somewhere near the area they live in.
Abstract
Around the world, menstruation stigma and the hesitation to talk about periods openly persist. This has created a culture of silence and taboos that menstruators have been living with for a very long time. Many nonprofit organizations work to fight against period stigmas and promote making periods a normal topic to discuss in public through their activism. The purpose of my paper is to understand the way menstrual organizations and its activists operate and communicate, as well as promote the importance of joining menstrual activism. I conducted interviews with two menstrual activists from different menstrual organizations. An analysis on websites of menstrual organizations, an article, a book and a survey were done to get a better understanding of menstrual activism. I found that menstrual activism uses communication in different forms to promote menstrual health, destigmatize period taboos and encourage people to join their activism. It can be concluded that menstrual activism works for a great cause. Expanding the knowledge about this can help to make progress in eradicating period stigmas because the best way to start dispelling taboos is to talk about them.
Introduction
Menstruation has been one of the most discreet and less popular topics for communication among people for a long time. There are women around the world who are still unfamiliar with adequate menstrual health knowledge, persistently living with its taboos and period poverty. For this reason, several organizations work to eradicate these problems and become a community which serves to bring about activism for periods. Menstrual activists create a mobilizing effort by communicating in forms of campaigns, movements, social media, conferences, writing books, journals and articles, and creating websites for interested activists to join their community. They aim to bring drastic change in the way people think about periods and promote menstruation heath and education. Although this community serves menstruators, it is actually the activism that makes people a part of this community. Anyone, be it the students or professionals of any gender, background and field of interest, who wish to advocate menstruation and its issues can become a part of this community.
In order to help alter entrenched social views, menstrual activists must work together with strong communication skills. John Swales, a linguist known for his work on genre analysis defines a "discourse community" as a group of people who have common goals or purposes and use communication to achieve the goals (220-222). Therefore, the community of menstrual activism is a discourse community. Using four of Swales’ defining characteristics for a discourse community - common goals, mechanisms of participation, lexis, and membership hierarchy - I will analyze how the menstrual activism community operates, what is the importance of communication for this community and how they use communication to achieve their purpose. The goal of writing this paper is to create awareness of normalizing talking about periods and promoting menstrual well-being. Understanding this can allow people to learn about menstruation, its activists and inform readers of a few ways to take action themselves.
Methods
To get a better understanding of menstrual activism organizations, I interviewed two activists, Henna Kabra and Jessica Hernandaz. Henna is a third year student at University of California, Davis. She started volunteering with the organization Davis Period when she was in freshman year after getting inspired by her sister who was once a part of this organization as well. She later joined Free The Period CA, which is a coalition of statewide student governments of universities throughout California. She is currently the Student Chair of the Menstrual Equity Task Force in UC Davis and is working actively in implementation of stocking campus bathrooms with free menstrual products. Jessica is a third year student at University of California, Riverside. She is the incoming President at one of the local chapters of the organization: PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement. She has worked on implementing free menstrual products in freshman dorms. Currently, she is working to create a Menstrual Justice Task Force that will continue to fight for menstrual equity on campus. She is also a team member for the Community Development at Free The Period CA. I performed genre analysis on the websites of organizations Free The Period CA and PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement to better understand the work, vision and goals of these non-profit organizations. Although currently I am not a part of either of the organizations, I am doing my part to contribute to the menstrual activism community on my own. I advocate for menstrual health, help girls who need prep talks about periods through community service and believe periods should not be considered as a stigma.
For my secondary sources, I read and analyzed the scholarly article “From embodied shame to reclaiming the stain: Reflections on a career in menstrual activism” by Chella Quint. Quint is a writer, performer, educator and the UK’s leading expert on menstrual literacy. She is the founder of the organization, Period Positive. I also examined the book, New Blood: Third-wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation by Chris Bobel. Bobel is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she teaches courses on Gender & the Body, Feminist Theory, Feminist Research Methods, Women in US Social Movements and Feminist Activism. Since 2003, Bobel has been engaged in the study of efforts to advance menstrual health as a matter of human rights and reproductive justice. Additionally, I used a survey called "Talking About Periods – An International Investigation," by the menstruation app Clue. This survey showed results of how stigmatized periods are by collecting popular euphemisms used for periods and statistics of participants' comfort level talking about periods with same and opposite genders. Studying primary and secondary sources helped me understand both the importance of verbal and written forms of communication which are equally important to envision the success of this activism. While primary sources show the pragmatic side in this community, the secondary sources helped increase knowledge on issues not discussed openly. Together these help me show how getting involved with organizations who work on menstrual activism will help achieve the goal to eradicate period taboos, promote menstrual health and talk about periods openly.
Results and Discussion
Genre Analysis
One of the most important tools organizations use to reach out to people about their work and objectives to promote menstrual activism is through their organization’s website. Well-designed and published websites provide a great way for organizations to attract new members and support since it can help find which organization relates to the peoples’ own interests and accessibility. Websites about menstrual activism have actually contributed to breaking a stereotype by discussing the topic of periods in public. Thus, websites have a significant role in boosting activism. This can encourage activists to create their own websites and further build the movement. For the purpose of showing what exactly a menstrual organization’s website looks like, I have displayed below the pictures of the home page of the organizations #Free The Period and PERIOD - The Menstrual Movement.
Figure 1 shows the home page of #Free The Period. It has sections of Home, About, Coalition, Take Action, Resources, News, Contact. There is a slogan in the home page of the website showing, “Let’s End Period Poverty in California!”, which provides the goals the organization wishes to achieve. The "About" section gives information concerning the organization's work, vision and team, which is a good example to show the credibility of the website. The Coalition section navigates the reader through other organizations working in alliance with them. This provides the reader with opportunities to reach out to any other organization they are interested in joining, especially if it is somewhere near the area they live in.
Figure 2 shows the homepage of the organization of PERIOD- The Menstrual Movement. Just like #Free The Period, this website is organized into sections to help the person interested in joining this organization to navigate through the sections and get the information they want. The “What We Do” section is the home page, which states the organization's goal fighting to end period poverty and stigma through service, education and advocacy. One of the fascinating sections is “Get Involved,” which has an option to start one’s own Period Chapter or be associated at an individual or organizational level. This can attract many people as they can contribute to menstrual activism on a personal level.
One of the best features of both websites is that they provide information about their social media handles. This is noteworthy as most of the communication nowadays is focused through social media. Websites contribute by giving a lot of information about involvement, opportunities and articulating community goals. These also provide factual and persuasive voices about knowledge on menstruation and its advocacy. Websites are an important part of this discourse community because they are the first source of information for people who search for menstrual activism using their search engines. Websites can be utilized as a tool to convey communication since they present information that is easy to understand to a potentially large number of people.
Common Goals
The word "activism" means the action of using a campaign to bring about a change or policy. For a change to take place, one must set goals to achieve the change. Similarly, the menstrual activism community commiserates to bring change. In order to utilize their websites effectively, the organizations work on their common goals. In his essay, “The Concept of Discourse Community,” Swales states that in a discourse community the activists understand and actively work together towards their common goal (Swales 221). During my interview with Henna, she described that being a part of the Menstrual Equity Task Force, the team worked on “funding for free menstrual products as a part of budget and getting dispensers and menstrual products installed in the washrooms” (Henna). For this, she provided the statistics of the projected budgets for the UC Davis campus in the Year 2018 and a campus survey with the motive of installing free menstrual products in the campus as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4 respectively. Henna’s organization also fosters educational awareness toward destigmatizing periods and to expand and replicate their work to pass onto other schools and campuses to follow.
Jessica’s organization focuses to achieve the aim of Education, Advocacy and Service which was described in the PERIOD organization’s homepage as well (Figure 2). Her campus club works on promoting an inclusive language to encourage people to talk about menstruation freely to eradicate the embarrassment one feels about it. They also work at providing menstrual products at campus level, local level and state level. This recalls how Quint presents a less discussed goal for menstrual activism, which is “focused on the perceived unfairness of periods – issues of cost, taxation and leave – arm’s length issues that conveniently avoid addressing embodied attitudes. This latest crop of menstrual activism, while gaining popularity, [does] not address what [I have] come to understand as the fundamental driver of all this – embodied shame that disrupts our perception of menstruation as vital.” (Quint 937). Therefore, one's goal is not just limited to working on improving menstrual health and its legislations but also addressing the shame and fear people face in public because of periods. The menstrual activism community focuses on bringing a better change for the perception of menstruation by advocating to provide free menstrual products and arranging awareness campaigns to destigmatize periods.
Mechanisms of Participation
Menstrual activism cannot achieve justice until there are platforms for the activism to nurture their initiatives to promote the noble cause. Swales characterizes the "participatory mechanisms" that communities use primarily to provide information and feedback among the members within the discourse community (221). Menstrual activism uses the conventions of different elements to provide information about its projects. Both Henna and Jessica felt that social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have been one of the greatest means for their organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic to reach their audience. Henna also added that “people connected to our organization through social media often repost or share our posts on their social media accounts as well” (Henna). This helps to spread the activists' motives to a larger audience through social media communication. She also said that her Task Force has voices from all over the campus, including members of facilities, staff chair, womens resources, students wellness centre. This helps to run a successful campaign as it makes sure that everyone has some kind of representation in this discourse community. Jessica added that before the pandemic her organization would run events, like distributing pads and tampons and conduct awareness programs for menstrual equity at the centre of the campus.
While these platforms are a great way to promote menstrual activism, Quint used rather uncommon ways to address the “leakage horror” faced during periods through parody, performance, improv, sketch comedy, stand up and writing spoof ad campaigns (Quint 929). Creative approaches like these show that there are various ways to advocate about menstrual literacy. Menstrual activism's fundamental purpose is to educate about promoting menstrual well-being. This proves that although the message serves the same purpose, we can use any platform or techniques we wish our voices could reach to promote menstrual activism.
Lexis
One of the reasons menstruation is a less discussed topic is because people feel uncomfortable saying the words “periods” or “menstruation” in their normal conversations. Instead they use some alternative words to discuss their periods. Menstrual activism works to end this stigma of the discomfort one faces on addressing periods openly in the society. For this special emphasis on terminology is encouraged. Swales states that a discourse community “has acquired some specific lexis” that may be any specific words or languages used in the community (222). It is common for women discussing periods to use code words, which acts as its specific lexis. The menstrual activism community works to eradicate such stigmas to bring about normalization regarding communication about periods. Henna and Jessica pointed out that because this practice of beating around the bush has been prevalent for ages, no one has been able to address this freely, as “we have been taught to follow the unspoken rules to hide it and not talk about it freely from generations” (Jessica). Henna suggested that although she was shy while growing up to say the word “period" openly, now that she is a part of an organization that works for menstrual activism, her fear has faded. She feels comfortable talking about her periods openly. This suggests that the more you get involved with this discourse community, you can eradicate your own stigmas and help others change their lexis from an indirect way of communication to direct way of communication.
In order to understand the concern regarding the indirect terminology used for periods, the survey conducted by the Clue App found that over 5,000 euphemisms for periods exist in different languages. Figure 5 shows some commonly used euphemisms used in different languages throughout the world. For instance, English-speakers call their periods “Aunt Flo”, "that time of month", "shark week" or "bloody Mary”; the French may address it as "Les Anglais ont débarqué," which means "the English have landed"; and the Spanish call it “Tus diablos” which means “Your devils”. These expressions state the troubling effects of speaking about periods indirectly since these names indicate that horrifying elements are used to name a normal process in the body. This survey also showed the statistics of nearly 90,000 people from 200 countries which showed results that 25 percent of Russians and 41 percent of Ukrainians were not well-informed about their period. While 86 percent of participants felt comfortable talking to women about periods, only 34 percent felt comfortable doing the same with men. Furthermore, 17 percent of respondents missed their school or work because they were scared of someone finding out they were menstruating. All this adds to the need to not only talk about the word “periods" more openly, but also communicate and educate about menstruation in the right way to destigmatize the skepticism about menstrual health.
Membership Hierarchy
The menstrual activism discourse community promotes everyone to join the community. It is not limited to women because they menstruate. Although women make the majority of the people joining this organization, this community encourages other people to become a part of this discourse community as well. According to Swales, “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” and “have changing memberships” (222). The menstrual activism community has always had women as their “threshold level of members”. It is the “changing memberships” which promotes the activism to become inclusive of people from different genders and professions. Changing memberships also promotes the idea that people leave and join, which maintains the continuity of the activism within this community. Activists inspire people to join this community. At university level, the campus organizations include leadership titles, such as President who guides its members to work on menstrual equity. These leadership roles keep changing as new members join in and senior members leave when they finish their degrees (Jessica and Henna).
Both leadership and entry-level positions are open to members of any gender, as Jessica emphasizes that “anyone and everyone who menstruates or cares about people who menstruates should join this community”. Henna and Jessica had similarity in the type of members joining their organizations being mostly young women on campus: “The only males who join this community are those who wish to pursue their profession in the field of medicine”(Jessica). They support the idea of involving people with different identities, backgrounds and genders because it will make sense for everyone to know about menstruation to eradicate the stigma. Henna supported the point put forward by Chris Bobel in her book, “ but not all women menstruate, and not only women menstruate” (Bobel 11). Reducing menstruation as only “women’s issue” (Bobel 12) does not state that only women are supposed to join the community. In fact, “it [is] essential that everyone [is] welcome – [we should invite] ‘menstruators and non-menstruators of all genders’ because no one can avoid [activism]” (Quint 929-930). The persuasive facts portrayed by both Bobel and Quint in their papers show that the activists that work on field like Henna and Jessica and the ones who write want to gain maximum support from people from all walks of life. This reinforces that menstrual activism is open for everyone, especially for those who wish to destigmatize taboos about periods and promote menstrual equity.
Conclusion
The menstrual activism community is an open-hearted community which allows everyone to get involved and participate to help accomplish the community’s goals. Its fundamental goal is to promote the discourse of open communication through which the community can promote menstrual health, destigmatize taboos and work to reach out to people where menstrual poverty prevails. This is achieved with teamwork by being a part of the organizations that work for menstrual activism. By analysing this discourse community using Swales’ four defining characteristics, the audience and prospective activists can understand the importance of communication within this community and get to know about the ways a menstrual activism organization works. Bobel suggested in her book that “menstrual activism rejects the construction of menstruation as a problem in need of a solution” (7). Thus, the issue of this community is not menstruation but the need for activists to speak up for constructing periods as a normal body process so that people can talk about periods as a topic of usual conversation instead of keeping it a discreet subject.
As long as we continue to socialize and live in an environment where menstrual bleeding is considered shameful or stigmatized, we will continue to repeat the same viewpoints that have been held before us. It is therefore a NEED that we all “truly share information and skills, and encourage people to interrogate what we think we know, [to bring] a change. Not just for menstrual cycle work, but for everything” (Bobel 179). Just as Bobel stated in her book, I believe that in order to make a change in this community we must first start with being comfortable talking about periods. Menstrual activism has come a long way. We still need to make an effort to reach out to people where bringing menstrual equity is very important. For this, the menstrual activism discourse community can be valuable.
References
Kabra, Henna. Zoom Interview. Conducted by Aarifah Bali, May 4 2021
Hernandez, Jessica. Zoom Interview. Conducted by Aarifah Bali, May 3 2021
Quint, Chella. “From Embodied Shame to Reclaiming the Stain: Reflections on a Career in Menstrual Activism.” The Sociological Review, vol. 67, no. 4, 2019, pp. 927–42. Crossref, doi:10.1177/0038026119854275
Bobel, Chris, and Judith Lorber. New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation. Rutgers University Press, 2010.
Weiss, Suzannah. “‘Talking About Periods’ Survey From Clue & The IWHC Shows That Menstruation Is Still Taboo — But Here’s Why It Shouldn’t Be.” Bustle, 1 Mar. 2016, www.bustle.com/articles/145122-talking-about-periods-survey-from-clue-the-iwhc-shows-that-menstruation-is-still-taboo.
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 220-222.