Toxic Shock

Оглавление

Sharra L. Vostral. Toxic Shock

Отрывок из книги

TOXIC SHOCK

A Social History

.....

Discussions about menstruation on the whole need more thoughtful attention to meanings and their implications. There has been an unquestioning link between menstruation and identities of womanhood, which falls back on an essentialist understanding of “woman,” and that conveniently sustains the man/woman binary. This reified notion, however, does not capture the whole picture of women or men or of the interplay of gender. The growing attention to transgender individuals has made it clear that biological body parts and processes do not define a woman. Yet menstruation has most definitely been a sign of being a woman, and as the feminist philosopher Denise Riley comments in Am I That Name?, menstruation summons a woman back to her body, often read as inferior to men, despite all the ways she may try to transcend prejudice with her mind, actions, and efforts.26 Thus menstruation has been a fraught subject of study, and in my book Under Wraps I traced how pro-woman physicians worked to break menstrual stigmas and conceptualize menstruation as normal rather than a sign of weakness and infirmity.

* * *

.....