(no subject)
I am currently sitting on my balcony with my ibook balanced atop the armrest of my chair. I spent my entire day this way, waiting impatiently for the Canada Post delivery person. Only, the Canada Post delivery person never actually arrived to deliver to me all of my worldly posessions. While waiting, I tediously edited my menstrual suppression paper down to eight pages, line-dryed some laundry I washed in the tub, and drank many consecutive mugs full of the loose mint tea Tasha gave me for valentine's day. At one point I tried to coax a tiny bird to come eat seed from my hand, but he was too timid.
It still hasn't hit me yet that I've moved. This is possibly because I've spent my entire time here still engaged in various aspects of the moving processes. It will be nice when that ends. I'm really ready for the part of living in Montreal where I get to, I don't know, see other people who also live here.
My last few days in Ottawa were lovely, excepting the parts that involved lifting heavy boxes, and bruising myself while lifting heavy boxes. Oh, and also the part where I went to critical mass and it was really boring and then an insane dude on a motorcycle stared me down and drove at me, implied willingness to run various people over, had his mirror smacked off his bike, chased people with his motorcycle, started a fight, threw a bike at someone's head, had his motorcycle beaten up, and responded by choking a person. I keep wanting to say something eloquent about the situation because I feel like it's really indicative of how blind those in activist circles can be to their own stupid machismo, and also how much it makes me crazy that stupid machismo is seen as just being more "radical". But that sentence actually pretty much says it all.
Also, I had the the most validating ever street harassment experience the other day! I was walking past three mid-twenties skateboarder guys in the parking lot at Bank and Gloucester. One of them stared at me as I pretended not to notice. "What, I can't get a smile out of you?". I quipped back, "Sorry, I don't respond to harassment on the street", and walked past without meeting his gaze. His friends erupted into hysterical laughter and a series of "OHHHHH SNAP! DISSSSS!"es. "What? I'm just saying you're a beautiful girl! So I can't appreciate..." and then his friends interrupted him, telling him to stop annoying me. I think he was pretty embarrassed, because he stopped. If it takes humiliation to accomplish my goals, well, humiliate I will.
I am of the opinion that more people should write and post papers on livejournal, mostly because I really like reading things in term paper format. So anyway, here is
--------------------------------
Cramping Our Style: Menstrual Suppression and Ir/rationalized Embodiment. by Pamela Clark!
When medical researchers Drs. John Rock and Gregory Pincus began to develop the Pill in the 1940s, they set out to create a product that would mimic women’s “natural” cycle. They believed that if the Pill dosage was structured around a typical “God-given” 28-day menstrual cycle, it would be easier to gain cultural and ecclesiastic approval for the product. Since the first oral contraceptives were developed, all Pills have followed this same basic formula- three weeks of hormones, one week of placebos, repeat. While researchers have developed Pills that are triphasic, bi-phasic, monophasic, low-dose, combination, estrogen-only, and progesterone-only, each one has relied on the same 28-day standard.
In 2006, Health Canada is set to approve a new oral contraceptive that would challenge this standard. Anya, developed by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, is the first oral contraceptive designed for continuous, daily use. Unlike with other oral contraceptives with a placebo week, women taking Anya do not menstruate. Anya would become the first oral contraceptive approved for menstrual suppression in Canada, though a similar Pill, Seasonale has been available in other countries since 2003.
The proliferation of technologies devoted to the dual elimination of unwanted pregnancy and unwanted menstruation has spurred debate between those who see monthly periods as an unnecessary “modern problem”, and those who see “the end of period” as a serious medical and political concern. With the normalization of menstrual suppression, periods are increasingly framed as a choice rather than a biological “fact”. The development of oral contraceptives designed specifically for menstrual suppression is particularly significant in this regard. Focusing on the use of oral contraceptive technology, I will argue that the science of menstrual suppression is interested in producing particular scientific narratives about menstruation and women’s “irrational” bodies.
While birth control pills emulate the “God-given” 28-day menstrual cycle, women taking oral contraceptives do not actually experience a menstrual “cycle” at all, due to the additional hormones in their bodies (Rako: 118). With traditional oral contraceptives, progesterone levels rapidly drop during the placebo phase, at which point “withdrawal bleeding” occurs. “Withdrawal bleeding” differs from menstruation in that it is not the result of uterine “shedding” of built up endometrium accumulated over the cycle. Rather, birth control pills cause bleeding because when the levels of the progesterone drop, it is a signal to the body that it is not maintaining a pregnancy.
If women do not take their placebo pills and instead skip straight ahead to a new package of hormonal pills, their progesterone levels will fail to drop and they will not experience withdrawal bleeding. This is not an approved use of the Pill, but women who wish to avoid menstruation during their honeymoon, while on vacation, or simply because they find it inconvenient, have been using this method for decades. Dr. Elsimar Coutinho, one of the leading advocates of menstrual suppression, argues that monthly menstruation is an unnatural and unnecessary phenomenon with “no beneficial effects for anyone” (Coutinho: xiii). It may be prudent to mention here that Dr. Coutinho may have a particular personal investment in his crusade against menstruation, as he is the co-inventor of Depo Provera- an injectible progesterone-based contraceptive that suppresses menstruation.
The crux of the pro-suppression arguments of Coutinho and others lie in the belief that monthly menstruation is not “natural”, because in their real “natural” state, women are consistently pregnant or breastfeeding (Hoffmann). Monthly menstruation is seen as merely a product of modernity- an evolutionary anomaly that is apart from an idealized true, original state of women’s bodies (Hitchcock: 201). While it is acknowledged that our contemporary bodies are cultural products, this same understanding is not extended to historical embodiment. While contemporary bodies are seen as culturally constructed through and through, pre-contemporary embodiment is considered pre-social and exterior to cultural influence.
Behind this pro-suppression argument is a notion that menstruation is most fundamentally a process of failed re/production. While pregnancy is considered a natural and legitimate biological process, menstruation in and of itself is viewed as wasteful and unnecessary. However, we know menstruation serves a variety of functional purposes beyond its reproductive utility. Menstrual blood contains immune cells known as “macrophages” which clean the uterus and protect it from invasive pathogens (O’Grady, 2002). Thus, enforced cessation of menstruation interferes with the body’s mechanisms of self-protection (Profet: 355), which can lead to increased susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections and cervical cancer.
Even if we accept that menstruation is currently more frequent than at other times in human history, it does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea to suspend the process via hormonal intervention to mimic the “natural state”. When menstruation stops from pregnancy or lactation, it is due to diminished levels of estrogen. Conversely, oral contraceptives supply additional estrogen in order to suppress menstrual periods (Hitchcock: 202). Women who suppress their periods with oral contraceptives subject themselves to up to thirteen additional weeks of these extra hormones, without any clear understanding about the effects this will have on their health in terms of hormonal exposure, fertility, bone density, or reproductive development in adolescence (O’Grady, 2005).
Sex hormones have a known effect on a variety of physiological symptoms. Even in the absence of good studies about the effects of enforced menstrual suppression, we can reasonably anticipate that the more frequently women take the Pill, the more likely they are to experience the complications and side effects that accompany it (Rako: 19). Due to the fact that women on the Pill experience anovulatory cycles, or cycles without ovulation, they are more susceptible to bone density loss and osteoporosis (Henderson). Women taking the Pill also have elevated incidence of heart attack and blood clotting. Further, with greater exposure to progesterone and estrogen, women taking hormonal contraceptive Pills are already at increased risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, prostate cancer and colorectoral cancer due to estrogen’s role in cell proliferation and resultant tissue growth (Henderson).
The argument has been made that the continuous Pill is a “modern solution to a modern problem" (George). However, even if we could prove that women throughout history have had fewer periods than they do in the present era, this does not illustrate that having fewer periods is “natural”. Menstrual suppression supporters make the mistake of conflating that which has become socially naturalized with that which is an inherent embodied essence. Our bodies have never not been mediated by the forces of culture, history and technology. Historically diminished rates of menstruation are not indicative of a natural state, but a social and environmental condition (O’Grady, 2002. Emphasis in original). Monthly menstruation is not a “modern problem”, but rather a reflection of the contemporary woman’s increased reproductive choice. In the past, women were less subject to “the monthly curse” only because without birth control or sexual autonomy, they were largely unable to make decisions about reproduction (Corinna).
It is interesting that while menstrual suppression advocates deny culture by focusing on an abstract notion of “nature”, the detractors employ similar rhetorical touchstones. Much of the anxiety about menstrual suppression stems from the notion that it is problematic to deny a “natural” biological function- as if any of our biological processes are ever exterior to cultural meddling. Curiously, both sides of the menstrual suppression debate appear to latch on to the idea that there is an extra-cultural “natural” we ought not deviate from. While one side exhibits nostalgia for a time when women were free from menstruation, the other exemplifies the kind of anxieties felt in late modernity about technological and cultural interventions on the body, even though the body has always been culturally and technologically mediated.
What both sides of the menstrual suppression debate have tended to overlook are the host of factors that make it structurally and institutionally inhospitable for women to menstruate in our society, instead framing the issue as an individual problem. In a recent study conducted by LC Andrist, 59% of women stated that they would be interested in not having a period every month. One third agreed that they would prefer to never menstruate if given the option (361). Many women argue that their periods are “a hassle”. As Emily Martin argues, this “hassle” stems from the fact that menstruation does not belong in our public lives. Given that menstruation has a connotation as a wasteful process of failed production, it is both symbolically and literally a misfit in the capitalist system. Women’s physiology is outdated, inconvenient, and inefficient (O’Grady, 2005). Martin argues that in the public sphere, women are not accorded the time or space to menstruate. The “hassle” is thus resultant less of the process of menstruation itself, but in the social organization in the management of menstruation.
The fear of “showing” also is indicative of the extent to which menstruation is construed as a “messy” process. Menstrual blood is conceptualized as excessive, unruly, and unpredictable. Even the language of feminine hygiene products and sanitary pads perpetuates an idea that menstruation is something inherently unclean. The classic imagery in advertisements for disposable pads is of blue liquid being dumped onto the pristine, white pad to illustrate that a given brand is superior because of the extent to which it can handle an unpredictable defilement. Tampon advertisements frequently discuss the range of opportunities and activities that will become available to women when they feel “free” and “clean” during their periods. The implicit assumption here is that women would otherwise be incapacitated from swimming, horseback riding, or playing tennis, because menstruating bodies need to be rigidly managed and kept in secrecy.
Oral contraceptives have always been, at a very fundamental level, about transforming our bodies to make them more manageable and knowable. The Pill was once merely about transforming women’s reproductive capacity, but has become responsible for transforming a litany of minor grievances women have about their bodies- from acne to cramps to menstrual regulation. Once a solution becomes available, women are made to feel that if they can correct or perfect their bodies, they would be irrational not to do so.
As women increasingly accept, and indeed demand, the “end of period”, a plethora of new technologies are being developed to accommodate this market. In addition to the existing Depo Provera, Seasonale, and Anya, there may soon be Milefiprisone. Better known as the “abortion pill” RU-486, researchers are investing significant time and funding into developing a less potent version of the pill to be used as a contraceptive and menstrual suppressant. Rather than fighting for the legitimacy and importance of this drug in the context of providing women access to abortion, researchers are fighting instead to find new ways to make the drug profitable.
The Milefiprisone example illustrates the extent to which research and development on reproductive and contraceptive technologies are not about providing women with the power to determine their possibilities, but rather is about providing a few options within a narrow socially acceptable range. Controversial possibilities such as abortion thus fall by the wayside, while those that are seen as amenable to our moral, economic and social framework flourish. Menstrual suppression is marketed to women as a source of emancipation from the tyranny of their own embodiment at the same time as their other reproductive autonomies are being gradually ceded from them. The development of menstrual suppression technologies is not, and has never been, about returning women to a beneficial “natural” biological state, but rather is about pushing them toward a particular social state of rationalized and deeply discursively depoliticized embodiment.
Works Cited
Andrist, LC et al. “Women’s and providers’ attitudes toward menstrual suppression with extended use of oral contraceptives” in Contraception Vol. 70, 2004 pp. 359-363
Corinna, Heather. “Oh, Bloody Hell” in Scarleteen Newswire. Accessed online January 5, 2006. <http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/2005/12/oh-bloody-hell.html>
Coutinho, Elsimar M. Is Menstruation Obsolete? Oxford University Press US: New York, 1999
George, Lianne. “The end of period” in Macleans Online, December 12, 2005. Accessed online February 10, 2006. <http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/health/article.jsp?content=20051213_117621_117621>
Henderson, Mark. “A contraceptive pill that can beat cancer”. The Times. Accessed online March 28, 2006. <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-2106558,00.html>
Hofmann, Karen. “Foes raise red flag against suppression of menstruation” in Pittsburg Post-Gazette. June 24, 2003. Accessed online March 20, 2006. <http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030624hcycle2.asp>
Hitchcock, Christine L. “Evidence about extending the duration of oral contraceptive use to suppress menstruation” in Women’s Health Issues 14, 2004 pp. 201-211
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1990
Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Beacon Press: Boston, 1987
O’Grady, Kathleen. “Haven’t We Learned Our Lesson Yet? Periods are not a Curse” in Globe and Mail, November 11, 2005. Accessed online February 24, 2006
<http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/pub/menstSuppression.html>
O’Grady, Kathleen. “Is Menstruation Obsolete”. 2002. Accessed online February 24, 2006 <http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/menstruation/obsolete.html>
Profet, Margie "Menstruation as a Defense Against Pathogens Transported By Sperm", in Quarterly Review of Biology 68, 3(September). 2002, pp. 335-381
Rako, Susan. No More Periods? The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge Issues about Hormones and Women’s Health. Harmony Books: New York, 2003
---------------------------
if you're interested.
Now, to go write that 100 word bio about myself. What do you say about yourself in one hundred words?
It still hasn't hit me yet that I've moved. This is possibly because I've spent my entire time here still engaged in various aspects of the moving processes. It will be nice when that ends. I'm really ready for the part of living in Montreal where I get to, I don't know, see other people who also live here.
My last few days in Ottawa were lovely, excepting the parts that involved lifting heavy boxes, and bruising myself while lifting heavy boxes. Oh, and also the part where I went to critical mass and it was really boring and then an insane dude on a motorcycle stared me down and drove at me, implied willingness to run various people over, had his mirror smacked off his bike, chased people with his motorcycle, started a fight, threw a bike at someone's head, had his motorcycle beaten up, and responded by choking a person. I keep wanting to say something eloquent about the situation because I feel like it's really indicative of how blind those in activist circles can be to their own stupid machismo, and also how much it makes me crazy that stupid machismo is seen as just being more "radical". But that sentence actually pretty much says it all.
Also, I had the the most validating ever street harassment experience the other day! I was walking past three mid-twenties skateboarder guys in the parking lot at Bank and Gloucester. One of them stared at me as I pretended not to notice. "What, I can't get a smile out of you?". I quipped back, "Sorry, I don't respond to harassment on the street", and walked past without meeting his gaze. His friends erupted into hysterical laughter and a series of "OHHHHH SNAP! DISSSSS!"es. "What? I'm just saying you're a beautiful girl! So I can't appreciate..." and then his friends interrupted him, telling him to stop annoying me. I think he was pretty embarrassed, because he stopped. If it takes humiliation to accomplish my goals, well, humiliate I will.
I am of the opinion that more people should write and post papers on livejournal, mostly because I really like reading things in term paper format. So anyway, here is
--------------------------------
Cramping Our Style: Menstrual Suppression and Ir/rationalized Embodiment. by Pamela Clark!
When medical researchers Drs. John Rock and Gregory Pincus began to develop the Pill in the 1940s, they set out to create a product that would mimic women’s “natural” cycle. They believed that if the Pill dosage was structured around a typical “God-given” 28-day menstrual cycle, it would be easier to gain cultural and ecclesiastic approval for the product. Since the first oral contraceptives were developed, all Pills have followed this same basic formula- three weeks of hormones, one week of placebos, repeat. While researchers have developed Pills that are triphasic, bi-phasic, monophasic, low-dose, combination, estrogen-only, and progesterone-only, each one has relied on the same 28-day standard.
In 2006, Health Canada is set to approve a new oral contraceptive that would challenge this standard. Anya, developed by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, is the first oral contraceptive designed for continuous, daily use. Unlike with other oral contraceptives with a placebo week, women taking Anya do not menstruate. Anya would become the first oral contraceptive approved for menstrual suppression in Canada, though a similar Pill, Seasonale has been available in other countries since 2003.
The proliferation of technologies devoted to the dual elimination of unwanted pregnancy and unwanted menstruation has spurred debate between those who see monthly periods as an unnecessary “modern problem”, and those who see “the end of period” as a serious medical and political concern. With the normalization of menstrual suppression, periods are increasingly framed as a choice rather than a biological “fact”. The development of oral contraceptives designed specifically for menstrual suppression is particularly significant in this regard. Focusing on the use of oral contraceptive technology, I will argue that the science of menstrual suppression is interested in producing particular scientific narratives about menstruation and women’s “irrational” bodies.
While birth control pills emulate the “God-given” 28-day menstrual cycle, women taking oral contraceptives do not actually experience a menstrual “cycle” at all, due to the additional hormones in their bodies (Rako: 118). With traditional oral contraceptives, progesterone levels rapidly drop during the placebo phase, at which point “withdrawal bleeding” occurs. “Withdrawal bleeding” differs from menstruation in that it is not the result of uterine “shedding” of built up endometrium accumulated over the cycle. Rather, birth control pills cause bleeding because when the levels of the progesterone drop, it is a signal to the body that it is not maintaining a pregnancy.
If women do not take their placebo pills and instead skip straight ahead to a new package of hormonal pills, their progesterone levels will fail to drop and they will not experience withdrawal bleeding. This is not an approved use of the Pill, but women who wish to avoid menstruation during their honeymoon, while on vacation, or simply because they find it inconvenient, have been using this method for decades. Dr. Elsimar Coutinho, one of the leading advocates of menstrual suppression, argues that monthly menstruation is an unnatural and unnecessary phenomenon with “no beneficial effects for anyone” (Coutinho: xiii). It may be prudent to mention here that Dr. Coutinho may have a particular personal investment in his crusade against menstruation, as he is the co-inventor of Depo Provera- an injectible progesterone-based contraceptive that suppresses menstruation.
The crux of the pro-suppression arguments of Coutinho and others lie in the belief that monthly menstruation is not “natural”, because in their real “natural” state, women are consistently pregnant or breastfeeding (Hoffmann). Monthly menstruation is seen as merely a product of modernity- an evolutionary anomaly that is apart from an idealized true, original state of women’s bodies (Hitchcock: 201). While it is acknowledged that our contemporary bodies are cultural products, this same understanding is not extended to historical embodiment. While contemporary bodies are seen as culturally constructed through and through, pre-contemporary embodiment is considered pre-social and exterior to cultural influence.
Behind this pro-suppression argument is a notion that menstruation is most fundamentally a process of failed re/production. While pregnancy is considered a natural and legitimate biological process, menstruation in and of itself is viewed as wasteful and unnecessary. However, we know menstruation serves a variety of functional purposes beyond its reproductive utility. Menstrual blood contains immune cells known as “macrophages” which clean the uterus and protect it from invasive pathogens (O’Grady, 2002). Thus, enforced cessation of menstruation interferes with the body’s mechanisms of self-protection (Profet: 355), which can lead to increased susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections and cervical cancer.
Even if we accept that menstruation is currently more frequent than at other times in human history, it does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea to suspend the process via hormonal intervention to mimic the “natural state”. When menstruation stops from pregnancy or lactation, it is due to diminished levels of estrogen. Conversely, oral contraceptives supply additional estrogen in order to suppress menstrual periods (Hitchcock: 202). Women who suppress their periods with oral contraceptives subject themselves to up to thirteen additional weeks of these extra hormones, without any clear understanding about the effects this will have on their health in terms of hormonal exposure, fertility, bone density, or reproductive development in adolescence (O’Grady, 2005).
Sex hormones have a known effect on a variety of physiological symptoms. Even in the absence of good studies about the effects of enforced menstrual suppression, we can reasonably anticipate that the more frequently women take the Pill, the more likely they are to experience the complications and side effects that accompany it (Rako: 19). Due to the fact that women on the Pill experience anovulatory cycles, or cycles without ovulation, they are more susceptible to bone density loss and osteoporosis (Henderson). Women taking the Pill also have elevated incidence of heart attack and blood clotting. Further, with greater exposure to progesterone and estrogen, women taking hormonal contraceptive Pills are already at increased risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, prostate cancer and colorectoral cancer due to estrogen’s role in cell proliferation and resultant tissue growth (Henderson).
The argument has been made that the continuous Pill is a “modern solution to a modern problem" (George). However, even if we could prove that women throughout history have had fewer periods than they do in the present era, this does not illustrate that having fewer periods is “natural”. Menstrual suppression supporters make the mistake of conflating that which has become socially naturalized with that which is an inherent embodied essence. Our bodies have never not been mediated by the forces of culture, history and technology. Historically diminished rates of menstruation are not indicative of a natural state, but a social and environmental condition (O’Grady, 2002. Emphasis in original). Monthly menstruation is not a “modern problem”, but rather a reflection of the contemporary woman’s increased reproductive choice. In the past, women were less subject to “the monthly curse” only because without birth control or sexual autonomy, they were largely unable to make decisions about reproduction (Corinna).
It is interesting that while menstrual suppression advocates deny culture by focusing on an abstract notion of “nature”, the detractors employ similar rhetorical touchstones. Much of the anxiety about menstrual suppression stems from the notion that it is problematic to deny a “natural” biological function- as if any of our biological processes are ever exterior to cultural meddling. Curiously, both sides of the menstrual suppression debate appear to latch on to the idea that there is an extra-cultural “natural” we ought not deviate from. While one side exhibits nostalgia for a time when women were free from menstruation, the other exemplifies the kind of anxieties felt in late modernity about technological and cultural interventions on the body, even though the body has always been culturally and technologically mediated.
What both sides of the menstrual suppression debate have tended to overlook are the host of factors that make it structurally and institutionally inhospitable for women to menstruate in our society, instead framing the issue as an individual problem. In a recent study conducted by LC Andrist, 59% of women stated that they would be interested in not having a period every month. One third agreed that they would prefer to never menstruate if given the option (361). Many women argue that their periods are “a hassle”. As Emily Martin argues, this “hassle” stems from the fact that menstruation does not belong in our public lives. Given that menstruation has a connotation as a wasteful process of failed production, it is both symbolically and literally a misfit in the capitalist system. Women’s physiology is outdated, inconvenient, and inefficient (O’Grady, 2005). Martin argues that in the public sphere, women are not accorded the time or space to menstruate. The “hassle” is thus resultant less of the process of menstruation itself, but in the social organization in the management of menstruation.
The fear of “showing” also is indicative of the extent to which menstruation is construed as a “messy” process. Menstrual blood is conceptualized as excessive, unruly, and unpredictable. Even the language of feminine hygiene products and sanitary pads perpetuates an idea that menstruation is something inherently unclean. The classic imagery in advertisements for disposable pads is of blue liquid being dumped onto the pristine, white pad to illustrate that a given brand is superior because of the extent to which it can handle an unpredictable defilement. Tampon advertisements frequently discuss the range of opportunities and activities that will become available to women when they feel “free” and “clean” during their periods. The implicit assumption here is that women would otherwise be incapacitated from swimming, horseback riding, or playing tennis, because menstruating bodies need to be rigidly managed and kept in secrecy.
Oral contraceptives have always been, at a very fundamental level, about transforming our bodies to make them more manageable and knowable. The Pill was once merely about transforming women’s reproductive capacity, but has become responsible for transforming a litany of minor grievances women have about their bodies- from acne to cramps to menstrual regulation. Once a solution becomes available, women are made to feel that if they can correct or perfect their bodies, they would be irrational not to do so.
As women increasingly accept, and indeed demand, the “end of period”, a plethora of new technologies are being developed to accommodate this market. In addition to the existing Depo Provera, Seasonale, and Anya, there may soon be Milefiprisone. Better known as the “abortion pill” RU-486, researchers are investing significant time and funding into developing a less potent version of the pill to be used as a contraceptive and menstrual suppressant. Rather than fighting for the legitimacy and importance of this drug in the context of providing women access to abortion, researchers are fighting instead to find new ways to make the drug profitable.
The Milefiprisone example illustrates the extent to which research and development on reproductive and contraceptive technologies are not about providing women with the power to determine their possibilities, but rather is about providing a few options within a narrow socially acceptable range. Controversial possibilities such as abortion thus fall by the wayside, while those that are seen as amenable to our moral, economic and social framework flourish. Menstrual suppression is marketed to women as a source of emancipation from the tyranny of their own embodiment at the same time as their other reproductive autonomies are being gradually ceded from them. The development of menstrual suppression technologies is not, and has never been, about returning women to a beneficial “natural” biological state, but rather is about pushing them toward a particular social state of rationalized and deeply discursively depoliticized embodiment.
Works Cited
Andrist, LC et al. “Women’s and providers’ attitudes toward menstrual suppression with extended use of oral contraceptives” in Contraception Vol. 70, 2004 pp. 359-363
Corinna, Heather. “Oh, Bloody Hell” in Scarleteen Newswire. Accessed online January 5, 2006. <http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/2005/12/oh-bloody-hell.html>
Coutinho, Elsimar M. Is Menstruation Obsolete? Oxford University Press US: New York, 1999
George, Lianne. “The end of period” in Macleans Online, December 12, 2005. Accessed online February 10, 2006. <http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/health/article.jsp?content=20051213_117621_117621>
Henderson, Mark. “A contraceptive pill that can beat cancer”. The Times. Accessed online March 28, 2006. <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-2106558,00.html>
Hofmann, Karen. “Foes raise red flag against suppression of menstruation” in Pittsburg Post-Gazette. June 24, 2003. Accessed online March 20, 2006. <http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030624hcycle2.asp>
Hitchcock, Christine L. “Evidence about extending the duration of oral contraceptive use to suppress menstruation” in Women’s Health Issues 14, 2004 pp. 201-211
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1990
Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Beacon Press: Boston, 1987
O’Grady, Kathleen. “Haven’t We Learned Our Lesson Yet? Periods are not a Curse” in Globe and Mail, November 11, 2005. Accessed online February 24, 2006
<http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/pub/menstSuppression.html>
O’Grady, Kathleen. “Is Menstruation Obsolete”. 2002. Accessed online February 24, 2006 <http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/menstruation/obsolete.html>
Profet, Margie "Menstruation as a Defense Against Pathogens Transported By Sperm", in Quarterly Review of Biology 68, 3(September). 2002, pp. 335-381
Rako, Susan. No More Periods? The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge Issues about Hormones and Women’s Health. Harmony Books: New York, 2003
---------------------------
if you're interested.
Now, to go write that 100 word bio about myself. What do you say about yourself in one hundred words?