Ungendering Menstruation

by Ela Przybylo

Why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability Honing a “cranky” approach to being a menstruating body expected to accept and embrace trauma, Ungendering Menstruation examines menstrual suppression, toxicity, and the cooptation of menstrual positivity rhetoric. Drawing on their own experiences as a toxic shock survivor and a menstrual pain and period dysphoria sufferer, Ela Przybyło questions why, on what terms, and for whom menstruation has been fixed around experiences of pain. Instead, they present a vision for menstrual justice that refuses the womaning of bleeding and the further erasure, dismissal, and denial of menstrual pain as real pain. If menstruating is framed as somatechnically elective, Przybyło contends, it provides avenues for both celebrating and appreciating cultures of bleeding as well as for remaining critical of the ways in which bleeding has been used as a transphobic and sexist tool to fix gender in place.

Genres: LGBT

107 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 13, 2025

Reviews

[Avery L. Woods Weber · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Przybyło's cited sources provide up-to-date medical information, it is particularly disappointing that this text repeatedly fails to accurately define endometriosis. A detail of Przybyło's argument is the premise that "menstruators" are the subject of "pain connected to menstruation such as endometriosis"; this arises from argumentation centering menstruation rather than the comprehensive reality of the disease Przybyło invoked. When Undergendering Menstruation perpetuates a medical myth that endometriosis is a uterine disease, the arguments Przybyło presents against the injustices of "menstrual management" lose much of their persuasive power.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting challenge to the more typical biological account of menstruation. Structure needed a bit more attention to eliminate repetitions