Re-spacing Menstrual Discourse: Visualizing Menstrual Oppression in West Bengal through the lens of Gender Theory.

Abstract

Social presentations of ‘selective’ bodies undergo scrutinization of the untouched dichotomic power-play- “pure/impure”; here, this ‘norm’ of impurity on certain anatomical functions of particular selective bodies is an area of discussion, and from an intersectional dimension. The coinage of the term Intersectionality was done by Kimberle Crenshaw, with her interview with the TIMES in 1989, where she asserts Intersectionality as
…It’s not identity politics on steroids. It is not a mechanism to turn white men into the new pariahs. It’s a lens, a prism…We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality, or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.
Women as a notion and definition has been ascertaining too many features which have also been fixed by the social norms; Judith Butler eventually takes this thread of describing what a “women” is-- “Women are the sex which is not “one”. Within…a phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable…women represent the sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity” (Butler, 13). Menstruation and menstrual discourse are interrelated yet separated by a few technical terminologies; however, the commonalities of them are the term ‘culture’ and ‘power-play, where menstruation becomes a device of oppressive narratives. Therefore, my paper’s main attempt will be to focus on menstrual marginalization operating in amalgamation with gender-power-dynamics, functioning within the culture of Bengal, based on a few interviews taken.