Body Politics and Menstrual Cultures in Contemporary Spain

This research paper aims to identify how women in contemporary Spain are challenging hegemonic ideas on the menstruating body, using their own embodiment as site of resistance; and how this in turn, is generating a new menstrual culture and body politics of menstruation. Through ethnography, netnography and semi-structured interviews, this research identifies the actions undertaken by groups of women in contemporary Spain to challenge the menstrual taboo, as it also explores women’s incentives to engage in these actions and finally, how this is all linked to the broader feminist movement. Using Situated Feminist Knowledges (Haraway, 1988) and applying the theories of Body Politics (Harcourt, 2009) and Corporeal Feminism (Grosz, 1994), this research explores the importance of having the body (in this case the female menstral body) as a subject of research, in order to challenge and transform the patriarchal ways in which it has been conceived, and as such treated in the private, social and political spheres.