Session 2: Menstruation

1st Global Conference

Friday 1st May 2009 – Sunday 3rd May 2009
Budapest, Hungary

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

At the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in the sixteenth century, woman was described as an “imperfect beast, faithless, lawless, fearless, inconstant.”  In contrast to the apparently more fixed male body, the childbearing, lactating, menstruating female body has traditionally been considered a body in flux – permeable, corruptible, unstable. In the nineteenth century an elaborate psychophysical system was developed whereby women were categorised as wet and cold, subject to leaking fluids and bodily transformations. The waxing and waning moon – a staple motif of werewolf cinema – was also designated wet and cold, and credited with exerting especial power over women, and contributing to perceptions that women were closer to nature than men. Lycanthropy and moon-induced lunacy share a long history, and while witches were often believed to coordinate their shape shifting with certain phases of the moon, cinema has been instrumental in routinely subjecting the werewolf to a regular, monthly cycle, by favouring the full moon as a lycanthropic trigger. This, in turn, has given rise to arguably one of the most significant developments in recent werewolf lore, placing the lycanthrope firmly within the feminine domain by linking it to that other, ‘notorious’, monthly occurrence, the menstrual cycle.

In the 1980s, Sadie Craddock made British tabloid headlines when she had her charge reduced from murder to manslaughter, pleading diminished responsibility due to severe PMS. Presented in her defence were years of diaries and institutional records indicating that her violent behaviour followed a cyclical pattern, supporting her claim that PMS caused her to act out of character by turning her into a ‘raging animal’ each month. Feminist groups remain ambivalent about the use of PMS as a defence in court, nervous about resurrecting 18th and 19th century notions of women as inherently hysterical and unstable. Nevertheless, the 28-day cycle is becoming a regular fixture in cinematic werewolf iconography, since Angela Carter’s Red Riding Hood came of age in The Company of Wolves. Craddock’s court case directly inspired Jacqueline Garry to create Frida, the heroine in her deliberately ambiguously titled film The Curse, who was bitten at a lingerie sale and thereafter becomes a werewolf whenever she experiences PMS. A werewolf attacks Ginger Fitzgerald (title character in the Canadian cult film, Ginger Snaps) on the night she gets her first period, having been drawn to the smell of her menstrual blood. “Once in a Blue Moon”, the Charmed episode in which the three witches become werewolves, opens with the premenstrual sorceresses bemoaning the trials and tribulations of PMS, while Randi Wallace (from the television series She Wolf of London aka Love and Curses) regularly makes throw away comments about ‘that time of the month’. A conspicuous dormitory effect has taken hold on female lycanthropy.

This illustrated paper will survey the menstrual cycle as an increasingly frequent motif in female werewolf film and television, and its debt to the cultural history of the moon as a specifically feminine phenomenon.

Download Conference Paper (pdf)

The vagina dentata appears as a complex, and sometimes ambiguous theme, in contemporary American culture. Unlike its earlier literary and visual presentations, the concept is no longer primarily a manifestation of feminine evil as constructed by male fear and desire.  No longer a demeaning misogynistic tool/tale, the vagina dentata is often used by visual artists as a strangely wistful, and often humorous, vehicle for female empowerment.  Contemporary artists such as Caitlin Berrigan, Allyson Mitchel, and Gretchen Schermerhorn transform the concept, narrative, and visual ferocity of the vagina dentata into a metaphor for potentially positive female power, rather than purely destructive evil.  Their images and performances translate a myth based on male fear into a story of female fearlessness.

This examination discusses the work of these three artists in the context of art historical discourse surrounding the concept of the vagina dentata as well as in the context of current discussions and uses of the vagina dentata in contemporary American popular culture.  In traditional art historical analysis, the vagina dentata is often seen as a misogynistic descriptor and visual metaphor for feminine evil and female power. This misogynistic interpretation is particularly relevant to images produced during the modernist era, as found in the critical discussions of works such as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon and DeKooning’s, Woman I.  In contrast to these earlier misogynistic readings/renderings of the vagina dentata, contemporary artists such as Berrigan, Mitchel, and Schermerhorn use the imagery and its narrative in playfully provocative ways.

This discussion of their work is placed in a broader examination of the theme of the vagina dentata in contemporary American culture as expressed in film, pop fiction, and popular discourse.   The most profound, and perhaps profoundly disturbing, reinterpretation of the vagina dentata appears in the film Teeth by Mitchell Lichtenstein (2007), as well as in Neal Stephenson’s book, Snow Crash (1992).  Both of these authors create female characters that use vagina dentata as a necessary protective device, a device that protects them from the unwanted advances of men.  In these tales, the women are not evil, they are innocents protected from the evils of a male dominated world.  This discussion ends by taking the concept of the vagina dentata out of the realm of fiction and into the world of reality through the examination of the controversy surrounding the Rapex device, an anti-rape device that arms the vagina with “teeth.”

This paper brings together a wide range of materials, from fine art, to popular film and literature, to blogs and MySpace.   Each of the sources reveals a thread of discussion running through American culture and a curious shift in boundaries, as the concept of the vagina dentata changes from a pejorative phrase, to one that implies necessary female empowerment.

Menstruation is a normal part of a woman’s life and a symbol of maturation and fertility. Although menstruation is an indication that a woman’s reproduction system is healthy, it is surrounded by a lot of taboos. Menstruation receieves attention because it is linked to blood and blood means life. But bleeding often associated with injury or death, and also assumed to be unclean. Due to this, menstruation is seen as a curse.

The history of these taboos surrounding mesntruation seems as old as human being. And even in the past few decades there has been incredible expansion in woman rights movement, superstition and taboos around a woman’s monthly cycle continue to persist in the contemporary societies.

Menarche is a milestone in female puberty and it signifies the maturation of reproductive potential and physiological growth.  This initiation  is also a celebrateion. Yet Ruth Benedict called attention to that, “if cultural emphasis followed the physiological emphasis, girls’ ceremonies would be more marked than boys”, it is not so. With the appearing of the first blood, young girls have been taught to feel responsible and unclean, she should shame of this curse and hide it form the others. Number of studies shows that it is not easy and comfortable for girls to talk about bleeding even with their mothers.

In the October of 2008, a news about a mother who prepared a party to celebrate her daughter’s menarche was published. She insisted that, if the circumcision has been celebrated, the menarche of the young girls’ should be celebrated too. Ve bir tartışma başladı. Hundreds of mesages were sent to the online newspapers’ forums.  Some of them who argued for the celebration agreed with the mother. But the ones who argued against the celebration of menarche were insisting on the evil of bleeding woman. According to that group, talking about menstruation is not conformed to the Turkish moral rules and traditions. By announcing her secret, the mother harms her daughter.