"Our Revolution Has Style": Contemporary Menstrual Product Activists "Doing Feminism" in the Third Wave

Sex Roles (2006) 54:331345 DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9001-7

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Our Revolution Has Style: Contemporary Menstrual Product Activists Doing Feminism in the Third Wave

Chris Bobel

Published online: 3 October 2006

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Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract An in-depth content analysis of ve web sites and eight paper zines (self-produced and distributed magazines) was conducted to uncover the inspiration, content, and unique strategies associated with text -based contemporary menstrual product activism. Menstrual product activism is loosely dened as various attempts to expose the hazards of commercial feminine protection to both womens bodies and the environment and the promotion of healthier, less expensive, and less resource-intensive alternatives. This activisms discourse draws on many traditions to produce its resistance to mainstream menses management. The movement, rst and foremost, is the legacy of several decades of related activism, dating to the mid1970s. Contemporary menstrual product activism updates and modies this tradition with the do it yourself ethic and anti-corporate philosophy of Punk culture and Third Wave feminist ideals of anti-essentialism, inclusion, humor, irony, and reappropriation. To date, this activist agenda has received little scholarly attention, yet it promises to yield meaningful insight into so called Third Wave feminist theory and practice and reveal the resilience of a woman-centered modern history of resistance.

Keywords Menstruation . Womens health activism . Third wave feminism

ax tampax.

in spirit of challenging and collapsing the insidious nature of the corporate monster

C. Bobel ([envelopeback])

Department of Womens Studies University of Massachusetts, Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA e-mail: [email protected]

that gobbles and trashes and fucks us over ... in response to the dirty business ... we have made this recipe book. as an act of resistance to the system that tramples over the homegrown d.i.y. style we are sick of how they co-opt our life to spit out into franchises ... to over package our needs into taxed luxuries ... we are sick of the garbarators that insists to dismember ... we are sick of how it insists to hide and disguise our experiences fuck the mark up they make on their lies ...

DOWN WITH THE INVENTORS OF NECESSITIES!

to the uprise when we stop popping tampons and the popping big business medicines ... we fuck the poisonsthat kill our...