Counter-Story #4: Resisting Medicalization

The medicalization of menstruation is one more form of medicalization of women’s lived experiences. The term ‘medicalization’ can be defined as “the process whereby everyday experiences and problems become framed as ‘illness’. In the course of this process, behaviors and conditions take on medical meanings or are defined (or redefined) in terms of health or illness” (McHugh & Chrisler, 2015, p. 3). As described in Chapter Three, Emily Martin (1987; 1991) explores how the “scientific fairy tale” creates the stereotypical belief that menstruation is a source of weakness, disability, or failed production, which needs to be treated. Despite the fact that women experience menstruation and premenstrual symptoms in different ways according to the particularities of their bodies, “the dominant menstrual discourse is one of pain, mess, and unpredictability” (Marván & Trujillo, 2010, p. 55). By situating the menstrual body as a medical issue, women’s bodies rely on the expertise of medical doctors, usually male, “rather than valuing women’s own knowledge and care of their own bodies” (Fingerson, 2006, p. 57). Interestingly in my family, resisting medicalization is, without knowing it, a shared story.

Older generations (my mother and my aunts) all make reference to the absence of medical assistance or treatment to deal with menstrual cramps. Surprisingly, there is a recurring story where my grandmother and great grandmother prioritize their own knowledge for calming menstrual cramps.

Yolanda (68): I never had painful menstrual cramps. But I remember how, if we had real pain, my mother gave us shots of anise to warm the belly and stop feeling pain.

Dresda (32): Why anise?

Yolanda (68): Because it was a warm drink and it calmed the coldness of the belly. This is how we have always treated menstrual cramps. Family tradition.

90 Dresda (32): And did you ever take anything?

Lupe (67): I never liked thee, and we never had pills or medicine. But I remember the shots of anise my mother gave me.

Martha (65): Menstruating was uncomfortable because sometimes I had menstrual cramps. The only thing I liked about those days were the shots of anise my grandmother used to give us.

Dresda (32): Why didn’t grandmother give you medicine?

Martha (65): I suppose because my mother did not trust in medicine. But I also think that my grandmother and mother were more into traditional medicine and home remedies. It was how illnesses were treated, we trusted more in our bodies’ capacity to heal themselves.

Mili (61): I had awful menstrual pain. I cried a lot. The only medicine I took were the shots of anise my mother gave me. I drank a shot and I fell sleep all afternoon, and I woke up without pain. My mother never gave us medicine. I like the shots. Now I remember it as a monthly tradition.

In these stories, a fissure is revealed at the intersection of hegemonic menstrual tales. In my aunt Yola’s story, the ritual of drinking anise shots has to do with the idea that “it was a warm drink and it calmed the coldness of the belly.” The concept of “coldness,” as Castañeda, et al., (1996) highlight the “qualities of objects, foods, people, and diseases” (p. 137). This belief is a traditional Mexican cosmovision of a “mythical duality (hot-cold) [that] classifies everything in terms of hot and cold. Hot/cold reflects a taxonomic order, through which the characteristics of objects or subjects are classified according to this specificity” (Castañeda et al., 1996, p. 137). With regard to menstruation, the cold/hot duality is commonly related to menstrual illness. For instance, cold food or beverages are seen to hurt women’s bodies because “they will cut [their] period” (Castañeda et al., 1996, p. 137); whereas “hot food (black beans, chili, broth, etc.) or cold beverages (thee, warm alcohol) are considered good for menstruation” (Castañeda et al., 1996, p. 137). In this pre-Colombian cosmovision, just like in my family’s stories, menstrual pain is treated as an illness that needs to be equilibrated by eliminating the coldness of the body.

However, this pre-Colombian cosmovision is no far-fetched from naturalistic traditions in medieval Europe. In “Medicine and Naturalistic Philosophy”, Katharine Park (2013) traces the most prominent scientific texts dated between 500 and 1500 B.C., focusing principally on Hippocratics, Aristotle, Soranus, and Galen. She explores how medieval scholars have forged a physical order based

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on fundamental differences between male and female bodies, concerning ‘scientific’ sex and gender facts. For instance, Park reviews the sexual difference ideas in early medieval West (500-1050), where Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen define sex differences based on “the polarities of hot and dry, cold and wet that were thought to distinguish male and female bodes respectively” (Park, 2013, p. 86). Similarly, in Arabic traditions (800-1300), following Galen’s ideas, al-Majusi, Ibn al-Jazzar, and Ibn Sina draw the fundamental differences between male and female bodies based on “their complexions: males were hot and dry and females cold and wet” (Park, 2013, p. 88). Along the same lines of thought, in “Menstrual Bleeding According to the Hippocratic and Aristotle,” Lesley Dean-Jones (1989) describes how both Hippocratic and Aristotle based their menstrual theories “on the unseen innards of a women” (p. 178). Hippocratic gynecological theories relate women’s menstrual bleeding with “women’s overly moist flesh” (Dean-Jones, 1989, p. 182). Coldness, therefore, is an unnatural bodily status for women that have an excess of moisture. Consequently, humidity is related with menstruation, and pain is attached to them, under the assumption that the “cold nature” (Castañeda et al., 1996, p. 137) of women is an illness that needs to be treated. In all cases, hot and cold are related to menstrual bleeding.

In this context, the fissure appears in the sense that even when their stories are not fully oppositional to the hot/cold duality of menstruation - perhaps even corroborate it - the ingestion of alcohol as a pain remedy goes against the prioritization of ‘medical expert knowledge.’ When my aunt Martha says, “I suppose [...] my mother did not trust in medicine” and “my grandmother and mother were more into traditional medicine and home remedies. It was how illness were treated, we trusted more in our bodies’ capacity to heal themselves,” my aunt is positioning my family’s menstrual practices, and therefore their bodies, as forms of “subaltern knowledge” against the “scientific fairy tale” of medicalization as a form of helping women to cope with menstrual pain and PMS. According to Spanish feminist Rosa Medina-Doménech (2014), “subaltern (non-hegemonic) knowledge” is “knowledge that is not traditionally considered as a form of ‘expertise’ and which lie outside of accepted or authorized ‘centers’ of scientific knowledge production” (p. 180-1).

In these terms, to trust in the capacity of the body to heal itself, paraphrasing Susan Bordo’s essay “Bringing Body to Theory,” is a form of bringing the body back to the realm of evidence; that is, locating women’s experiences “as the origin of knowledge” (Scott, 1991, p. 777). This idea can be better illustrated by my cousin Daniela’s story.

Daniela (36): I try not to use any medication. I just try to avoid anything that can cause me pain. For example, when I was little I used to jump a lot the first day so all the blood came down once for all. Now, I listen to my body, and I try not to drink cold liquids or eat spicy food because I know that will bring

92 me pain. And if I have pain, I use a bag of hot water on my belly. Also, in the first day, I try to drink a lot of water because the more I drink, the more blood comes out when I go to the bathroom. These are my little tricks.

In this story, by “listening to [her] body,” my cousin fissures the medical tale that situates medical expertise as the authorizing source of women’s bodily knowledge. By “listening,” my cousin challenges medical decision-making and expertise, seeking alternative forms, or tricks, of care, based on the notion of the knowledge of her body. In privileging the knowledge of her own body, my cousin is breaking the tale of women’s bodies as passive receptors of medical representations and knowledge expertise, reconstructing women’s bodily experiences as a form of knowledge production. In this regard, my family’s stories can help to visualize how every women’s body contains their own knowledge and practices to define their own well-being. This type of bodily knowledge, the one that comes from within, reveals alternative/subaltern forms of (non-hegemonic) knowledge; that is, to listen to our menstrual experiences is a counter-hegemonic practice of care against scientific tales of women’s menstrual medicalization.