Menstrual Temporality: Cyclic Bodies in a Linear World

ABSTRACT

In this paper I will explore a phenomenology of the menstrual cycle, focusing on the cycle’s rhythm as a form of lived temporality. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Thomas Fuchs I will outline a key connection between embodiment and rhythmic temporality more generally, before applying this analysis to the rhythm of the menstrual cycle specifically. I will consider the phenomenology of the experience of cycling through the phases of pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstruation and menstruation as a pattern, or specifically an embodied rhythm that constitutes a form of lived temporality. I will consider a way that the subject may potentially be alienated from this rhythm as a result of a dominant cultural narrative of “linear time”. I will argue further that this dissonance between the menstrual body and the contemporary world tends to be compounded by a lack of “menstrual literacy” in education and culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Phenomenology
• temporality
• embodiment
• menstrual cycle
• rhythmanalysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 167–9; Young, On Female Body Experience, 97–122.

2 As another notable exception, we find a brief refection on the experience of the menstrual cycle as a whole in the first chapter of The Second Sex. De Beauvoir's comments here are cursory but indicative of one kind of approach to the lived experience of the menstrual cycle. I look at what she has to say in more detail on p7 but it is also worth noting here that her emphasis in this brief analysis is the lived experience of the cycle inasmuch as it intersects with reproductive potential, social expectations and gendered power dynamics, which takes a different focus to this paper, which will look at the relationship between cyclical and linear forms of temporality. As below in fn4 there are many complex and intersecting aspects of lived experience which are relevant to phenomenologies of the menstrual cycle, but which I do not have space to consider in this paper. My thanks to one of the reviewers of this paper for pointing me to this in De Beauvoir.

3 See Schües, Olkowski and Fielding, Time in Feminist Phenomenology for other different discussions about the phenomenology of temporality from a feminist perspective.

4 For clarity, there are all kinds of other possible aspects or dimensions of exploration that might come under the heading of “phenomenologies of the menstrual cycle” that are not my focus here. The lived experience of someone's cycle, including disruptions to this cycle, might intersect with all kinds of other aspects of lived experience (some of which may be highly significant and central to lived experience) including illness, injury, aging, gender identity (as non-binary and trans-masculine identified people may have a menstrual cycle), sexuality, fertility, cultural or sub-cultural expectations, particular experiences of menarche, perimenopause or menopause. Each of these things – and others – constitute huge topics of discussion and exploration in terms of different ways that they might intersect with someone’s experience of their cycle. I am not going to foray into any of these different areas here, keeping my focus narrowed to the cycle as a form of lived temporality. This emphasis is not to say that this is the most important aspect of a phenomenology of the menstrual cycle – other aspects may be more salient or some people, but the temporality of the cycle is worth considering on its own terms.

5 Heidegger, Being and Time, 52–62. (2.12–13).

6 Nagel, The View From Nowhere.

7 Vasterling, “Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Account of Cognition”, 10.

8 Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

9 See Heinämaa, “The Body” for a more detailed overview of classic and contemporary accounts of the lived body.

10 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 41–51.

11 Gallagher, “Phenomenology and Embodied Cognition”, 9.

12 Varela et al., The Embodied Mind; Newen et al., The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition.

13 Stapleton and Froese, “The Enactive Philosophy of Embodiment”.

14 Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Ch8.

15 Dawson, “Embedded and Situated Cognition”, 62.

16 Heidegger, Being and Time, 97–99, (1.3.15).

17 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 95.

18 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 55–63.

19 Ibid., 55.

20 Ibid., 57.

21 Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time A.1.1–3, 3–25.

22 Lefebvre, Rhythmnanalysis.

23 Ibid., 37.

24 Lefebvre, Rhythmnanalysis, 20.

25 Ibid., 26, cf. 37–46.

26 Ibid., 79.

27 Lefebvre, Rhythmnanalysis, 77.

28 Ibid., 78.

29 Ibid., 18.

30 Ibid., 18–19.

31 Lefebvre, Rhythmnanalysis, 15–16.

32 Ibid., 25.

33 Lefebvre, Rhythmnanalysis, 41.

34 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 48.

35 Ibid., 48.

36 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 49

37 Ibid., 53.

38 Ibid., 57.

39 Ibid., 53.

40 Ibid., 48.

41 Kristeva, “Women’s Time”. Kristeva attributes the phrase “cursive time” to Nietzsche (14).

42 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 47.

43 Ibid., 58. Fuchs cites Wood, E.M. (2002) The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, New York, London: Verso, in support of this point.

44 Interestingly Kristeva makes a similar point in discussion about the temporality of contemporary media which she describes as “implying an idea of time as frozen or exploding.” Kristeva, “Women’s Time”, 18.

45 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 62.

46 Ibid., 33.

47 It is for this reason that an understanding of menstrual bodies as cyclical does not need to be competition with Camille Froidevaux-Metterie’s understanding of menstrual bodies as “linear” inasmuch as they follow an arc of maturity, aging and decline in fertility in a one-directional chronological way. Froidevaux-Metterie’s analysis touches on a phenomenology of the menstrual cycle as it intersects with aging and fertility which lies beyond the scope of my paper, as per fn4. What is clear, however, is that a multi-faceted phenomenology of the temporality of the menstrual cycle will seek to hold together both the cyclical and the chronological dimensions of the lived time of the menstrual body. See Froidevaux-Metterie, “The Experience of the Feminine.” My thanks to one of the reviewers of this paper for directing me to Froidevaux-Metterie’s work.

48 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 48. Fuchs’ emphasis is that the body (as the rest of the natural world) always involves cyclical rhythms, rather than the claim that the body (and the cosmos) have no natural forms of linear time, understood in the broad sense.

49 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 60.

50 Marsh, “How Overfarming Affects The Environment”.

51 Fuchs, “The Cyclical Time of the Body”, 48–49.

52 See Clayton, “Menstrual Cycle”; Reed & Carr, “The Normal Menstrual Cycle”; Bull et al, “Real-world menstrual cycle characteristics”.

53 Dreaper, “Booming Market in Period Tracker Apps”.

54 Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power; “Red School”. See also Lacey, Lunaception; Hill, Period Power.

55 See Barker-Smith, “Navigating the Menstrual Landscapes” for a work of auto-ethnography on her experience of menstrual cycle awareness.

56 The authors of Wild Power make this point explicitly, in their own words. They call this “The Big Red Rule” – “your own experience trumps anything we might say … Drop any expectation that you “should” experience the cycle in a certain way.” Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, 12

57 Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power, 68.

58 Ibid., 68. This is from Hugo Wurlitzer’s own self-reporting of Day 9 of her cycle.

59 This tallies with, for example, Galasinska and Szymkow, “The More Fertile, the More Creative”.

60 Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power, 78. This is from Hugo Wurlitzer’s own self-reporting of Day 14 of her cycle.

61 Ibid., 78. This is a quotation from “Amber”, speaking from Day 14 of her cycle.

62 See for example, Bäckström et al., “Mood, Sexuality, Hormones, and the Menstrual Cycle”; Eisenlohr-Moul, “Premenstrual Disorders”.

63 Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power, 84. This is a quotation from “Janna”, speaking from Day 24 of her cycle.

64 Barker-Smith, “Navigating the Menstrual Landscapes”, 9. This is taken from her self-reporting on Day 21 of her cycle.

65 Bryant et al, “The Association Between Menstrual Cycle and Traumatic Memories”.

66 Pope and Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power, 186

67 Ibid.,, 13.

68 Again, this is suggestive rather than prescriptive.

69 By contrast, there are many other cultures which have and continue to initiate, educate and ritualise the experience of the menstrual cycle in more explicit and honouring ways than we typically find in modern Western culture. See, for example, Owen, “Her Blood is Gold”, 31–38 for an overview of some beliefs and practices around the menstrual cycle in Native American traditions, the Pygmies of the Congo and the Dagara of Burkina Faso.

70 See Eschler et al, “Defining Menstrual Literacy”. For clarity, “menstrual literacy” is not just about gaining objective/scientific facts about the menstrual cycle (although some elements of this are likely to be a helpful part of this education) but is about cultivating first-, second- and third-person menstrual cycle awareness of the lived experience of oneself and/or others.

71 Historically, anatomical models have been centred on a version of an idealised male anatomy as standard, meaning female bodies were viewed as “non-standard”. The changes of the menstrual cycle throughout the month were therefore perceived as non-standard. My thanks to one of the reviewers for pressing the wording on this point.

72 Some of these apps also measure physiological changes such as changes in cervical mucus and changes to basal body temperature, as they double as fertility trackers. Again, this should not be conflated with the primary focus on menstrual cycle awareness as a conscious noticing of lived experience.

73 NPR notably declared 2015 “the year of the period”, see Gharib, “Why 2015 was the year of the period”. Further public conversations were generated in 2019 when the US Women's football team attributed some element of their World Cup success to the team’s collective commitment to tracking their menstrual cycles, see Kindelan, “How tracking their periods helped USA women's soccer team”.

74 See Levitt and Barnack-Tavlaris in Bobel et al., Critical Menstruation Studies, 561–75.

75 This aligns with recommendations made for clear and holistic menstrual health care by the Global Menstrual Collective. See Hennegan et al., “Menstrual Health”.