A Bloody Waste: Embodied perspectives on menstrual materials, waste and responsibility among Swedish menstruators

Abstract

Every day, hundreds of millions of people around the world are menstruating. While questions around menstruation have gained a growing public and academic interest in recent years, which has successfully emphasized and included various perspectives, the waste dimension remains largely neglected. Accordingly, this thesis aims to explore embodied perspectives on the relationship between menstrual materials, waste and responsibility among Swedish menstruators. The intersection between these cross-cutting themes forms an increasingly important topic, and is closely related to the global challenges we are facing related to menstrual health, waste management and environmental sustainability. The study combines perspectives from two academic fields: critical menstruation studies and discard studies. A qualitative method is adopted, using online focus groups, and the empirical data is thematically analyzed according to scholarship on radical menstrual embodiment as well as theories on waste and responsibility. The results show that choices of menstrual materials and the perceptions of waste and responsibility are complex and multifaceted matters. While the participants exhibits both an awareness and a sense of responsibility for menstrual materials and sustainability issues, the personal wellbeing is the primary priority. Hence, the use of a certain menstrual material cannot be investigated in isolation from other experiences and realities, nor can the use of disposable products be equated with not taking responsibility and not caring about the environment and sustainability issues.