ABSTRACT
Discourses of human rights often compellingly frame an issue and call for urgent action. But in some limited cases, their invocation can inadvertently distort and misdirect intervention. In this essay, I offer an analysis of such a case. Proponents of Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM), a rapidly expanding cross-sectorial development focus, draw on human rights discourses to rationalize efforts to “end the taboo” and “break the silence” of menstruation. MHM campaigns – from grassroots projects through the articulation of the Sustainable Development Goals – assert that access to appropriate menstrual care is a matter of dignity and privacy without which girls and women’s quality of life is compromised. MHM proponents argue that inadequate access to menstrual absorbents exposes menstruators to shame and ridicule, and extant research verifies this relationship. Based on a mixed methods study of more than 60 MHM campaigns centered in low- and middle-income countries, I explore the content of MHM’s overall agenda to enable girls to effectively conceal, or keep private, their menstruation through access to “improved” (often Western and commercial) products. This theory of change burdens girls with accommodation to the norms of good biocitizenry – clean, efficient, and effectively disembodied. In this essay, I aim to show how when the tropes of dignity and privacy are deployed in the case of MHM, the fundamental construction of (female) bodies as dirty and, thus, shameful is left untroubled. Ultimately, I argue that framing MHM as a matter of dignity and privacy avoids the true problem menstruators face – the widespread and enduring view of devalued women’s bodies as sites of pollution requiring containment. Furthermore, this framing fails to challenge institutions (both material and cultural) to imagine a view of the body that is truly agentic and profoundly liberatory.
