Introduction: Menstruation as Rationale

Menstruation has been used as an excuse in many contexts. There is much legal and historical precedent linking menstruation to the category woman, and the limited political rights offered to persons therein. This section looks, in part, at the ways that menstruation has been used as a rationale to purposely curtail women’s political rights, access to legal processes, and/or benefits of citizenship. The way that stories of exclusion are built, often through norms of constructing menstruation as disabling and as a liability, constitute the core of this section.