Reclaiming Your Blood: Decolonizing the Menstrual Cycle

The Red Pen Collective | La Plume Rouge

· February 16, 2026

By Laura Verbich

Ever wondered why “being on your period” is so demonized, pathologized and deemed as shameful by society, culture, religion, and the medical system? It’s not because there is something demonic or “wrong” or disgusting with menstruation or the people who experience it. It is because the dominant systems in power are colonial and patriarchal – that is, they are built and controlled by (and for) men, and are inherently racist and misogynist. Our society has a long history of racist men taking what they wish by creating narratives that cast their “opponents” as unnatural, as diseased, as needing to be eradicated. This is easy to see when we examine the ways in which Europeans colonized the Americas and its Indigenous peoples and called it “discovery” and “civilization”; or how America enslaved and murdered African and Caribbean people and called it “just” and “progress”. Colonialism is a specific form of violence that seeks to eradicate and erase the cultures, practices and experiences of those deemed as “less than”. It is through this lens that we must view the colonization of menstruation.

Menstruation in and of itself is a natural biological function, thrust upon us by our very human nature. In many cultures, when someone is “on their period”, they are seen as being in a magical, powerful and sacred time and menstruating people are treated with reverence and respect. For example, “in some parts of Ghana, West Africa, young girls sit under beautiful, ceremonial umbrellas when they begin menstruating. The family would give her gifts and pay her homage… She is celebrated like a queen”. How amazing to be celebrated for this monthly occurrence, and for it to be seen as a blessing rather than a curse!

In our Western culture, we have internalized misogyny, which means that we have begun to believe the terrible things that have been told to us about our bodies and experiences. It is not only something we believe, but something we act out in everyday life; from hiding our pads and tampons, to whispering to each other about how terrible we feel, to believing we are weak and “less than” because we even have periods. AFAB (assigned female at birth) people have been taught the bare minimum about their own bodies, and what is taught is very clinical and biological, with a focus on reproduction. “From an early age, the media, menstrual educators, and sometimes our own mothers educate women in how to shield others from having to see our menstrual blood. Women are conditioned to self-police female bodily processes in order to maintain ‘normative femininity’ ”. “Normative femininity” is a tool of the patriarchy which assigns rigid gender roles and behaviours for those who are considered feminine. Girls and AFAB people have expressed, as surely you have felt too, a frustration with this type of curriculum, saying it leads to confusion as well as misinformation, and that it doesn’t answer any of their real-life questions or concerns. It is important work, then, to deconstruct these narratives, which become the cornerstones upon which our cultural beliefs are built. It is imperative to deconstruct these narratives by understanding why and where they originate in the first place, and to replace them with accessible and correct information. Together, let’s discuss a couple of ways in which decolonial and feminist re-tellings of menstruation can work to empower all those who menstruate, and break the cycles of shame and disgust as it pertains to menstruation and those who experience it.

An important component to decolonizing the menstrual cycle and our bodies is to decolonize our minds.

How do we do so? By acknowledging, naming, critiquing and counterbalancing these unequal and dominant systems of power. Once we can understand why the narratives are the way they are, we can begin to deconstruct them and see them reflected in ourselves and the world around us – and from there, we can help shine a light for others who may be caught in the web of patriarchal lies. Dominant paradigms, which are the widely believed, understood and accepted set of social norms and expectations, reinforce men’s experiences and understanding of the world, and women are left to mediate our experiences and understanding of our female bodies through androcentric lenses. This leaves AFAB folks to mediate their experiences and understand their bodies through an colonial, androcentric and heteronormative lens – that is, a worldview that centers white, cis, straight, able-bodied men and women as the norm. In fact, this is scientifically and historically traceable: these models of “normal” and “statistically average” were crafted from white European standards and were expressly used in order to quell fears of colonial settlers who felt threatened by the Indigenous populations around them.

Medical history has built its knowledge upon this as the basis.

It was only in 1869 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, that the first female physician, Jex-Blake, was allowed to practice medicine, and she found that “an enormous amount of preventable suffering arose because girls and women were fearful of revealing their intimate concerns to a man”. She pioneered the cause to bridge the gap between the “human first” physicians, whose model of the norm was men, and helped shed some light upon women’s issues and female shame. One of the beliefs of the time was “German physiologist Eduard Freidrich Wilhelm Pflüger proposed that menstruation has a neurological cause… Since menstruation was an involuntary process, women were thought to have no control over its impact on their nervous systems”. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how our first instinct (in medicine, psychology and sociology) for something we don’t understand or know, is to demonize it… to make it a fault of the woman, a mistake, a problem.

Armed with this information, we can finally choose to become free of these “standards” and begin to understand our bodies in all their complexities, mending our outdated beliefs about periods. We now know that “menstruation is a core part of female physiology and the projection of misogynistic menstrual ideologies onto women and the enforced control of our female bodies and menstruation by patriarchal systems, is happening to us”. Let’s keep something important in mind as we continue: not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate are women. Non-binary folks and trans men are a couple of examples of non-women who menstruate, and it’s imperative that we focus our advocacy and understanding upon this biological truth. There are many transphobic rhetorics about periods, namely that the only people who bleed are “biological women” – this is once again a colonial and patriarchal construction, and has been proven throughout history and medical science to be incorrect. This, coupled with the relationship between menstruation and womanhood, plays a big role in the demonization of menstruation. “In … Western patriarchal societies, menstruation and women have been intentionally connected (for biological and social reasons) to provide evidence that women are problematic and to justify the control of our bodies and place in society. Menstrual blood has been equated with danger as an illness, symbol of death, pollution, dirt, or simply as “other”— meaning something male bodies do not do. Until recently, menstrual blood has also been, with few exceptions, equated with women. Thus, women as a class have been constructed as dangerous. In other words, it is not simply “menstruators” who are considered dangerous, but women. Women are dangerous because we menstruate.”.

Many religions (such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam) preach that period blood is impure, and that women should not perform certain acts while menstruating, embedding the narrative into our minds and psyches that women are dangerous and less than men due to our biology. These are old and deeply rooted beliefs passed down generationally and through culture as societal norms. These are harmful beliefs that perpetuate stigma, AFAB folks grow to believe that period blood is dirty – and so am I. We internalize, yet again, this stigma, this shame, this “dirty little secret”. We become disconnected from our own bodies, from our own experiences and from our community. This is what colonialism does: it dis-connects us from ourselves to sell us the dominant narrative as truth. But now, we are more informed, more empowered – and we know the truth. We can embrace our own embodied experience and re-connect to our bodies and ourselves by embracing our blood, reclaiming our power in our periods and rewriting the narratives of what it means to menstruate.

So, how do we move forward in reclaiming and rewriting our bodies, our blood, our community, our narrative?

We just accomplished step one: understanding the ways in which we have been lied to and harmed by the colonial and patriarchal stories. By deconstructing where these beliefs originate, we realize they do not belong to us, and there is a freedom in being able to cast these beliefs away from us. It may take time, as for some of us, these beliefs are sewn into the fabric of who we are; for others, the practice of unlearning comes easier. The important thing is to no longer shame ourselves for “not healing fast enough”. Instead, we must continue to learn and unlearn, to connect with our friends and communities and come together in celebration of our menstruation. Name the harm – colonialism and patriarchy – and name the truth – I am perfect, whole and complete, just as I am. Together, let us remind the world why we are a force to be reckoned with: we bleed and we do not die. Our blood is sacred, not toxic. In fact, our blood can heal as it is rich in stem cells and regenerative tissues, as well as holding important information for our overall health. The more we know, the more we become empowered. And if we were so powerful and magical before, imagine how much we can do now?!

Works Cited

This article was written by Laura Verbich, as part of The Red Pen Collective writing group created by Monthly Dignity.