Experiências menstruais de meninas adolescentes da periferia de Porto Alegre

Abstract

Menstruating for the first time is an event that creates a new reality. Menarche is culturally signified as the entrance into womanhood and this implies a series of imperatives in the life of those who menstruate. In this master’s degree work in Social Anthropology, I take the menstruation as a common thread to dive into the universe of six girls, who live in a peripheral region of the city of Porto Alegre (Brazil). The objective is to study the themes that unfold from these teenager’s menstrual experiences, such as: the hegemonic patriarchal cis heteronormative discourse, which brings up a series of control and surveillance devices over the bodies of girls and women; the imposition of the biomedical knowledge and its consequences for different forms of menstrual existence; the feelings of disgust, shame, and abjection culturally projected on the menstrual blood; the menstruation as a site of resistance and confrontation to common life’s violences. The text has as it’s focal point the six girls’ stories and uses this ethnography to create a dialogue with authors and approaches that relate to the subject of menstruation somehow. In addition, the research aims to use the intersectionality as an analytic tool to reflect on how gender, class and race issue affect and shape the complexity and diversity of menstrual experiences.