Content warning for genital mutilation, medical trauma

When Jessica Pin got a labiaplasty at age 18, her consent form read, “excision of redundant labia.” Instead, the doctor cut off the entirety of her labia minora and performed a clitoral hood reduction she never agreed to.

Afterward, when she touched her clitoris, there was no sensation. Since then, she hasn’t been able to orgasm, or feel much of anything at all, without a vibrator—something therapists and doctors dismissed as normal or a consequence of her “not being in love.”

When she wrote to her surgeon about what happened, he said he’d given her what she asked for. But an examination from his colleague confirmed that the dorsal nerve of her clitoris had been cut, leaving scars.

She wanted to report her surgeon, but her psychiatrist warned her that the board would defend him and attack her. Plus, the loss of her sexual functioning combined with the backlash she’d received for talking about it had left her suicidal. By the time she felt mentally healthy enough to speak out, the statute of limitations had passed. The doctor went on to win awards and become president of the state medical association. And even after she got yet another examination from his colleague, her surgeon said the scars must have been from a different surgery (which she never got) or that she must have done it herself (which she didn’t).

The loss of her sexual functioning combined with the backlash she’d received for talking about it left her suicidal.
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When another woman, who wishes to remain anonymous until her case goes to trial, got surgery to repair a tear to her labia after a sexual assault, she told the doctor not to go anywhere near her clitoris. “The doctor decided they needed to remodel my entire vulva, without discussing with me or asking for my consent, thinking this was best and would improve the ‘appearance,’” she remembers.

Instead of the minor repair she requested, her inner labia were completely cut off, and the skin of her outer labia and clitoral hood were pulled inward, causing nerve damage. In addition to losing all sexual sensation and ability to orgasm, she developed “extreme burning sensations, sharp pains in my clitoris glans, shaft, up the inguinal nerves and into my cervix.” She now finds it difficult to walk due to the pain. She had several consultations with doctors who do reconstructive surgery for botched labiaplasties. “They told me it looks like FGM,” she says.

A study she conducted that is currently awaiting publication has identified hundreds of women who have been victims of botched labiaplasties. Their complaints include complete amputation of the labia, inability to orgasm, clitoral injuries, and labia minora stitched to their labia majora, clitoral hood, or vagina.

It’s unclear how common incidents like these are, but they’re common enough that there are discussions on online forums dedicated to botched labiaplasties, as well as doctors who specialize in correcting them. One of them is Michael Goodman, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the California Northstate University School of Medicine, who estimates that “well over a thousand” women suffer from botched labiaplasties each year. This number will likely grow, as labiaplasty is the world’s fastest-growing cosmetic surgery, seeing a 45% increase in 2016 alone.

They told me it looks like FGM.
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Pin thinks this problem is more common than we realize because many victims are afraid to speak out. “Things got a lot worse for me when I started trying to talk about it and decided I needed to stand up for myself,” she says. “That’s why I suspect women who are harmed stay silent. The worst part was the gaslighting, victim-blaming, lying, and minimization.”

One reason labiaplasties get botched is that OB-GYNs don’t have an adequate understanding of the labia or clitoris, says Goodman. “OB-GYNs are both ’women’s surgeons’ and supposedly experts in vulvar and vaginal anatomy. They are trained to perform ulvovaginal procedures but receive absolutely no training in plastic procedures on the vulva,” he explains.

“While a board-certified plastic surgeon will not dare to perform a labiaplasty unless his or her residency program includes labiaplasty and genital anatomy in their training program, an (untrained in plastics) OB-GYN will think, ‘Well . . . how hard can it be? I am an expert in the vulva! Just cut it off and sew it up.’” Much of the issue could be solved through proper training in medical school and residencies, he says.

The Sexist Science Of Female Sexual Dysfunction

Paul Pin, MD, Chief of the Division of Plastic Surgery at Baylor University Medical Center, often trains residents who’ve been taught nothing about clitoral anatomy, and he’s never seen clitoral anatomy in plastic surgery journals. This means that many doctors who perform labiaplasties don’t even understand the body parts they’re operating on. Jessica’s doctor had only performed two labiaplasties and received no training in them.

Vulvar anatomy is also woefully absent in textbooks. After poring through medical books, Jessica has only been able to find the nerves and vasculature of the clitoris illustrated in two—Williams Gynecology and Williams Obstetrics—and even these didn’t have accompanying descriptions. Anatomy books include “very little detail about clitoral anatomy—certainly less than the penis,” confirms Paul Pin. “The real nerve supply to the clitoris is almost universally absent in textbooks.”

No one even knows how many of these procedures are done, much less what the outcomes are.
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Another problem is that doctors who offer labiaplasties are not held accountable for providing the procedure safely, he adds.

“Most labiaplasties are done in doctor’s offices under local anesthesia, in non-certified operating rooms. No one even knows how many of these procedures are done, much less what the outcomes are. Professional societies should demand their members report their numbers and their outcomes to insure patient outcomes.”

But the issue goes deeper than lack of training or oversight. Underlying the erasure of vulvar genitalia from textbooks, journals, and medical schools is a societal neglect for female sexual pleasure and health. Many people still describe vulvar genitalia as the “vagina,” neglecting the clitoris and other sensitive external parts. In sex ed and biology classes, people learn about the role of vulvar anatomy in reproduction, not its potential for pleasure. As feminist author Peggy Orenstein put it in her TED Talk, kids “learn that boys have erections and ejaculations, and girls have periods and unwanted pregnancy.”

It’s this view of women as baby-making or man-pleasing machines, rather than human beings with their own desires and needs, that colors medical education. “For most medical students, the great majority of sex-ed-related learning has to do with reproductive anatomy and functioning, not pleasure,” explains sexologist Carol Queen, PhD. “The clitoris isn’t really directly relevant to this, and so the ‘inner workings’ (uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, etc.) often get more attention.”

As such, many women and gender variant folks themselves don’t learn the importance of the clitoris—or that the labia can also be sources of sexual pleasure. “I didn’t know my body or understand the significance of lost external sensation because I thought the magic was supposed to be inside the vagina,” says Jessica.

What A Fake ‘Female Orgasm’ Statistic Says About Gender Bias

In a society that considers women’s primary role in sex to be pleasing men, injuries that do not affect their ability to have penis-in-vagina intercourse are trivialized. “Female sexuality is objectified in the way it is approached. The vulva isn’t well described as an actively functional apparatus, which it is,” says Jessica.

“Do you think men would go to urologists who didn’t know the nerves and vasculature of the penis? Obviously not in a million years. But for some reason, women are comfortable with doctors who approach their vulvas as if they are non-functional, inanimate objects. ‘How vulvas work’ is not a subject of much consideration because women are ‘complicated’ and ‘emotional,’ not sexual.”

Compounding this problem is an overall neglect for sexual pleasure in the medical field, and a denial of the fact that pleasure is part of health. For example, women who don’t experience adequate sexual arousal may suffer from painful sex, which could lead to medical problems, Queen explains.

Queen believes surgeons should be required to inform their patients that, even when they’re performed properly, labiaplasties remove sensitive tissue and could result in some loss of sexual sensation. The same goes for hysterectomies, she adds. “While it can absolutely be medically necessary, it is often the case that patients aren’t informed that sexual sensations may change, and historically, doctors didn’t focus on retaining fully functional neurology when they removed a uterus.”

If vulvas got the same standard of care as noses, I’d be happy.
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When Jessica has written about her botched surgery, some have questioned why she got a labiaplasty in the first place, and implied that she was asking for it by going under the scalpel. But while she acknowledges that unrealistic beauty standards led her to get the surgery, she points out that other forms of surgery are held to higher standards, regardless of the patient’s motives. “If vulvas got the same standard of care as noses, I’d be happy,” she says.

Ultimately, if people learned about and valued women’s sexual anatomy and pleasure, fewer people would be getting labiaplasties, and those who did would be able to get them more safely, says Queen. “It’s not just that doctors need pleasure-inclusive sex education as part of the medical curriculum,” she says. “Everyone needs sex education that honors the fact that most people want sex that is pleasurable.”

What do you call your private parts, to yourself, to your doctor, in polite company? There are plenty of slang words for the female genitalia—some cute, some raunchy, some silly, some banal—but none of them, not even the scientific-sounding vagina, is quite right.

The term vagina refers to the canal that connects the inner, non-visible organs—cervix, uterus, ovaries—to the visible, outer part, which is the vulva. Often, when we refer to our pussy, hoo-haw, cooter, or vagina, we’re actually talking about is our vulva. Given that “vagina” isn’t —arguably— the prettiest or most exciting word out there, why is that our collective, patriarchal culture insists on using it?

Swedish artist Liv Strömquist wants women to reclaim the word vulva. Or, more specifically, she wants us to—finally—claim it. The illustrator, whose book of graphic nonfiction, Fruit of Knowledge: The Vulva vs the Patriarchy, was released in English last month, aims to destigmatize the female body, especially the vulva, the orgasm, and menstruation.

The 40-year-old feminist activist felt a lot of shame about her body growing up, especially when it came to menstruation. As an adult, she decided to start looking into the taboos associated with the female body. She started asking pointed questions, like, “Where does the taboo around the vulva come from? Has it always looked the same throughout history? How does the taboo around the vulva affect us women psychologically?” she told me via email in early October. “All these things were very interesting for me. I wanted to investigate why there is so much shame surrounding women’s bodies—and in particular the genital parts—in order to change it.”

And then, in 2012, she started turning what she had discovered into Fruit of Knowledge (originally published in Swedish in 2014 as Kunskapens frukt), a cultural history that explores—in edgy, satirical tones and comic-book form—the pathologies, politics, and oft horrifying punishments that female and trans bodies have suffered at the hands of religion, science, and men.    

The meticulously researched Fruit of Knowledge chronicles—toggling between dead serious and drop-dead funny tones—the female body’s mistreatment and mishandling, starting with Eve and winding through history, medicine, pop culture, sex ed, contemporary advertisements, and more.

As graphic nonfiction gains more of a foothold in the literary world, we see more and more serious subjects conveyed in comics form. Here it brings awesome power to a misunderstood and hushed-up topic.

Where does the taboo around the vulva come from? Has it always looked the same throughout history?
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“So much is communicated with a well-drawn side-eye, angry eyebrows, etc.,” translator Melissa Bowers told me via email. “The first time I read [Fruit of Knowledge] I was either giggling, cringing, or both. I was so charmed by Liv’s simple, expressive drawing style.” Charmed is a surprisingly accurate response to the way Strömquist conveys information. When asked why she chose the comics form to write about such thorny material, she said, “I’ve always really liked comics, since I was a child. If you see a comic in a magazine you immediately want to read it—and this is why I really like this art form. It’s very appealing, not difficult or pretentious. It’s folksy. Articles about feminism and left-wing politics often tend to be very heavy, academic and serious, so I like to make my work fun to read.”

Fruit of Knowledge certainly achieves that artistic intention, turning a gallery of “Men Who Have Been Too Interested in the Female Genitalia” into an informative yet humorous hall of shame, and, in “Blood Mountain,” poking fun at the superstitions around menstruation, while also digging into ancient times, when it “appears that menstruation was MORE holy and LESS icky.”

For thousands of years and across cultures, Strömquist relays, the vulva and menstruation had been integral parts of the sacred landscape—vulvas made their appearance in Greek myth, Egyptian lore, European fables, and notably, monasteries, churches, and village gates in Celtic culture. It was once believed that the female orgasm was necessary (and thus highly valued) for procreation. Sounds a bit different than the way we treat the female body today, doesn’t it?

Strömquist explains the disparity this way: “The very overt hatred and fixation that the monotheistic religions have with the female body and sexuality [arose because religions]—in their early stage—were in competition with fertility cults.”

During the Enlightenment, and with the rise of medical science (and male doctors), those in power had to come up with new theories for female inferiority.

For thousands of years and across cultures, Strömquist relays, the vulva and menstruation had been integral parts of the sacred landscape.
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Strömquist continued explaining that:

“Science had to try to find explanations as to why women were different from men and couldn’t have the same access to power and money in society. Before they could say, ‘Women have no power in society because that’s what god wants’—but later they had to come up with scientific reasons. That’s when medical science started to obsess on things like the uterus, menstruation and so on.

“In the debate over if women could enter university in the end of the 1800s, there was a doctor who wrote a book that argued that women couldn’t enter university because of their menstruation. If they studied, their brain would use the blood they needed for menstruation, and become infertile. So if women started to study in the university, it would be the end of the human race.”

This might sound extreme to us now, but considering the contemporary struggle to simply close the gender pay gap or support working mothers—how far have we really come? Society continues to use the female body—and its natural functions—against women.

While much of what Strömquist covers in her work relates to the biologically female body, she also fixes her searing gaze on the binary two-gender system, criticizing the surgeries that intersex babies undergo, often in the first weeks of their life, which only serve to “categorize genitals” and “remove sensitive tissues that the person might miss later in life.”

In “Blood Mountain,” the chapter which covers menstruation, Strömquist explores the fallacy of PMS being linked to a particular gender, illustrating her point with a male figure skater lifting a leg to expose bloody panties, accompanied by the captioned thought that if we didn’t live in a binary two-gender society, “I could have drawn the first page of this chapter like this → Or in some completely different way!! Which I am too socially conditioned to even think of!!!”

Social conditioning plays a strong role throughout Strömquist’s work, and she’s keen to exploit that awareness, not allowing how we culturally perceive biology and gender to dominate her art.  

In all areas of her work, Strömquist explores “provocative” subject matter. Last year, her art came under fire last year when Stockholm’s metro commuters found her subway illustrations of women menstruating “disgusting,” while others insisted it was awkward explaining the red stains to their children.

“There was a big debate over my pictures when they were displayed in the Stockholm Metro-station,” Strömquist says.

“They were vandalized twice so they had to be replaced with new prints. There was a political debate, where the populist right-wing party in Sweden wrote an article criticizing the use of tax money to support this kind of art and promised that if they got in power they would replace this kind of art with pre-modern oil painting. People still have quite strong feelings about [menstruation], which I find interesting.”

Despite the controversy over her artwork, she also “received a lot of support and positive reactions” for depicting menstruation—something that happens to millions of bodies every day—in a celebratory public forum.

Strömquist currently lives in Malmö, where she works for a youth radio station and hosts a political podcast. She has two new books in the works. One, a comic titled “Rise and Fall,” covers “climate change and problems of world capitalism.” The other is “a book about the social construction of romantic love,” which she hopes to see published in English as well.

In her chapter, “Upside Down Rooster Comb,” where she quotes Sartre and The Latin Kings, Strömquist also cites psychologist Harriet Lerner, who has been writing about the consequences of mislabeling the vulva as the vagina for decades. Lerner “likens this misuse of language to ‘psychic genital mutilation.’”

Whereas the vagina is often described in terms of absence, “a ‘hole’ waiting to be filled with a cock,” the vulva is very rarely mentioned—in conversation, and even in biology textbooks.

We are literally discouraged from properly naming the vulva. “If we don’t have the words,” Stromquist says, “we cannot understand what the organ is or how it looks and works. Words are really important. In many languages there isn’t even a proper word for the [female] sexual organ—one that isn’t an insult.”

Imagine being encouraged to call your arm your hand, or being told your entire life that your toes are your leg. This kind of senseless mislabeling encourages confusion, avoidance, and embarrassment, all of which prevent many people from treating the vulva with the respect and veneration it deserves.

If we don’t have the words we cannot understand what the vulva is or how it looks and works.
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Given the current political climate in the United States, Strömquist’s vibrant, excoriating work is more necessary than ever. Fruit of Knowledge is the kind of self-care Western culture needs—accessible, intelligent, and engaging renderings of culture and history—that provide the encouragement to help us finally name and reclaim the female body.

It was a long and winding road that led me to the basement of a 19th century stately house in Brussels for my initiation. Lined along a narrow stairwell leading down to the basement with 40 or so other women, all in bare feet, all waiting in silent awe for Miranda Gray to personally welcome us into the Moon Mother sisterhood, I began to wonder, how did I get here? And why had I already begun to wish I had never come?

It all started with my 10-year devotion to hormonal birth control. To me it was man’s greatest invention, providing welcome relief from monthly cramps that left me prostrate in bed for three days, alternately fainting or vomiting. At 28, however, I had the sudden impulse to find a more natural solution to my menstrual woes. I came off the pill, bought myself a menstrual cup, and began exploring yoga, herbs, a life without coffee (temporarily), full moon circles, Red Tents, and natural gynecology workshops. I read everything I could get my hands on that promised to reset my dysfunctional cycle, including Red Moon by Miranda Gray.

I became a doula and began accompanying friends through pregnancy, abortions, and gynecological disorders including endometriosis, PCOS, and uterine cysts. The more I accompanied these processes the more convinced I became of the need for us to reconnect with our bodies and recover our autonomy. So when a training to become a Moon Mother — someone (usually a cis woman) who feels a particular devotion to the “divine feminine” and feels called to accompany other women with similar spiritual leanings, and to host individual and group Womb Blessings and Womb Healings — coincided with a family visit to Brussels, I put my skepticism aside and signed up for the two-day initiation into the world of Womb Blessings.

Somewhere between the initiation ceremony and the prescribed activity of coloring in a menstrual cycle mandala, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the biological essentialism that was being preached from a pulpit adorned with crystals and porcelain fairies, with the idea that my whole world should be centered around my womb and its monthly whims, and with the imperative to embrace the “divine feminine” and rediscover my “authentic femininity,” as if my authenticity and my womb were one and the same.

Somewhere between the initiation ceremony and the prescribed activity of coloring in a menstrual cycle mandala, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable.
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Discomfort turned to anger as we were repeatedly told that our “women’s problems” stem from being disconnected and alienated from our wombs, our authentic femininity having been suppressed in us as children by both our families and wider society. There was never any mention of the system that causes this disconnect — you know, the white imperialist, capitalist, hetero- and cis-normative patriarchy that has forced us into binary conceptions of gender and sexuality, and submitted us to a multitude of oppressions. Only that our wombs held the answers to all our problems.

I was baffled by this omission. Perhaps the existence of structural violence, inequality, and reproductive injustice was taken as a given? Perhaps it was unnecessary to mention the many factors that harm our bodies, regulate the functions of our uteri, and determine who or what can enter and exit our vaginas? Superfluous the discuss things like violence, discrimination, sexual abuse, rape culture, lack of access to contraception, adequate health care and comprehensive sex education, restricted or criminalized abortion, and personhood laws that impact the lives of menstruators and pregnant people across the world on a daily basis?

Perhaps this was all just too messy, political, and depressing for a space that focused on “purity and grace,” where the answer to “women’s problems” was to build a global legion of empowered women vibrating with the divine feminine womb energy, spreading love, light, and kindness wherever they go? I could have done with a bit less purity and a lot more mess, so I decided to cut my losses and leave.

I never expected I’d be so angry and frustrated with what was supposed to be an empowering women’s retreat. For a long time I wondered if I was too cynical, or if angry feminist activism had taken me too far. Or is there something at the heart of menstrual spirituality that just doesn’t sit easy with my feminist principles?

Chris Bobel, in her book New Blood (2010), characterizes the menstrual spirituality movement as a branch of feminist activism that began in the 1970s and continues to the present day, despite occupying a marginal, if not irrelevant, position within feminism. It is led by mostly white, middle class, cis, able-bodied women, who use books, websites, workshops, retreats, womyn festivals, Red Tents, and full moon circles to reach their followers, blurring the lines between spiritual leaders, healers, artisans, and entrepreneurs.

Miranda Gray is just one purveyor of menstrual spirituality. The book that launched her career as a menstrual guru, Red Moon, was published in 1994. Gray has since published three more books, developed her own menstrual tracking app, The Flow, gives multiple Moon Mother, Red Moon, and other trainings across the world each year, and hosts five global Womb Blessings a year via meditations that can be downloaded from her website. According to Gray there are currently more than 3,000 practicing Moon Mothers across 60 countries and and an estimated 180,000 women participating in each Global Womb Blessing. As global women’s movements go, it is not insignificant. It’s relationship to feminism, however, is questionable.

Why We Must Stop Calling Menstruation A ‘Women’s Issue’

I spoke to other Moon Mothers and discovered that I am not the only one to have come out the other side with doubts.

Cecilia Perez is a founding member of a local collective, Guatemala Menstruante, which educates members and others on issues relating to menstruation and sexual health, provides educational workshops on the menstrual cycle, advocates for youth sexual education, and makes and distributes pads in Guatemala City.

Cecilia became a certified Moon Mother in 2016 at a training in Colombia. She was interested in the training as a way to develop new skills for accompanying women in Guatemala. “I had no kind of accompaniment or training when I started out with Guatemala Menstruante, we just learned as we went along, reading whatever we could and sharing experiences,” she says. “Reading Red Moon, it was great to see that someone else had been working on the same issues.”

Don’t Judge A Girl For What’s Between Her Legs

Orlagh McIlveen is an engineer from Ireland and a certified Moon Mother. She has a history of disruptive menstrual problems and, for a long time, used hormonal contraception to correct them. Following a miscarriage in 2015, she began searching for ways to heal and feel better about her body and her womb. “I read a lot, including books by Miranda Gray. I decided that since Miranda was coming to Ireland for the first time, I would go along,” she says. “I didn’t fully understand what a Moon Mother was, but I’m very glad I did it. (…) Connecting with other people with negative menstrual experiences and linking with other people who had miscarried or had trouble conceiving is very helpful for me.”

While both Cecilia and Orlagh remain connected with the other Moon Mothers, and offer individual and collective womb blessings on a voluntary basis or as part of their general accompaniment, they also express doubts around the tendencies toward essentialism and universalizing the “female experience,” the lack of inclusion of diverse identities, and the accessibility of the trainings.

Orlagh questions the movement’s strong aversion to hormonal contraceptives. “[They] are very useful for all sorts of reasons, and while they can disrupt the body’s normal hormonal systems, that’s kind of the point. A focus on ‘only what’s natural’ is fine if that works for you, as an individual, but not as a blanket, ‘This is the One True Way’,” she says.

Regarding the participation of trans women, queer, and non-binary folk, both Cecilia and Orlagh agree that while the Moon Mother movement does not define itself as trans-exclusive, the language and concepts used are couched in binary conceptions of gender and essentialist assumptions around women’s biology. According to Orlagh, “while Miranda is very clear that the womb blessing is for anyone with womb energy, rather than anyone with a womb, I think it needs to be clearer that this is not a trans-exclusionary movement — because for some people within the menstrual spirituality movement it is. [They] make claims of difference between ‘real’ women and trans women (…) The odor of TERF-ism [that] surrounds the movement as a whole really needs to be addressed.” In their practices, Orlagh and Cecilia are clear that participation is open to people of all identities, minus cis men.

The odor of TERF-ism that surrounds the movement as a whole really needs to be addressed.
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Orlagh and I both also questioned the accessibility of the trainings we attended. While in Colombia the five organizations involved in hosting the event went to great effort to ensure women from across the country, including indigenous women and women of African descent, could participate, helping with travel, accommodation, and fees — but these considerations were apparently absent from either the Brussels or Dublin training. Orlagh says, “The cost of the training in itself will exclude many people from participating. I wish there was a way make it more accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford the hundreds of euros for the course, plus travel and accommodation. (There is a 10% discount for those on benefits, but it’s still a very hefty sum).”

More than 40 women attended the workshop in Brussels, each paying 225 euros and above, depending on the package they opted for. The workshop ran over Monday and Tuesday, which meant either you were on holidays, like me; a student; could afford to take two days off work; or could make suitable childcare arrangements. These factors might, in part, explain why participants in the Brussels training were predominantly white and middle class. According to Bobel, this participant profile reflects the overall trend in the movement: of all the menstrual spiritual activists Bobel interviewed for her research, 92% were white and 78% self-identified as middle or upper middle class.

If you add up economic accessibility, the essentialist overtones, and the majority participation of white women, what you are left with is a movement defined by rather considerable privilege with poor capacity for self-reflection or criticism. That this privilege so often goes unchecked in these circles also leads to widespread cultural appropriation. It is common for menstrual spiritual gatherings to take place in Red Tents or Moon Lodges, and for participants to be adorned with bindis and their spaces decorated with mandalas, yin yang, OM, and other “exotic” spiritual symbols. This mix and match of different cultural practices, rituals, and spiritual beliefs often occurs removed from their original context, with a minimum awareness of their spiritual meaning, and used for the benefit of people who have little or no connection with the culture or spirituality.

Pagan feminist Lasara Firefox Allen is a harsh critic of cultural appropriation in feminist spirituality, and insists on the need to decolonize spiritual practices. “For white people it means (…) paying attention when someone says that you are practicing their tradition without consciousness, relational awareness, or consent. It means taking seriously the topic of appropriation,” she writes in Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality (2016). “It means not casually ‘god collecting,’ or cherry picking from the spiritual systems and cosmologies.”

Bobel is equally critical of the tendency toward cultural appropriation. She writes in New Blood:

“When it feels good, traditions of their culture can be deployed in the service of our self-improvement. To demarcate and sustain these separations, race and class privileges are invoked, though often not consciously. Indeed, unspoken privilege is the engine that propels feminist-spiritualist menstrual activism. The project of self-improvement, after all, is itself a privilege and one that takes cultural capital to enact.”

Despite my discomfort and cynicism regarding the Moon Mother experience, it became quite clear to me over the course of my day at the workshop how moved the women around me were, how deeply they needed a space where they could connect with their own bodies and other women.

I am sure that if I had done the training two years previously I probably would have felt the same. I had my Red Moon moment at the very beginning of this journey, when celebrating, rather than cursing, my period was still a mind-blowing concept. Cecilia and I both agreed that it was a necessary step in overcoming all the shame and aversion to our menstruation and our bodies that had been drilled into us from an early age.

But it was just a moment. As we kept learning, reading, sharing with other women, and participating in feminist activism, we became more aware of diverse identities, and of the daily challenges many women face that prevent them from “embracing their menstruation,” “flowing” with their cyclical energies, or discovering the “divine feminine.”

Why We Need To Talk About Queer And Trans People And Birth Control

Bobel’s principal critique of the movement is that it rarely, if ever, transcends “life politics,” instead remaining rooted in the individual search for self-improvement that is accessible to few. Furthermore, it sidesteps or ignores uncomfortable truths about the nature and origin of women’s oppression. Nevertheless, you could argue that the very act of gathering women together to learn from each other, share experiences, improve their body literacy, and recover autonomy over their sexual and reproductive health is in fact profoundly political.

Cecilia’s experience, and the spread of menstrual spirituality across the Americas, also challenges the assumption that this is a movement only for white, western, middle class women. In her accompaniment of people through pregnancy loss and gynecological illnesses, she focuses on helping them reconnect, heal, and overcome feelings of guilt, largely influenced by the culture of shame and secrecy that surrounds all aspects of sexuality in Guatemala. These actions defy the patriarchy’s attempts to keep us separate from each other, in competition with each other, and firmly within the control of the medical industrial complex.

The challenge is to ensure that our actions transcend the individual goal of self-improvement toward collective social actions. To use the energy generated in these gatherings to support our activism around sexual health and reproductive justice and in breaking down gender binaries. These spaces cannot, therefore, be void of a feminist political analysis that situates our personal experience within the context of a global system of repression and struggles for reproductive justice. It is only through that analysis that they will become truly inclusionary.