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ï»¿THREADS feminist health, politics and experiences

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Second edition, second printing Donji BudaÄki/Bristol/Sunderland/Zagreb, June 2018 First edition completed and published by Lisa January 2008. 2nd edition ï¬rst printed June 2016 by Active Distribution and Å to ÄitaÅ¡? Second printing of this edition June 2018 ISBN 978-1-909798-08-3 www.activedistribution.org www.stocitas.org

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Contents Introduction. 1 Part One. Changes During the Menstrual Cycle. 7 Days and doctrines. 8 A hierarchy of âsignsâ. 10 Descartes, rationalism and Cartesian dualism. 10 Signs and Cyclical Observations. 12 Blood. 12 Dry days and cervical ï¬uid. 18 Slippery, wet ï¬uid. 20 Blood. 21 Sanitary protection (they call it). 26 Position of the cervix and os. 29 Body temperature (and moving into secondary signs). 30 And other âsecondary signsâ (so-called). 31 More (so-called) secondary signs. 32 Part Two. Anatomy. 33 The biomedical body. 33 Other understandings. 36 The women of Eisenach. 36

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Chinese Medicine. 36 The Warlpiri. 37 Female anatomy: feminist redeï¬nitions. 39 Female anatomy: some on the history of the sexes. 40 Female anatomy: some on the history of sexology. 43 âFemaleâ anatomy: some on sex and gender. 48 Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Some things. 57 The clitoral junction. 59 The glans. 59 The inner lips or âlabia minoraâ. 61 The hood. 62 The bridle, or frenulum. 62 The fork or âfourchetteâ. 62 The hymen. 64 The shaft. 69 The legs, or crura. 69 The bulbs. 69 The urethral sponge. 70 The G-spot. 71 The paraurethral glands and female ejaculation. 72 The vulvovaginal or Bartholins glands. 73 The perineal sponge. 73 The pelvic ï¬oor muscles. 74 The suspensary ligaments and round ligament. 75 The nerves. 75 The blood vessels. 77 Female genital cutting. 78 Internal anatomy. 80 Self exam. 85 Part Three. Models and Metaphors. 93 The medical narrative. 95 Reductionism and bio-medical narratives. 99 Some about the history of hormones. 99 FAM (Fertility Awareness Method). 102 FAM Basic ideas. 104 Cervical ï¬uid. 104

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Position of cervix and os. 107 Peak day of cervical ï¬uid. 107 Temperature. 107 FAM: Putting it all together. 109 Conception and gender selection. 110 The idea and practise of FAM. 110 Beyond thermostats. 111 Synchronicity. 112 Luna Yoga. 112 Yoga at Sambhavna. 116 Lunaception. 120 Metaphors in the medical model. 123 Menstruation. 123 Menopause. 125 The egg and the sperm. 125 âOtherâ narratives. 127 Part Four. The politics of PMS. 131 Appendix. Questions and Mass Observation. 163 Sources. 169 Reading. 183 Books. 183 Zines and pamphlets. 189 Articles. 190 Websites, groups and other resources. 191 Contact and thanks. 193

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Preface Itâs been ten years since this zine/book was put together and went out into the world. Itâs had a good few reprints, itâs available as a pdf (threadsbook.org) and has reached and resonated with more people, and people across a wider geography than I could have ever imagined. A collective in Barcelona are also in the process of translating it into Spanish. In these ten years conversation around feminist health and around gender and race have expanded in all kinds of ways. To some extent the possibility to share information has also increased with the exponential growth of the internet. Iâm grateful for the hard, often dangerous, work and emotional labour thatâs continued to be done by genderqueer, gender non-binary and trans people to broaden understandings of, and generate more possibilities for freedoms around our various embodied and gendered experiences. Threads always aimed to avoid essentialism (the idea that any particular biological anatomy or processes are conï¬ated with any particular gender). It continues to speak to various gender identities inhabiting different bodies, even though the deconstruction of sex and gender and the quest for language that embraces that complexity, has increased in sophistication. It feels important to acknowledge that over the past ten years Iâve also had increased access to conversation, thinking and resources about colonialism, processes of decolonisation and whiteness. I want to express gratitude for the way Iâve continued to be inspired by the legacy of general, and speciï¬cally reproductive/health justice activism and scholarship of people of colour. Both these areas of expanded awareness would be represented differently were I to put Threads together now. Still, it stands as a gathering of different thoughts and ideas collated by one person at a given point in time. It hopes to be a part of continuing to generate dialogue about our diverse lived experiences, and the social justice/change that can be activated from complex, wide understandings. The original content remains the same, just with some edits and additions to the reading/resources section. Thanks to everyone who has been in touch to give responses or share thoughts;

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all the collective exchange as part of making sense of our lived realities and mobilising for more well being and health (in the broadest sense of the word) has felt energising. Iâd like to take this chance to thank everyone again who was involved in Threads coming together in the ï¬rst place (see thanks list at the back). And additional thanks to Active/Sto citas? for picking up the baton with a new cover design, reprinting and distro support. April 2018

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Introduction This zine (that has expanded to book size) came from personal experiences, sense making, struggling, questioning, thinking and talking which became the content of workshops that usually got called something like âexperiences and politics of the menstrual cycleâ. It always felt like a bit of a challenge to know what to call the workshops (the term âworkshopâ always felt problematic as well; the spaces were nothing to do with work or shops). I wanted to try and make it clear that it wasnât information/ discussion that was just âcelebratingâ the men- strual cycle or talking about menstruation in any one kind of way. Not all women menstruate. Not all women feel it is something they are interested in, or inter- ested in, in a discursive kind of way. There are inï¬nite ways we inhabit our bod- ies and really broad discussion is needed to do justice to that diversity. Not all women who menstruate have similar cyclical experiences. There is no ârealâ or ârightâ experience of cyclicity women should have. Workshops were to talk about changes that can happen during the menstrual cycle. I remember how massive it felt when I learned that information initially. And every workshop someone would say that they couldnât believe they didnât know about some of this stuff, and ask why didnât we get taught this stuff at school. Workshops were to talk about how cycle awareness can help us to connect to different cyclical experiences, energies and needs (especially pre- menstrual ones) as best as possible in a culture that denies those changes. They were to talk about how an awareness of cycle changes can give women information about their fertility. Workshops were to talk about how changes in the menstrual cycle can show up the way cultural structures and institutions are constraining and oppressive. And that social change can come out of those realisations. 1

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It always felt like cramming a massive amount of stuff into a couple of hours or so, and a good amount of time in front of the photocopier beforehand trying to make handouts to cover/ integrate some of the more practical information with political thinking. Part of the motivation for this zine/ book was to have some of that info, thinking and different personal experiences together in one place and so that ideas could be shared this way with more women. It was also to pull info together from sources that arenât always so easy to access because they are out of print, or not so easy to get hold of in the UK, or just arenât available because of the way learning is institutionalised. (A good friend smuggled books out of a University library for me that I wouldnât otherwise have got to read). This is an attempt to collate stuff but there are gaps and of course itâs really subjective. None of it (and especially not Parts One and Four which are more personal) is trying to be remotely comprehensive or representative (either gener- ally or even of myself). Obviously itâs part of wider discussion that can/ needs to be had thatâs of the diversity of experiences. Because the zine is something be- tween workshop handouts and a piece of writing it uses some elements of mon- tage. It made me think a lot again about the process of putting things together side by side and in a certain order and how that affects things and their mean- ing. Also in the process of putting things together I tried as best as possible not to pull things out of their original context in a way that would distort them. I hope the information about the Warlpiri included in Part Two, that is part of discussing the differences there are in understandings of the body, feels respectful enough even though it is excerpted from an essay where the author already felt she had had to condense information more than she would have liked to. Part Four about so-called PMS mixes passages drawn from feminist writing about PMS with quotes and some writing Iâve done over the years. The writing is a few lines, notes, sometimes just one line, taken from things Iâd scribbled over time, edited together. None of it was ever written as a larger bit of writing. As with other quotes in this zine Iâd really recommend folk to read the books and essays that they are from. I just pulled some key ideas out. Part Four about so-called PMS doesnât really discuss self-help in the sense of diet and herbs for example. Of course food, herbs, yoga asanas etc are 2

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fundamental and transformative (and there is related information in lots of the books that are in the reading list at the back) but the discussion is more about how and why a breadth of experiences are deï¬ned as illness by the medical establishment. This part also talks about the politics of what it is that gets called ânormalâ and âabnormalâ. Part Four includes a passage about the sugar industry. I wanted to note here that acknowledgement of brutal history and economics applies to other indus- tries, like cotton, coffee and tobacco. The zine contents are from all over but a lot of the information is drawn from the feminist health movement in the UK and US in the late 1960âs, 70âs and 80âs which was part of a larger feminist movement. Although it can be said there wasnât enough consciousness about class and race in the feminist movement (sometimes referred to as second wave feminism, the ï¬rst referring to the suf- fragettes), sexism and other oppression under patriarchy were being named and challenged. Feminists began examining centuries of patriarchy, of women living under male dominated religions and state institutions. They looked at the role of wom- en throughout history and an area of research focused especially on the Europe- an Witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries where thousands and thousands of women were killed. This systematic and brutal attack was orchestrated by the Christian church as it consolidated its male god-headed religion over the older pagan spirituality, and as written by Federici in âCaliban and the Witchâ, by the emerging capitalist system as it subordinated womenâs power and autonomy that stood in the way of the imposition of this new economic imperative. In the Witch hunts it was especially women with the knowledge of herbs and healing arts that were burned at the stake. Ehrenriech and English in âWitches, Healers and Midwivesâ describe how this was part of paving the way for the new male-dominated medical establishment to assert itself. The feminist health movement, as part of that wider feminist movement, particularly addressed how patriarchal oppression related to womenâs health and health treatment they received. Consciousness raising groups met. Women discussed their personal experiences, named the power dynamics inherant in the Dr./ patient relationship (one which is still totally dominant in conventional medicine and frustratingly replicated in a lot of alternative medicine as well) and saught more radical and womanâcentred, self-help approaches. Some women did their own historical, medical and naturopathic research. Some women liter- ally redrew female anatomy and expanded on discussion about sexuality based on their own observations (see Part Two). In the US women did self-help work- shops and set up self-help clinics in colleges and community centres. 3

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Unlike the self-help movement which combined political awareness with vari- ous holistic healing approaches, a lot of alternative medicine and natural healing now, though more holistic in many ways, doesnât engage with wider political and social realities. Profound healing practises and treatments like yoga, mas- sage and herbal medicine are assimilated into the culture and practised and prescribed as remedies to âcureâ people individually or support what gets called âpersonal healthâ. They only go part of the way to real and radical (from the Latin âradixâ meaning root) healing which needs to consider and alter all the factors that relate to and affect our health. The individualising of health and the way it depoliticises people is seen acutely in a lot of the New Age movement. Individuals can consume ideas and merchandise for personal healing or âpersonal growthâ with no political aware- ness. The powers of physical, emotional, spiritual healing are distorted and sold to the individual. We are led to believe we can heal âourâ lives and vital discus- sion is shut down. You are encouraged, for example, to call to the Universe for a better job, a partner, personal success, without questioning the structures or ideologies we live in/with, or analysing the consequences of a particular kind of western comfort to other folk around the world. New Age ideology isnât just simplistic and dangerous in this way but often also involves a direct theft of traditions from other cultures, especially ones from First Nations, without concern about misap- propriation or colonialism. This zine is a record, a document in a way. It is things that have been found, written and put together over a long period of time. In the workshop spaces 4

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there was the freedom to talk about something, move to something else and then come back to it. I moved backwards and forward between stuff (and forgot things and remembered them in the middle of something else!). For a more ï¬xed printed form I decided on these four parts. Itâs intended to be read from the start to the ï¬nish. I thought it would be interesting for Part 1 to be read before any in- formation about anatomy and medicine (Parts Two and Three). It could be really interesting to read Part One and experience one or two menstrual cycles with just that information to hand ï¬rst before reading the rest. And itâs useful for the information about medical models (Part Three) to be read before thought about so-called PMS (Part Four). Links that run through the zine are a kind of echo of moving between things in workshops, and a way of making connections in the context of this printed format. Arrows show whether a link is to a sentence/ idea that is on a page ahead i.e. -20> (see page 20) or whether it refers back to a sentence/ idea on a previous page i.e. <2- (see page 2). Ignore arrows that show links that come from earlier pages i.e.-2> (from page 2) or that come back from pages later on i.e. <20- (from page 20). Most quotes and all the images are scanned in from original texts. Quotes that arenât scanned are in quotation marks or have been layed out in a differ- ent font. Everything else in this font or in this font in italics is by me apart from the writing on pages 51, 67, 68 and 142. To check the sources you can look up page numbers in the âsourcesâ at the end. I wanted to mention that I struggled with the tone of voice in some parts. I felt like I wanted to talk about things in the way I did in workshops. But the process of putting ideas into writing made me fall back sometimes into old ways I was taught to write at school. I hope it reads ok. Even though workshops and this zine were/are about the menstrual cycle, and the menstrual cycle in a political context, itâs really also a starting point because discussion about the menstrual cycle intersects with discussion about sexism, racism, class, the effects of this proï¬t-based economy, damage to the environment etc. Because everything is interrelated. common. difference. the mix for ideas to more fullness. exploration. to meet the breadth of question for all life. our lives. struggle. you want to see change. you feel tired. you forget. you remember. you are re-energised. it falls away. you ï¬nd it again. roads in. threads. 5

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Part One Changes During the Menstrual Cycle Part 1 is about some of the different physical, emotional and energetic changes that can be experienced during the menstrual cycle. I found a lot of the information in Part 1 initially through learning the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) which is a method of contraception based on knowing where you are in your cycle by observing the changes, combined with a set of ârulesâ to follow to avoid getting pregnant. Thereâs information about FAM in the middle of Part 3. Even though I ï¬rst came into contact with the information and ideas through FAM (and initially started âchartingâ my cycle to use as contraception), the con- nection I made to my cycle, realising the changes and the need for me to honour those rhythms in a culture that denies them was really the wider, more profound learning or awareness I gained. I canât remember the exact chronology now: when I ï¬rst learned about the cyclical changes; where it met with other big learning curves about how the structures and institutions of this linear, capitalist, patriarchal culture affect us; where it met with connections to larger rhythms of change - the phases of the moon, the turn of the seasons - that this culture is so divorced from. I remember though when lots of the the information below was new to me, feeling like I kept making new realisations every menstrual cycle about changes that happened (obvious and more subtle ones), how changes connected to each other and about the relationship between the experience of those changes and the culture we live in. Because it feels like there is the potential for so much really broad collective discussion to come out of some of the information about changes that can be experienced in the cycle, I wanted to try and wrest that information from FAM sources out of the context of just talking about âfertilityâ. Part 1 is a bit of an ex- 7

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periment to try and look at menstrual experiences â some of what can be seen, sensed, felt during the menstrual cycle â to see how those things interrelate with each other and interrelate with the environments we live in - natural and social. To see how they could be perceived, talked about, explored in a way that is usually closed off because they are talked about in terms of reproduction. Of course what we see, sense, feel during a cycle isnât neutral or objective and for lots of women it is intimately bound in with the consciousness of the possibility of becoming pregnant. I still thought it might be interesting/ useful to look at the experiences of changes in the menstrual cycle, without the usual emphasis on what it is changes are supposed to be indicating is happening inside the body in terms of fertility and reproduction. A good way to get a sense of your cycle and what happens in your cycle based on some of the changes talked about here is to make daily observations of what you notice and keep a note of them. Itâs easy to forget when it was that you think you were aware of something, and it can be useful to look back over a cycle and maybe notice things that way as well. I kept different records, jour- nals, charts. It varied over the years. My cycle and cycle length changed. That probably happened for a few different reasons but deï¬nitely in part because of the way I was engaging with it, and with myself and with things related. Part 1, like part 4, which mixes information, quotes and writing is personal and subjective. There are gaps. Itâs not trying to be deï¬nitive or conclusive at all. Itâs just part of a much bigger collective discussion about shared and differing cyclical experiences that can be had. Some of the information and ideas are re- turned to in parts 2, 3 and especially in part 4 about premenstrual experiences. Days and doctrines The menstrual cycle, as a continuous round of events, doesnât really have a deï¬nitive or objective or factual start or end point. There are experiences, events and signiï¬cant points or phases that can occur and recur from menarche (the beginning of menstruation) to menopause (the end of menstruation). Modern western medicine says the ï¬rst day of menstrual bleeding is Day 1 of the menstrual cycle. Chinese medicine divides the menstrual cycle into four phases. Modern western medicine (although it does acknowledge more variation), still often talks about the average and regular, ânormalâ cycle length being 28 days. In actual fact cycle lengths vary a lot between women (and can vary in length for an individual woman cycle by cycle for a whole range of reasons; ex- citement, stress, diet etc). Cycle lengths can range from what get called âshortâ 8

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cycles (21 days) to what get called âlongâ cycles (34 days or more). They arenât ï¬xed phenomena. 104< Some womenâs menstrual cycles follow a lunar rhythm, bleeding at either 111260< the full or the dark moon for example, and there are linguistic links between the words for moon, month, menses, measurement and menstruation. The doc- 95< trine of the so-called ânormalâ 28 day cycle needs to be challenged though as a medical construct that women are measured to and measure themselves to because it ï¬xes an idea of ânormalâ and ânot normalâ when there is no ânormalâ. It reinforces the notion that womenâs bodies are isolated entities that tick (literally) in the right or wrong way. Time In Egypt around 1500 BC the shadow or sundial clock divided daylight into 10 âhoursâ with two twilight hours. The clock was orientated east and west in the morning and an elevated crossbar cast a moving shadow that marked the âhoursâ. The clock was turned in the opposite direction at midday to measure the afternoon âhoursâ. The length of the hours themselves varied dependant on the length of sunlight of the time of year. In the UK local clocks were set to local sundialsâ time and showed local time. It wasnât until the coming of the railways that time was standardised every- where. The Great western Railway was the ï¬rst to adopt London time in Novem- ber 1840 and other railways followed suit. By 1855, 98% of all clocks in Britain were set to Greenwich Mean Time. In an interim period some town clocks had two hands showing London and Local time. By 1880 under the Statute (Deï¬ni- tion of Time) Act, British standard time became law. 9

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A hierarchy of âsignsâ Changes that we can notice during the menstrual cycle get talked about in Fertility Awareness as âprimaryâ and âsecondaryâ signs. So-called âprimaryâ signs are changes in cervical ï¬uid changes in the position and shape of the cervix and the os changes in body temperature. So-called âsecondaryâ signs include variation in energy levels, sleep needs, 95< dreams, sexual desire, emotional sensitivity or resilience, creativity, food de- sires/cravings/dislikes, abdominal bloating, breast tenderness, so-called âmid- cycleâ pain, spotting, ï¬uid retention and other cyclically related experiences of for example migraine, epilepsy, allergies. This division of âsignsâ we can sense, feel, see, observe, comes from and at the same time reinforces the stronghold of western, patriarchal culture and think- ing now which separates everything apart and creates particular hierarchies of precedence, worth and power. Things are split apart, simpliï¬ed, (mis)associated and ordered like material over non-material, in other instances, mind over body, intellect over emotion, and, in the terms of this ideology, male over female. Descartes (1569-1650) rationalism and Cartesian dualism. ââ¦I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind (mens sive animus), understanding or reason,-â âI have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of the body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I (that is my mind, by which I am when I am) am entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it.â 10

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He wanted to be âleading the mind away from the sensesâ. He was strongly rationalist in this belief in maths as a unifying philosophy but he was not com- pletely rationalist; Descartes believed in God and saw scientiï¬c knowledge as coming directly from him. His delineation of the mind as something other than matter means, unlike modern science, he did not belive in the purely material. Descartes expanded on the tradition of scepticism in Western philosophy that stretched back to Plato and before. His desire to describe the physical world and knowledge in immutable mathmatical terms led him to âsearch for certaintyâ to the point of questioning how he could be certain that he existed.He believed that he knew he existed because he could concieve of it. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. He is still described as rationalism 1 Philos. the theory that reason rather than sense-experience is the foundation of certainty and knowledge. Expounded notably by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, the theory emphasizes a priori rather than empirical con- cepts (opp. EMPIRICISM). 2 Theol. the practice of treating reason as the ulti- mate authority in religion. 3 Philos. a belief in reason rather than religion as the guiding principle in life. 4 The practice of using reason or reasoning as a basis for action or thought. Again, as with Descartes, his philosophical tenets are part of a larger theo- logical discussion about the mind and the soul, nonetheless he makes the sig- niï¬cant schisms and separations. 11

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The so-called âprimaryâ and secondaryâ signs of fertility awareness are ex- 104< amples of this splitting apart of lived experience- the body, the emotions etc as if they are separate not having any kind of complex interrelationship. These divided experiences are then discussed in terms of their relation to reproduction only. âPrimaryâ signs here are the ones considered to be not only most signiï¬- cant to the singular narrative of reproduction, but are notably also the ones that are more physical, measurable, veriï¬able; on the whole less psychic, emotional. For some women, some of the so-called âsecondaryâ signs are actually the more signiï¬cant (primary) things they notice/ engage with cyclically. The language used to categorise experiences can powerfully shape the way we come to per- ceive of and validate those experiences. Signs and cyclical observations that smells like the soil red on your ï¬ngers Blood The length of bleeding, texture, colour, smell and taste of menstrual blood is personal to each woman and so is the experience of bleeding; some women feel strong cramps, others hardly notice that they are bleeding. Menstrual blood usually lasts between 1 and 7 days. Chinese medicine gives consideration to blood and the quality of menstrual blood as an indicator of the constitution and state of health of the body. and youâre in the toilets. automated water at the sink. you dance about trying to get it working. banana scented hand soap. mirrors to mirrors. and behind op- posite a woman is washing the blood out of the back of her dress. rubbing at the brown stain with wet loo roll. rubbing at her dress. ï¬owery blue. we catch each otherâs eyes. 12

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(â¦that youâre sure everyone else can smell. so strong and sweet you look about you on the tube, the bus sometimes, wonder if anyone else is bleeding. this silent thing (silenced)) 13

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âI was staying at my grandparents house when I ï¬rst bled. I awoke to ï¬nd 37< blood in my knickers and asked my grandma if it was my period. She had a look and said it was. Everyone made a bit of a fuss of me then, by rushing out to get sanitary towels and making sure I was comfortable. My Dad got a bit soppy say- ing that his little girl was growing up and becoming a woman and gave me hugs. I really like this memory as it made it a good occasion. My Grandma advised me not to walk barefeet on the cold kitchen ï¬oor which I thought funny but did it anyway and would leap from the hall carpet to the kitchen rug for a couple of years to come.â 14

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âI was warned that swimming, hair washing and plunging hands in to cold water or ï¬our(??) were taboo at this timeâ through glastonbury. new age tourism. gemstones ripped from who knows where. ornaments. trinkets. global plunder. shop shop. myriad titles A-Z sick spiritual hotch potch to sell. stolen begged borrowed. too much and so obviously not enough. tweak twiddle. this and that. X path, Y remedy. isolated. change not nothing this the root. to the roots. the roots. this culture. we ate bad chips and veggie sausage rolls in the centre of the town. no sleep delirious. sat on the pavement, ate crap chips and watched a bit. climbed glastonbury tor. mound upright in the landscape. you see it from miles around and see for miles around. red and black burnet moths again (same as on the downs and arthurs seat later summer). read about the christian pilgrims climbing the tor with dried peas in their shoes. how the scape lay below water. an island once you would have had to sail to. all in the mix now history and what got overlayed there, stamped on there, said of. pagan pre-christian. christian abbey. ley lines, arthurian claim.... walked down and paid in to the chalice well below. she put lilac forms in front of us we couldnât be bothered with. tax exemption something she explained. money money. we werenât here to think about fucking money. sweet sour she said (middle class new age capitalist softley smiley) âif you donât want to ï¬ll it in thatâs ï¬neâ. clearly not ï¬ne. it clearly wasnât ï¬ne. paid our Â£2.50 in. and were offered plastic bottles to take water. rows and rows of plastic bottles for sale. 2 sizes. more plastic. you know you think why are they plastic fucking bottles. youâre reminded of other same same new agey places. signs every 10 feet. rel- axy relaxy. this area. that area. always the same kind of colours and fonts. prod- uct. sculpted attraction. 17

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we walked round most of the gardens. squatted by the water a while. the spring. and took a taste. the chalybeate. really something. rust rust red iron. we drank more. and said god itâs right like your period. itâs totally like how you smell when you bleed. and the taste you get in your mouth metal. and we wondered what it would be like to drink it after youâd bled. tonic. rust rust red iron. blood water blood. through. â...it is also known as the red or blood spring....â and I remembered it today lying back to the ground a while then walking by the old wick chalybeate spring round the road here. st anns well park. the light was going. colder wind with the days drawing in. I hopped over the small fence, picked a can out of the thin stream. carried it out past the elm and the oak. found a bin for it. wiped my hand dry and smelled my ï¬ngers. and there. rust red iron. blood water blood again. there that smell. energy. there. rust red iron. water spring. water blood water. smell familiar. familiar smell. Dry days and cervical ï¬uid 29 >< 89 < Cervical ï¬uid, secreted from glands in the cervix, changes during the men- 104 strual cycle. 18

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and all these years you never got told to celebrate. all those years. âdischargeâ, they said. vaginal mucous, you got told. like snot. like sickness. dirty. you worried. and all those years (you think about language) they told you of seminal ï¬uid. rich. virile. millions. every day. production. you with your mucous to hide. perfume. make invisible. 19

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Slippery, wet ï¬uid Further into your cycle you can notice cervical ï¬uid that resembles slippery salty your cunt like the sea. seaweed. smells so clear and fresh like fruit. like sea spray. like a cave. like a mouth to kiss with (you are told to forget about. to only fuck with like in the movies). You can notice a day (which will be approximately 14 days before you next 107< bleed) where there is the most slippery wet ï¬uid present. After that really wet stretchy ï¬uid your cunt might feel dry or similar again to how it feels for the time just after you bleed, and it will stay like that until your next bleeding. Though 20

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birdwing birdwing sound nothing else for miles around quiet this time when everything is dark so still. the season. Blood sink down your blood might come like a rich outbreath like the sea just like breathing so slow and such a peacefulness how hard to embrace this that is disallowed wind in and out rhythm like a snake about to shed itâs old skin (can sleep for days then re emerges) bury me in leaves and leave me be curled up like a small thing silent tail wrapped round yourself AJ: The menses is a very powerful time, when youâre connected to your deepest sense of self.... but weâre not in an inner-directed world, we have to be external; we have to answer the phone - basically weâre thrust into this frenzied capitalist world - LL: All the stress, the caï¬eine, the work, and the pressure make the menses all the more un- comfortable. The fact that you have no time to go into yourself and actually rejuvenate makes it worse. And of course cramping and frustration are just going to feed oï¬ each other. Everything is compounded; thereâs no time for regenera- tion, like animals do who are more in tune with themselves - who are not blinded by the 9-to-5 paycheck chase. 21

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âI am very angry with the way wider culture and the media deal with menstrua- tion as companies compete to hide and control our menstrual cycles through invisible sanitary wear, drugs and deodarants so that we can all carry on normal lives as if nothing has changed. Fuck that! I donât want to live my life this way. I feel that our wider capitalist culture alienates us from our bodies as we are encouraged to manipulate and control our natural processes so that we can function in the workforce and so that we can appear attractive to the opposite sex by spending vast amounts of money on drugs and cosmetics to âlook and smell goodâ even when you feel crap, as the fashion industry dictates.â ââ¦the roller skating, volleyball playing, lycra wearing models are ridiculous too. I just want to watch telly when Iâm on and eat lots of chocolate. Itâs not that Iâm afraid of leakage itâs just I havenât got the inclination to go skydiving at allâ that sanitary towel disposal bag. crazy how the image logo hasnât changed in decades â cornered a market behind closed cubicle doors, and havenât had to endlessly repackage it. so you are still looking at that crinoline lady. black and white. waxy paper bags â like you used to at school. back when the last of those towel incinerators used to hang on the wall in the loos. âI do recall being upset by being taunted by the boys in the neighbourhood whoâ¦would shout and ask me about jam sandwiches.â canât remember if it was actually still working that incinerator. I think it was and we used to burn all sorts of shit in it. cold toilets. you used to stand chatting, run- ning your hands under the hot tap. the comfort of hot water to the corridors cold, and the long days, holding. stiff school shirts that used to chaff at your nipples as they opened and grew. before you did the whole bra thing and the numbers counted. 34AA 34A 36B. youâd say have you started yet? theyâd say have you started yet? 23

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âTo cope with the inevitable ï¬ooding I used to wear up to 6 pairs of knick- ers, so that I wouldnât end up with tell-tale stains on clothes or chairsâ¦. The worst time was when I went on School Journey to the Isle of Wight. We stayed in a small hotel, which had itâs own swimming pool. I had my period while I was there, and I couldnât contemplate not going in the poolâ¦So I wore a sanitary towel, and several pairs of knickers underneath my swimming costume. Looking back I canât believe I did it! I was climbing up the slide, and a boy (who had cre- ated the name of âBig Vââ¦.for me already as I needed a bra) climbed up behind me and said âUgh, why have you got pants on? The shame of it!â âMy grandmothers both used muslin nappies which were known as âsmall towelsâ and had to be bagged separately and labelled if sent to the laundryâ¦ My American grandmother didnât think anyone else should be expected to wash hers for her, so she did her own, and dried them on the lawn in her garden. She was a great believer in the sterilising properties of grass.â living; the wasteground my understanding pressed out to the edge of town forming occasional traï¬c the daily deï¬ance of the twenty day fast ever increasing ï¬re taking note of the yarrow bleached grass season such profound tenderness marks the recycling ascent into darkness deep well of the earth and sky observance pressing the runnels between my breasts it makes sweetness in my veins to see the relentless surface crack open your prising began with a hidden seed dark weight tiny root, snap so easily between ï¬ngers i lay my blood down amongst the soil 24

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Sanitary protection (they call it).... and youâd see the tv. some hand pouring blue liquid from a vial on to an absorb- ent pad. clear blue liquid like cleaning ï¬uid. There are alternatives to the corporate âsanitary protectionâ that is sold to women, and to the environmental pollution and hazardous products/ processing that is involved (see next page). Obviously everyone is different, and what works and is comfortable for some women isnât for others. You can buy disposable pads and tampons made from natural (fully bio-degradable) unbleached ï¬bres, or you can buy reusable cotton and/or reusable organic cotton pads. Even bet- ter you can make your own (see page after next). You can soak reusable pads in cold water after youâve used them and then just put them in with the rest of your washing. Some women use the mooncup aka the menstrual cup or keeper. Itâs a rubber or silicon (depending where you buy it) cup that you wear inserted inside your cunt to catch the blood. Some women use natural sea sponges. 26

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Position and shape of the cervix and os The position and shape of the cervix and the os change throughout the cycle. 107< >18 You can feel your cervix, the neck of the womb, by reaching a clean ï¬nger or ï¬ngers up inside your cunt. In the centre of the cervix you can feel a dip which is a hole called the os, (the opening of the womb where menstrual blood and cervical ï¬uid ï¬ows through). âI remember reaching inside myself when I was younger and not knowing what it was that I was feeling. I thought I had some sort of growth, maybe even some sort of penis growing inside me.â During the menstrual cycle, the position of your cervix in your body changes. Itâs low down nearer the opening of your cunt when you are bleeding, then rises up inside your body and feels highest when you are secreting the slippery, stretchy, wet cervical ï¬uid. Some women can have difï¬culty reaching it when it is high up in the body.Then it moves back down inside your body and is lowest again when you next bleed. The shape of the cervix and os also change. When the cervix is low in the body it feels ï¬rmer to the touch, like the tip of your nose and the os feels closed. As the cervix rises and secretes wetter ï¬uid it feels softer and the os opens. It can feel more spongy, like the closed lips of your mouth do under your ï¬nger. After the slippery ï¬uid the cervix moves down, the os closes and the cervix feels ï¬rmer again. âI can get this kind of downward sensation after all that slippery ï¬uid. Some- times it can feel almost a little bit like Iâm about to get my period even though Iâm not due for a couple of weeks.â 29

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It can help get a sense of this movement and change by feeling the position of your cervix daily, at roughly the same time, and by feeling for it in the same position. Body temperature (and moving into âsecondary signsâ) From the time of menstrual bleeding through cervical ï¬uid changes to the slippery wet ï¬uid which happens at the same time that the cervix rises in the body and the os opens, your waking body temperature (sometimes referred to 19077<< as Basal Body Temperature: BBT), is lower. After the most slippery ï¬uid has been secreted, your temperature rises and stays risen. Just before or at the very onset of your next menstrual bleeding your temperature will fall again. The wak- ing body temperatures can vary cycle to cycle and vary woman to woman. Sagte sie, âDu Ich muss ganz kalt schlafenâ. And how you need to feel the air through an open window. And how heat makes you dream. And how vivid your dreams can be before you bleed. To get an idea of the change in your temperature cyclically, you need to measure it ï¬rst thing when you wake in the morning and you need to take your temperature before you move or drink etc â before your temperature rises to itâs daytime active level. You need to have the thermometer right by where you sleep so you can just pick it up and use it. To get a reliable reading, you have to have had at least three consecutive hours of sleep, and the readings need to be done at roughly the same time every day. That suits some rhythms and just doesnât suit others. If you can measure your temperature regularly and get a feel for your own shifts and pattern you can learn to make allowances for differences in readings that can occur when you take them later or earlier than usual. Or when things have happened that will have a particular affect on your temperature (see below). Digital thermometers give good accurate readings and you donât have to fan- kle about shaking the mercury back down. (Some of the thermometers that are speciï¬cally designed for reading really accurate temperature, called âfertilityâ thermometers, have a really ï¬ne line of mercury and are not always the easiest thing to read.) There are a few things that affect (usually by raising) body temperature like illness, late nights, disturbances in the night, sometimes alcohol consumption and/or drug use, use of electric blankets or extra bedding, travel (especially ï¬y- 30

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ing across time zones), night shift work, stress. So if you are making a note of your temperature changes as part of cyclical awareness you need to account for any of these factors with any change in temperature reading you notice. You can take your temperature with a thermometer in your mouth, your cunt or your anus. An oral reading takes slightly longer than in internal temperature reading. Vaginal/anal readings are supposed to be more accurate. For some women there are particular beneï¬ts of vaginal/anal readings; if you have any sinus or breathing problems it can be easier. One woman said it was easier to take her temperature anally as she had her young child in bed with her in the mornings. Whichever way you chose you need to stick to the same way for the whole cycle so that readings are consistent. Although you can notice shifts in temperature yourself, most women would probably need to read these temperature shifts using a thermometer. So tem- perature, as something that can be observed cyclically, is a âsignâ that sits sort of half way between things we can experience sensationally, and things we get told (in this instance by FAM information) about the âworkings of the bodyâ and that we have to read using a tool. The other thing is that the internal temperature shifts as described above arenât necessarily always what women are feeling. Some women can feel quite cold just before their period (even though their temperature âreadingâ will be higher). Some women feel quite hot while they are actually bleeding (even though their BBT is lower again). Maybe the sensations of cold/heat are related to womenâs individual constitutions or experiences of bleeding and can be insightful. do your dreams change, are there any that recur. does the content alter, what, who, the colours do you need to sleep less sometimes or more do you feel like you need to sleep alone, be alone. do you have energy for people, outwards, or more for solitude And other âsecondary signsâ (so-called) and what do you notice of space. and personal space. psychic space. and what of your desire for touch. sexual energy. pleasure 31

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and what of your physical sensitivity and what of the pace of your digestion. does it alter your sense of taste, your choice of food and what about your sense of smell. and vision. are there changes. are you drawn to different colours. sound. and do you notice any changes in your sense of balance your spacial awareness ? More (so-called) secondary signs Spotting (light bleeding) can happen in your cycle between periods, usually 107< a couple of weeks or so before you bleed. Some women can feel a pain in their abdomen. The pain can get called âmittel schmerzâ which translates from the German as âmiddle painâ even though it doesnât necessarily occur in the middle of your cycle. âItâs like a sharp strong sensation that has a kind of cold, metallic quality to it and can stay for a couple of hours or so, quite intense. I always used to think it was wind before I recognised what it wasâ. and do you feel ï¬uid differently in your body and does your skin feel different, your hair do your breasts feel different cyclically. shape, texture, sensitivity. and do you move differently? 32

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Part Two Anatomy The biomedical body In âFeminism and the Biological Bodyâ Lynda Birke asks âWhat is inside the 43 < body? And how do we know what is there?â She writes ââ¦ most of us learned some human biology at school, or weâve watched TV programmes featuring forays into the body, or perhaps read popular health magazines or pamphlets from the doctorâs surgery. It is this that tells us what is inside the human body, whatever our experiencing of our interiority may be; the scientiï¬c narrative has authority, it is a biomedicalâ¦powerful voice.â Birke, talking more speciï¬cally about her own training in biology, says âOne of the ways I came to learn some anatomy was through a transparent plastic âVisible Womanââ¦I thus learned that bodies have a number of separable organs, which I had to paint in different colours to make them distinguishableâ¦I also learned that such organs are part of âsystemsâ, which serve particular functions in the body. These ways of thinking are now familiar â so much so that we can- not easily understand how bodies were conceptualised in the past.â Feminist discussion of the body has predominantly focused on challeng- ing âbiological determinismâ - the idea that women are deï¬ned by their biology. Feminists have usually opposed patriarchal ideas like these that maintain that women are the weaker sex and that all women are ruled by maternal instincts etc. because of their role in keeping women ï¬xed in a subordinate position that denies the possibility of change. Birke points out that apart from the discussions of the body âin the activist work of feminist health groups (mostly in the 1970s) where women grappled with medical knowledge about the (biological) body in order to understand womenâs health and our relationships to the medical pro- fessionâ - there has been an omission in feminist thinking and theory about 33

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biological understandings of the body; about what goes on inside the body and how we understand the body and are led to understand it. Birke talks about dissection in the history of West- ern anatomy. How it has involved âcutting into the fabric of the body, and separating out itâs partsâ and that that âconceptualisation is with us still, and is central to our thinking of the body as a series of sys- temsâ. She says we âread of the circulatory system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, for in- stance. Usually, each of these has a component that seems to have command over others â the heart, the brain, the pituitary glandâ. Birke notes how a sepa- 93< rateness of the systems is illustrated in the way that anatomical diagrams of organs and systems ârarely used context. Rather the organ was represented as somehow free-ï¬oating on the pageâ. Birke adds that diagrams not only show organs free ï¬oating in space but that âthe use of space in diagrams is sometimes itself gendered â. She ex- plains how diagrams for example, of the female reproductive tract often portray the âuterus as a space, by contrast to the solidity of the male equiva- lentâ¦womenâs anatomy is space, disappearing to become merely a receptacle for the baby while men, the urinary system it would seem, are ï¬rm and solid.â. The anatomical illustrations and anatomical âfactsâ that western medicine tells us about the body are intertwined with metaphors that get used to talk about how the body works. Metaphors that have been adopted reï¬ect not just particular socio-historical contexts, but also substantiate the materialistic ideo- logical terrain that western medicine is a part of: Western medicine was open for example, to adopting the metaphors of mechanisation. Birke comments on 111< conceptualisation of the body as a machine as being a signiï¬cant part of the Industrial Revolution: âFrom earlier analogies with clockwork mechanismsâ¦. came the nineteenth century view of the body as a heat engine, akin to the great steam engines of the Industrial Revolutionâ. Birke cites a 17th century scientist Robert Hooke who wrote; â by the sound they make, who knows but that as in a Watch we may hear the beating of the Balance, and the running of the wheelsâ¦ and Multitudes of other noises; who knows , I say, but that it may be possible to discover the Motions of the Internal Parts of Bodies. Whether Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, by the sound they make, that one may discover the Works performâd in the several Ofï¬ces and Shops of a Manâs Body, and thereby discover what Instrument or Engine is out of or- derâ¦â. (emphasis added). Birke notes how âsound, indeed, did become part of the diagnostic repertoire of doctors, albeit somewhat later. The invention of the stethescope at the beginning of the nineteenth century enabled doctors to 34

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hear changes in the way that the lungs or heart worked, or what âEngine is out 95 < of orderâ. By doing so, they were imaginatively âlooking insideâ trying to match the sounds heard with what they knew of pathology. They were also listening to a private conversation, to which the patients themselves were not privyâ. Birke goes on to talk about how medicine gradually became less about listening to what people themselves felt about their health and more about technological procedures used by doctors to assess patients that were interpreted independ- ently of and to the exclusion of the patient. ie heart monitors and ultrasound. Other metaphors used in the nineteenth century described the body âas a small business trying to spend, save or balance itâs accounts,â¦ mirroring the values of early capitalism. Spending-saving metaphors dominated the descrip- tion of physiological processes and diseases.â In her book âWoman in the Bodyâ, Emily Martin explores some of the other metaphors used in medical science and how they relate to cultural ideology. She shows us how social and institutional hierarchy is reï¬ected in the understanding of the body as systems with âcontrol centresâ. 35

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Martin also shows how a modern industrial/militaristic society has shaped medical understandings and how medicine has simultaneously also chosen such metaphors to explain its understandings of for instance the cell as a fac- tory, and the immune system as a fortress, where immunity is discussed using the language of invasion and defence. Other understandings The women of Eisenach European cultures have previously discussed the body in really varying ways. Barbara Duden shows the ways women patients in 18th Century Germany spoke about their bodies. â The women of Eisenachâ¦ believed in the need for the body to ï¬ow; blood or pus had to be drawn out if stagnation and illness were to be avoided. Bloodletting was necessary, as were various means of luring the blood from one part to another (such as heat or herbal prescriptions). Storch records many instances of women suffering from such phenomena as âsuffocation of the wombâ caused by an excess of blood surging towards uterus or head; there it caused stagnation and cramping, and must be lured away.â Chinese Medicine Chinese Medicine like so many other traditions of medicine has a completely different conceptu- alisation of the body to Western medicine. In part, Chinese Medicine understands Qi (pronounced Chi and sometimes translated as life force or energy) as animating the body and being central to under- standing of health and well-being. It understands how Qi moves in certain channels in the body and can become blocked or depleted in areas causing health problems, and how Chi can be unblocked or rebalanced using massage, acupuncture, move- ment, sound, for example, and/or replenished with for example, food, meditation, the breath. Chinese medicine acknowledges the interrela- tion between things; the physical, emotional, spir- itual; the interrelation between a person and their environment, season, climate, social context etc. It understands life (and the body as part of that) as the interrelation of energy and elements that move and change. Chinese medicine uses the concepts of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang can be described as polar com- kidney meridian plements but they are not opposites or ï¬xed es- sences. âThe character for Yin originally meant the shady side of the slope. It is associated with such qualities as cold, rest, responsiveness, passivity, dark- ness, interiority, downwardness, inwardness, decrease, satiation, tranquility, 36

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and quiescence. The original meaning of Yang was the sunny side of the slopeâ¦ Yang is associated with qualities such as heat, stimulation, movement, activity, excitement, vigour, light, exterior, upwardness, outwardness, and increaseâ¦ Yin and Yang are continuously merging. Thus Yin and Yang create each other, con- trol each other, and transform into each other.â They are used to describe the continuous process of natural change. Amongst other concepts Chinese medicine uses the language of climactic conditions to discuss the state of the body: âIn the case of cold and damp, it is important to take care during and just after a period not to be excessively ex- posed to these factors. For example, do not walk with bare feet on cold surfaces or damp grass, as damp tends to invade through the meridians in the legs and <14 settles in the lower burner, where the uterus lives.â Apparently Confucian regard for the sacredness of the body was a central reason for the fact that anatomical dissection has been largely absent in the history of Chinese medicine. Chinese Medicineâs understanding of health as the dynamic and energetic interrelation of things - within the body and between an individual and the universe they are part of, and the understanding that Qi leaves the body at death may also have meant that there was little to learn from looking at a dead body. The Warlpiri In her essay âInscribing identity. Skin as country in the central desertâ Jen- nifer Biddlle writes about the Warlpiri who live in remote communities north and west of Alice Springs, Australia. She writes that the Warlpiri âare perhaps best known internationally for their acrylic âDreaming paintingsâ and that the signs employed in the acrylic painting âderive from the ritual domain: in the case of womenâs paintings, from ceremonial body inscriptions called yawulyu, and for men, from ceremonial ground inscriptions and ritual object designâ. She ex- plains âThese inscriptive signs and symbols are called kuruwarri â a complex term meaning mark, trace, ancestral presence and/or essence, and birthmark or freckle. Kuruwarri are said to be marks made, left over by Ancestors as they roamed the same country as Warlpiri do (where they still have access to tradi- tional countries) â camping, hunting, ï¬ghting, defecating - creating the land- scape, ï¬ora, fauna, weather and people as they areâ. Biddle writes that Ances- tral presence resides not only in country but that âpresences can enter womenâs wombs, cause conception and, in turn leave birthmarks, freckle and other iden- tifying traits of speciï¬c kinds of subjectivity upon individuated Warlpiri.â In yawulyu the Warlpiri women ï¬rst apply fat or oil to the skin and then make inscriptions using ochre - dragging and re-dragging half circles lines and shapes into that surface of fat and oil (in the same way that the ground is cleared be- fore the menâs ceremonies and the way canvases are prepared before they are inscribed). Biddle writes that, through this application of fat and oil to the skin (maparni) there is a âsimultaneous erasure and renewal of a siteâ¦â it â is ren- dered receptive to the inscription of kuruwarriâ. Another writer Barbara Glowc- zewski claims that in yawulyu the ârhythmic, repetitious marking and re-marking literally press the kuruwarri mark inâ¦.In yawulyu, what was previously outside is 37

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brought inside, traced round the breasts, up around the collarbone and shoulder blades, down the breasts againâ¦.equally what is âinsideâ is brought âoutââ¦ â Barbara Glowczewski describes âWhat speciï¬cally is repeated is the movement from what Warlpiri call kanunju (what is secret, âunderneathâ or âbelowâ â where Ancestors now reside having once emerged to walk the landscape and where in most cases, they have returned to rest) to kankarlu (what is in the world as it is seen and known âaboveâ and in the âpublicâ domain). In and through perform- ance of a given yawulyu, Ancestral presenceâ¦ is brought kankarlu, above and into the present.â Biddle concludes âIn short a certain embodied expression of Ancestral pres- ence is effected: one âbecomesâ ancestor, âbecomesâ countryâ and writes âthe rendering of the body commensurate with country is not a one-way process. For the aim of yawulyu is, after all, the care of country - as part of a larger series of what have been described as âincreaseâ ceremonies (Dussart 1988, Peterson 1970) in which the livening-up of country - rejuvenating, revitalising, âfeedingâ certain places, species, and persons accordingly - occurs.â Biddle is clear that it is not what kuruwarri signs mean that she is interested in. Anyway she acknowledges that while the âWalpiri claim the country speaksâ, it does so in a complex cultural context only to those who Biddle describes as âauthorisedâ. She writes that what she is interested in is how the inscriptions are made in the yawulyu and âwhat this tells us about âskinâ and its productive capacities in the Warlpiri contextâ. She asks âhow may this kind of analysis work to rethink our conceptualisation of âskinâ, of culture, of the potentialities of the so-calledâ human bodyâ?â Biddleâs essay began with her comment on the âuniversal projection of what is a Euro-centric conceptualisation of the bodyâ where âthe âhuman bodyâ is assumed to be at once singular in form, discrete, uniï¬ed (âtheâ), âhumanâ (as opposed to animal, and thus a distinct speciesâ¦ and already existent, thus natural (as opposed to cultural)â. She writes âThe very boundary âweâ so-called western subjects understand âskinâ as providing â that is, âskinâ as a material, external cover for a stable, self-identiï¬ed and self-identical subjectivity â is not a universally held understandingâ¦âskinâ in the Warlpiri Aboriginal context, pro- vides the medium through which women regularly can and do transform into the object world: âbecomeâ landscape, country, other species. This fundamentally challenges and disrupts notions of the âhuman bodyâ â. Biddle writes that Yapa (the name the Warlpiri use for themselves) live an âalready intercorporealâ¦ open relationship to and with Ancestral bodies in their varying manifestations. If there is no body as such..., but only ways of being bodily in culturally and situationally speciï¬c terms, then âbecomingâ country be- comes thinkable in a very literal sense.â And Biddle concludes âThe surface of the body, somatically rendered the same as the surface of the country, allows for this intercorporeal exchange, this interchangeability by making the two almost identical. And I stress the almost here, for the one is never completely reducible to the other, there can be reciprocity â exchange between Ancestor and Yapa â because there is alterity â someone else to exchange with. What lies between the two â âskinâ â is not as much a border as a certain bridging potentiality. 38

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This intercorporeality makes for what Yapa describe when witnessing a particu- larly good yawulyu: they donât say, for example, that Napurrurla is performing or enacting a particularly convincing Ngurlu or Kurlukuku Jukurrpa (Mulga Seed and/or Diamond Dove Dreaming) â as we might speak of an actorâs successful âportrayal â or âdepictionâ â but indeed, Yapa say that she really is âthat one now, that kurlukuku, that Diamond Dove.â Prescientiï¬c European narratives, Chinese Medicine and Warlpiri traditions show that there is a multiplicity of understandings of the body. Many of these diverse understandings are being quashed by Western scientiï¬c medicine as it intellectually and economically colonises cultures, disenfranchising people from their indigenous healing traditions and attempting to surplant them with biomedicine. History shows how Western medicine began by quashing local healing traditions and that much pre-patriarchal healing knowledge of old in the west was usurped by the new reductionist science, and has been lost over time. Biomedicineâs belief of its own scientiï¬c rationalist superiority to other tradi- tions goes hand in hand now with the pharmaceutical industryâs expansion of proï¬ts, whether by selling synthetic manufactured drugs in place of local natural medicines and healing traditions, or by patenting local medicines for its own ï¬nancial gains. The idea of a ânaturalâ body, as something that just âexistsâ as opposed to something that is explained, understood and experienced culturally is perva- sive, but there is no one, true, objective, factual understanding of the body, however much western medical science believes that to be the case. Question- ing the dominant medical narratives and their ideology â what we are told about the body, our bodies, how it shapes what we feel and how it can affect/ divorce us from what we feel - and exploring other traditions/ possibilities, can help cre- ate space to reconceptualise our bodies in ways that might be more expansive, useful and/or truer to our experiences of them. Female anatomy: feminist redeï¬nitions âA New View of a Womanâs Bodyâ is a publication that came out of exploration 45< by womenâs health activists in the US in the 1970s. Their exploration of female anatomy was in response to the lack of information and the misinformation that they found in medical textbooks where some womenâs anatomy had been mis- drawn or even left out entirely. Women met and looked at their bodies and each othersâ bodies in self-exam groups and explored their experiences of sexual arousal and orgasm. They questioned medical and historical descriptions and discussions of female sexu- al and reproductive anatomy and sexual experience in relation to their own ï¬nd- ings. They also produced anatomical illustrations and information that was more accurate than what they had found. The introduction to âA New Viewâ explains how the ââ¦.well-researched illustrations are designed to lift the veil of medical mystery from womenâs bodies and reveal truths that, though simple, have been hidden up to now.â This redeï¬ned anatomical information was, and is, a challenge to dominant 39

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ideology - questioning and literally redrawing itâs deï¬nitions and depictions. Itâs a vital resource that has had and has profound importance for womenâs self-per- ception in the context of a patriarchal culture (and its medicine) with its legacy of sexist, oppressive narratives about womenâs bodies and sexuality. Itâs also useful to place it in the context of broader discussion of Western anatomy and how we are led to/can/do perceive the body, our bodies. The illustrations reveal truths, but the truths are still part of a western anatomical paradigm that shapes our perception of ourselves in particular ways. We are still looking âinsideâ the body and understanding our body as having isolated parts and separate sys- tems, when we might actually make different kinds of connections between different areas of the body/ or things we feel and between the body and the environment we live in. And that we might otherwise use completely different language/ imagery to represent. Some of the feminist redeï¬ned female anatomy follows after... Female anatomy: some on the history of the sexes In âMaking Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freudâ Thomas Laqueur discusses the changing perception of female bodies throughout European his- tory, particularly female genitals, reproductive organs and sexuality. He shows how male and female bodies have been seen as being similar (commensurate) and then different (incommensurable) at different points in history, and how both perceptions and interpretations were used to the same end - to justify the power imbalance between men and women. In the patriarchal hierarchy of Ancient Greek citizenship women (along with children and slaves) were considered inferior to men. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote âSo it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.â Percep- tions of the body mirrored this ideology and the male body was believed to be âperfectâ with the female body seen as an imperfect reï¬ection of this ideal. Galen, a famous Greek physician who moved to Rome in the 1st Century, described his understanding of female genitals: âAll the parts, then, that men have, women have too, the difference between them lying in only one thing, namely that in women, the parts are within, whereas in men they are outsideâ. And, using contemporary understandings of the body in terms of heat and cold, said that it was the greater heat of men that caused the genitals to protrude âand thus âperfectedâ them. In women, the cooler, imperfect sex, the genitals remained hidden from viewâ. Galen made an ââelaborate comparisonâ between the eyes of a mole and womenâs genitals. He wrote âThe eyes of the mole have the same structures as the eyes of other animals except that they do not allow the mole to see. They do not open, ânor do they project but are left there imperfectâ. So too the female genitalia âdo not openâ and remain an imperfect version of what they would be were they thrust out. The moleâs eyeâs thus âremain like the eyes of other animals when these are still in the uterusâ and so, to follow this logic to its 40

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conclusion, the womb, vagina, ovaries, and external pudenda remain forever as if they were still inside the womb. They cascade vertiginously back inside them- selves, the vagina an eternally, precariously, unborn penis, the womb a stunted scrotum, and so forth.â Mapping the body through anatomical dissection was one of the obsessions during the European Renaissance. (The 19th Century term used to describe the cultural and political period that existed in Italy between the 14th and 16th centuries whose inï¬uence spread to other parts of Europe). Laqueur notes âthe more Renaissance anatomists dissected, looked into, and visually represented the female body, the more powerfully and convincingly they saw it to be a ver- sion of the maleâs.â Laqueur tells how the perception of female anatomy as commensurate to maleâs meant âthe vagina is imagined as an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, the ovaries as testiclesâ and says âLanguage constrained the seeing of opposites and sustained the male body as the canonical human form. And, conversely, the fact that one saw only one sex made even words for female parts ultimately refer to male organs. There was in an important sense no female reproductive anatomy, and hence modern terms that refer to it â vagina, uterus, vulva, labia, Fallopian tubes, clitoris â cannot quite ï¬nd their Renais- sance equivalents.â 41

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While the male and female genitals were being perceived as commensurate, in what Laqueur terms âthe one sex modelâ, anatomists and midwifery manuals show acknowledgement of the clitoris, and discussion of it as commensurate to the penis, not the vagina as in the so-called one-sex model. Jane Sharp, a 17th century English midwife reports that the clitoris is a female penis: âit will stand and fall as the yard doth and makes women lustful and take delight in copulationâ. Lacqueur wonders whether these contradictory positions can be reconciled âin that the vagina only resembles the penis whereas the clitoris actu- ally is oneâ but that âboth maintain the one-sex modelâs insistence on the male as the standard.â The perception of the male and female body as commensurate continued in the West until the 18th century. It was around the time of the French Revolu- tion that political change challenged the perceived ânatural orderâ of things. (It could be argued that the possibilities for progression and change â generally and speciï¬cally in terms of gender relations - were limited by the fact that the new philosophies were rooted in Cartesian dualism and scientiï¬c rationalism). This manifested itself in new justiï¬cations for the power relations between men and women. Itâs at this point in Western anatomical history that male and female bodies became deï¬ned in terms of difference. Laqueur writes that where before there had been only one basic structure, that now there were two. It was difference in anatomy and biology that was now used to justify the continuing subordination of women. And new narratives abounded. One 18th century physician said âwomen owe their manner of being to their organs of generation, and especially to the uterusâ. What was to be concluded at the turn 42

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of the 20th century, was that the reproductive system is not only structurally but functionally fundamentally different in the male and the female; and âsince all 83 < other organs and systems of organs are affected by this system, it is certain that the Male and Female are essentially different throughoutâ. They were described <33 as âcomplementary, in no sense the same, in no sense equal to one another: the accurate adjustment of society depends on proper observation of this fact.â âOrgans that had shared a name â ovaries and testicles â were now linguisti- cally distinguished. Organs that had not been distinguished by a name of their own â the vagina, for example â were given one.â In some areas though medical science lagged in its reinterpretation of the female body as âotherâ. The âsecre- 72< tory glands that empty into the female urethra were known as prostates in both sexes until in 1880 they took the name of A.J.C. Skene, who extensively inves- tigated them.â Female anatomy: some on the history of sexology 60< Discussion/ control of female sexual pleasure has taken different shapes and forms throughout the records of European patriarchal history. In Antiquity and similarly in the Middle Ages there were narratives of the dangers to men of an insatiable female sexual energy. In the 17th century there was the acknowledge- ment and discussion of female sexual pleasure (for all that female sexuality had been so under attack during the 16th and 17th century witchhunts) with the then contemporary theory about the intrinsic relationship between female orgasm and conception. Shifts in the depiction of and control of female sexuality can be seen in the later Victorian concept of the sexless woman. History shows how some of the anatomical descriptions and discussions of female anatomy have interrelated with those shifts in perspective. Laqueur notes how âthe erasure of female pleasure from medical accounts of conception took place roughly at the time as the female body came to be under- stood no longer as a lesser version of the maleâsâ¦but as its incommensurable oppositeâ¦from this point on, womenâs sexuality was seen as very different from menâs â increasingly weak, chaste and passionless.â In the context of increasing sexual repression - and in particular the repres- sion of womenâs sexuality - anatomists âbegan to ascribe parts of the clitoris to the reproductive or urinary system. Medical illustrations became increasingly more simplistic, leaving parts of the clitoris unlabelled. By Victorian times or- gasm, which was previously accepted as a natural component of womenâs sex- ual repertoire, was seen as unnecessary, unseemly, perhaps even unhealthy for women. âThe majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind,â the inï¬uential English urologist William Acton famously harrumphed.â In the very early 20th century the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud made sweeping claims about female sexual pleasure, insisting that clitoral pleasure and or orgasm was immature, adolescent and inferior to vaginal penetration. The clitoris he described as âlike a pile of pine shavingsâ useful only to âset a log of harder woodâ (i.e. the vagina) âon ï¬reâ. Rebecca Chalker summarises 43

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âThis suggests that masturbation or other means of clitoral stimulation is an in- appropriate or useless adult activity, and privileges heterosexual intercourse as the only healthy, mature, acceptable form of sexual activity for women. Freudâs demotion of the clitoris and elevation of the vagina as the adult womanâs primary means of giving and receiving sexual pleasure brought the male-centred hetero- sexual model of sexuality to its phallocentric apogee.â âA debate raged between professionals over where exactly the focus for sexual response was in women. In the 1950s Alfred Kinsey, an American so- cial scientist, did a massive research project interviewing 17,000 case studies on personal sexual habits. He started to challenge Freudâs idea that âmature womenâ should not focus on their clitoris and as part of his research, with fe- male volunteers, he tried to ï¬nd out whether the vagina or clitoris was more sensitive. Kinsey used a probe to stimulate women, so as to keep that âscientiï¬c objectivityâ and concluded that the vagina was not sensitive at all. This was a mistake as the urethral sponge inside the actual vagina is only stimulated by deeper pressure, which the probe was unable to do.â Even if the experiment hadnât been ï¬awed in that way, it is still problematic as a whole because it, like all other âscientiï¬câ investigation into âfemale sexualityâ, attempts to isolate and discuss sources of pleasure as if sexual experience can be fragmented and then assessed in parts. Chalker writes that the 1960s publication of âHuman Sexual Responseâ by Masters and Johnson âï¬nally brought discussion of the clitoris to light. Indeed the âï¬rst coupleâ of sex theory and therapy devoted an entire chapter to it, calling it both âa receptor and transformer of sensual stimuli,â as well as an âorganâ and an âorgan systemâ. Yet in purporting to dispell certain âphallicâ fantasies,â Mas- ters and Johnson actually created a new vaginal ï¬ction, the so-called âorgasmic platformâ located in the âouter third of the vagina.â What they are really describ- ing here are clitoral structures, which surround the vaginal opening. Since they ï¬rmly believe that the vagina and not the clitoris is âthe human femaleâs primary means of sexual expression,â they apparently needed to concoct something impressive-sounding to back up this assumption.â Reports research this locus of attention. small. signiï¬cant. clitoris, vagina trying to ï¬t inside your own skin, song French philosopher Michel Foucaultâs (1929-1984) writing covered many ar- eas where he analysed and critiqued how power functions in the deï¬ning and categorising of certain modes of behaviour. He wrote extensively: âMadness and Civilisationâ, âThe Birth of the Clinicâ, âDiscipline and Punishâ and âThe History of Sexualityâ. Sadie Plant writes âFoucault was dismissive of attempts to free and extend orgasmic sexâ as part of his thinking and theory that âall attempts to liber- ate some supposed authentic sex or sexuality were bound to exacerbate the containment of bodies they ostensibly wanted to freeâ. He was critical of the 44

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exploration and discussion around orgasm and orgasmic potential, writing the â...âapologia for orgasm made by the Reichians still seems to me to be a way of localising possibilities of pleasure in the sexual,ââ¦ going as far as to suggest the we have to get ârid of sexualityâ in order to strip the body from its formal controls, disable the mechanisms of self-protection and security which bind intensity to reproduction. Foucault certainly had no doubt that certain drugs rivaled the âin- tense pleasures of sexual experimentation. If orgasm concentrates and localises themââ, certain drugs which he speciï¬ed ââallow you to explode and diffuse it throughout the body; the body becomes the overall site of an overall pleasure.â The plane on which it forgets itself, omits to be one.â Foucault is addressing vital issues about the possibilities for pleasure being vast, diffuse and expansive. About the possibility for ecstasy beyond a localised deï¬nition of sex. His mention of drugs feels like an example that relates to other things like the possibilities of a really wide variety of sexual practises and pref- erences and the transformative experiences that exist and have existed in the context of religious, ritual and spiritual practices. It feels though as if in this discussion of erotic/ intense experience, Foucault does Reich a disservice. By setting the parameters of discussion in terms of âpleasureâ, it feels like Foucault reduces down and misrepresents the breadth of exploration Reich was concerned with. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) an Austrian- American experimental psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, believed that political and social oppression was fundamentally linked to the controlling and subju- gation of sexual energy. His exploration did focus in part on orgasmic sexual energy but within a context of engaging with a universal life energy which he called orgone. And with the wider implications of fuller erotic/energetic under- standings of life. Foucaultâs critique of orgasm also dismisses the fact that connection to or- gasmic pleasure in a more âlocalisingâ, as Foucault deï¬nes it, sense is also vital. And especially because â in the way female sexuality has been controlled, con- structed and deï¬ned â it is a source of power and pleasure that women have in a lot of instances experienced a particular disconnection from. The anatomical information about parts of the female body that follows re- lates to this. It can be one way (for all the limitations and reservations about anatomical information discussed earlier) of making reconnections to a particu- lar part of sexual, bodily, orgasmic experience, even though the possibilities for the erotic go beyond it. It was the exploration of their own bodies, by feminists in the 1970s - and their discovery of the work of Jane Sherfey (âThe nature and evolution of female sexualityâ1972) that provided the basis for their more comprehensive, anatomi- <39 cally accurate redeï¬nition of the clitoris - opening up discussion about womenâs actual sexual experiences and desires. Their exploration âconcluded that wom- en have one united sex organâ and âthat all parts react during sexual arousal no matter what part is being stimulated.â The Hite report, a survey ï¬rst published in 1976, updated in 2000, calls itself The Revolutionary Report of Female Sexuality. It is the research project of Shere Hite which collated the âtestimony of over 3000 womenâ. Iâm sceptical of that 45

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lineage of research projects that go under the name of their researcher and cre- ate a sort of academic celebrity status for people. Nonetheless, the Hite report does give a lot of different womenâs varied descriptions of sexual play, fantasy, range of genital stimulation preferences, arousal and orgasm. It shows some of the breadth of physical and psychic sites of pleasure. In 1980 Beverley Whipple, Alice Ladas and John Perry added to the dis- cussion about female genital sexual pleasure with their book âThe G Spot and Other Discoveries about Human Sexualityâ. Their focus was talking about the erogenous zone in the vagina (called the G spot â also described as the urethral sponge- after Ernest Grafenberg who âï¬rstâ talked about it in the 1950s) and how stimulation of that area with deeper pressure can be part of stimulating orgasm and/or female ejaculation. A friend of mine remembers the âG-Spotâ appearing as a concept in womenâs magazines - âFind your own G spotâ etc. etc. Liberating information that encour- ages women to ï¬nd more in their sexual exploration is often quickly assimi- lated into mainstream ideology and becomes the next thing that women are now pressured to ï¬nd, use, do. The potential of information can be distorted when it is in isolation from other expansive discussion around sex and sexuality. Some of the more recent exploration and writing about sex and sexuality, pushes/opens out the boundaries of discussion about sexual energy and pleas- ure and power, encouraging change in a culture where sex is still disallowed and/or deï¬ned in narrow ways. It feels vital, but thereâs still often a sense that sexuality is separated off to varying degrees from all the other facets of our lives, and that thereâs a lack of discussion/analysis about how all those facets of our lives interrelate, and what that means in terms of wider social change. Complex energies. Compartmentalised. Narrowed. Dis-intergrated. you got taught a life dislocate. unsensual. shut down. then they tell you of your desire. (thin gesture at the fullness you could. might) 46

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none told you to really listen and feel. breathe dance and still this culture stares at you airbrushed from billboards, screens. says this was and this way only sexy sexy (to sell you) they say. cheeky grin performance that you should be attractive and vivacious at all times this culture of mixed messages. never your full power. really. stop. you ask what has happened what happened to sexual, vital, vital, sexual energy. the sun, the stars, ï¬esh, song, spirit, dancing. that you walk through such lifeless parameters sucks at you young woman sorting cheques behind the glass while the sun is hot blue clear out above and the grass has come thicker in fresh spring outside and you feel like you might start crying at the counter or shouting too much. itâs too depressing. waste such distortion such damage done. overt - diffuse. you ï¬nd more how you ï¬nd more how you to of on your own terms some claim. reclaim. claim. 47

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âFemaleâ anatomy: some on sex and gender The anatomy that follows is what gets called âfemaleâ anatomy but there are different anatomical and diverse gender experiences human beings can have. The term âintersexâ means 48

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49

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The word Queer emerged in the English language in the 16th century. It relates to the German word Quer meaning âacross, at right angle, diagonally, transverseâ. Itâs been used to describe something that is strange or not ânormalâ. For most of the 20th century it was a derogatory term for effeminate gay men and other non traditional gender behaviour. Of course more recently itâs been reclaimed by folk to describe a diverse range of sexualities and genders; les- bian, gay, bi-sexual, trans and more. Queer politics can also get used as a term to talk about politics that challenge the dominant ideology around sex, gender, sexuality, relationships, monogamy, the institution of marriage, and to critique the assimilation of sexual liberation into the capitalist mainstream (i.e. through consumerism based around sexuality âthe âpink poundâ- and/or recruiting drives for gay and lesbian employees by the military for example). This culture maintains rigid ideas about âthe sexesâ and gender and sexuality. 101< It means that people are forced to conform physically, psychically and culturally to ï¬xed ideas of what male and female are, even though experiences of being male and female and of masculinity and femininity are much more ï¬uid and vari- able. 50

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From Hair to Eternity Hairiness runs on my dadâs side of the family. Asian women with lighter skin have noticeable hair because itâs darker. The women in the family have hair of âtypicalâ Asian standard, except for my Auntie and her daughter whose hair is coarser and thicker. Whilst I was in Pakistan at the age of 15/ 16 my mother tried to âthreadâ my upper lip. It is a traditional method of removing hair and there is quite a skill to it. The smoother and whiter a face the more beautiful a woman is deemed to be. I remember my cousin/auntie in Pakistan saying that I had beautiful skin and that it was a shame that it was ruined by the hair. My Aunties held me down and my mother skimmed the threads over my lip ripping the hairs out by their roots whilst I screamed. They repeated over and over that I would thank them for it and that the pain would pass. My swollen lip hardly looked attractive. It was on my second visit to Pakistan that I met hijiras for the ï¬rst time. I thought they were my cousinâs friends dragged up to perform at his sisterâs wedding. (My uncle Yusaf used to do this quite regularly back home for fun. He did it during the preparation for his remarriage in Pakistan and the whole room was silenced. It just wasnât the âdone thingâ there and he never danced again. So you can see how I would have thought this.) When my family saw me hang- ing out with them I was dragged away from them and told not to go near them. I asked more questions and was told that they were eunuchs and they danced and blessed or cursed people to earn a living. Some of them were prostitutes too and they all lived together in self-contained families. Thanks to the open frankness of my family I learned a lot about them. Some were castrated, others not. They did this as a rudimentary form of genital sur- gery. They were sometimes given babies of indeï¬nite genitals to raise, as fami- lies did not want the shame, or to have to deal with issues brought up in later life. Most were male babies but since I have been researching I have uncovered cases of âfemaleâ children being handed over, i.e., female babies with big clits. This seems to be a better option than the western method of surgery on infants. Even better would be the acceptance of the parents and society, that goes without saying. Hijiras were an important part of pre-colonial India/ Pakistan. They lived with- in the palaces of the moguls and served in the roles of court eunuch, harem supervisor, priest type ï¬gures and entertainers. The British were horriï¬ed and disgusted with them and the fact that they lived openly within Indian society. Once they crushed the kings the hijiras were cast out with no way of surviving except through entertainment and prostitution. Although people fear them they are also respected. The fear was instilled drop by drop by the British and sur- vives to this day. It is partially a sexual fear â of what lies beneath their skirts and of the curses that they lay on one of infertility: so you become like they are â un- able to have children. Blessings are placed on families if you pay hijiras enough money and give enough food/ saris etc. Crazily enough I recently discovered that one of my ancestors is a Suï¬ saint and that Hijiras ï¬ock to his tomb in India to have fertility blessings placed upon them, and attend there at special times of the year. 51

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I canât recall exactly when I started to get hairier except not wanting to change in front of the other girls whilst in 6th year at secondary. I always had hair on my arms and whirlpools on my back which I was quite proud of. My older female cousin was hairier than me and would get called names, even by other family members, âhairy fairyâ etc. etc. My auntie was also the hairiest of all my grand- motherâs children, the only one I would say. She has always been very strong and her body was quite androgynous and her features slightly coarser. The hair on my neck also started to grow longer and longer and join with my âsideburnsâ. Under the pressure of my family I started bleaching it regularly but this made it stand out more. By the time I had taken my year out between school and going to art school my sideburns and neck had developed into soft 5cm long curls. I was horriï¬ed. I wouldnât step outside of the house unless I had bleached, picked and plucked every single hair. I couldnât get up and leave like I used to and I felt trapped. I elected to remove it and ashamedly bought some pretty basic leg wax â you heated it up in small camping like pot and then spread it on and rolled it off with the hair stuck in itâs gooeyness. The ï¬rst time I tried it I burnt my neck as I had no experience of using it before. I felt horrible. I blamed all of my emotional prob- lems on being hairy and it was steadily getting worse. I didnât make friends with anyone outside of older school friends and I became a bit of a recluse. One of the projects I decided to do for my entrance folio to Art school was a year long âlife performanceâ of not speaking to anyone for a whole year except for absolute necessities. I also photographed my face in close up obsessively. I feel this has had a lasting effect on my verbal communication skills. I hated my self and my body. My sexual exploration took a back seat during this time too. This was not usual as I turned to my body for relief and comfort in my most troubled times. I tried to commit suicide a few times during this phase as my emotional life at home peaked in its intensity yet again. I had tried before. The ï¬rst time I had tried I was seven years old. Nothing was said about it and my mother told me not to tell anyone about it. My mother was really quite intense in her hatred of me and would constantly insult me and chip away at my self esteem â in her eyes I was hairy, ugly and stu- pid (she ignored the fact that I was a b average student) and was always saying that if she knew what I would have turned out like would have had an abortion. Her main concerns were what other people would say, and that no man would ï¬nd me attractive. My own feelings never came into the equation. She had been doing this for years and as I grew older it intensiï¬ed and often culminated in physical ï¬ghts between us. I agreed to see the family doctor who sent me for tests at the endocrine de- partment at the hospital, more to shut my mum up and see if I could get some answers. I was poked and prodded and questioned thoroughly. I had to show my chest to a roomful of student doctors once and that was awful. I felt I had no choice â either as a âsubjectâ, or in my role as wanting to expose this as ânormalâ. My thinking on it was starting to change ever so slowly. My thoughts were start- ing to bud. I was getting tired of it all for a lot of reasons. I hate appointments. I hated being an âobjectâ. I wanted to be able to drink alcohol. I was gaining 52

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strength through making art, etc. etc. Gallons of my urine were kept to be analysed and blood samples regularly taken and substances introduced. This went on for one and a half years. All they realised was that I had polycystic ovaries and extremely high levels of andro- gen and testosterone. (This made sense as my libido has always been sky high and compared to 99.9% of women I know I think about sex almost constantly. Friends on T [testosterone] now realise just how I feel. For them it is something amazing but when I couldnât ï¬nd anyone that satisï¬ed me it was tortuous). I eventually came to see the head of the department. He said they could offer me drugs that would stop my hair growth but they would also increase my risk of cancer by 70%. I laughed and said that that was not an option - there was no way in hell that I was going to take them. He looked me in the eye, smiled and said he admired me. I felt sick. I couldnât understand why he felt like that. It made me angry. By this time I was midway through my ï¬rst year of art school and after my initial reluctance had started to make friends. Friends who didnât seem to care about the way I looked and that was important. Being accepted without ques- tion. Despite this I hid my face away from physical touch throughout art school and continued with the bleaching, plucking and waxing regime. I wouldnât let anyone I slept with come anywhere near my face (no pun intended) and I didnât like to be kissed. My dad died just before I started my ï¬nal year and it freed me up in ways I thought I never would. I am not sure how and why that happened. Maybe I saw that life was short and never certain, or that to remain repressed was never good for the body and mind. I started to explore s&m in a more open way â I had started at the age of 6/7 after I tried to slit my wrists. I found that I enjoyed the sensation when the cuts were poked and started playing around with my body in various exciting ways in secret. I started having sex at the age of 11/12 in a fumbling explorative kind of way. I remember that I wasnât hairy then, I just had breasts for sure and a ï¬ne average bodily down. My sexual distancing lasted until graduation night when I got together with a friend of a friend. There was something about him that allowed me to trust him. He was the ï¬rst man I ever let touch me completely and see my body all over. We talked about it all the next morning and felt there was a real understanding between us. We even discussed my bisexuality â rather he pointed it out to me and it took a veritable stranger to do that for me. He was the start of the repair- ing of my self esteem. I had thought that the BDSM scene would have been the same but it still felt strangely constricted and not how I imagined it to be like at all. There seemed to be a real emphasis on heterosexual pairs at that time and I didnât feel comfortable enough to reveal my body like the others. After Art School I asked various friends after we all graduated about my beard. They all said that they didnât notice it. All they saw was me. I ï¬nally came out a year afterwards. My fear of being unwanted by possible lovers intensiï¬ed. I did the same with women as I did with men â I wouldnât let anyone near my face. I didnât know much about gay culture except stereotypes and expected all women to run a 53

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mile when they saw my hairy-like-a-man body. I think it was this physical distance; the fact that I had male hair patterns and no idea of âwhat a woman can beâ that pushed me into transgenderism. I didnât see any images that reï¬ected who I was, who I felt inside except of women who lived as men or changed sex. I was frequenting the womenâs library almost every day it was open and devouring everything I could on dykes, sex, bodies, and transsexuals. After about a year of drunken debauched nights on the gay scene I eventually found some folks who classiï¬ed themselves as transgendered. They also knew my new dyke mates whom I kept my trans exploration hidden from initially. We formed a small support group of sorts and spent hours, day in day out, discussing gender and our histories, fantasising about the possibilities that lay ahead. We used to drag up and go out on the town. Ironically enough I used to shave off my beard and attach a fake goatee and âtache with my own hair....... bonkers!!?!! We got a mixed reaction. Some women loved it and were really turned on by it, others were aggressive and angry, sometimes becoming threat- ening. The more I learned the more conï¬dent I became. My self esteem was still pretty low as I still thought no âproperâ dyke would want me. I was open to any- one who would have me. I stopped using all the heavy duty scar cover make-up to cover my neck and face. I told my oldest queer friends about my gender con- fusion and that I had decided to start letting things grow as they were naturally intended. I got an immense amount of love and support from all of them as well as âwe all knew about itâ. I threw out the expensive creams and bought my ï¬rst ever razor aged 24. It was a momentous time. They gave me what I should have been receiving from my family and I will always love them for that. Family wise I was only out to my cousins. I stopped communicating with my mother pretty much and moved out. A new addition came to our fold. He was trans and had never met anyone else in the city until the pride that year where some of us were out about our trans status. All of us had started off as drag kings and one by one were now follow- ing our bodily feelings. âBoys donât cryâ had just come out and Brandon Teena (a teenage FTM who pretended to be a straight boy and was eventually killed and raped by the ex of his girlfriend after the police department revealed his birth sex after arrest in the local paper) was his role model, literally. He passed incredibly well and wo