Uniting the Nation through Transcending Menstrual Blood: The Period Products Act in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This article sets the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) (2021) Act in the context of historical imaginations both of menstruation and of the nation. It identifies the following underlying assumptions about menstruation in the parliamentary debates of the Act: (1) that menstruating is a stigma, (2) that menstruators are always the others, and (3) that menstruation particularly affects those in already marginalised groups. Speaking about menstruation (4) creates a privileged, pioneering position for the speakers, and (5) forges bonds between them. The article traces the historical precursors of these assumptions in premodern and early modern humoral medicine, especially Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ Secreta mulierum, and in modern fiction discussed in the Scottish parliament: the film I, Daniel Blake and Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things. The parliamentary debates also imagine the nation as a collective body which is united by a shared blood and which at the same time transcends blood, in this case menstrual blood. This is part of a historical pattern of similar imaginations of the Scottish nation in relation to blood. The article demonstrates how this conception of menstruation and the nation functions not only in the parliamentary debate, but also in a sample of Scottish writing and thought from the Middle Ages to today.