Alternative menstural product activism and scholarship

"When women ignore their bodily processes or, worse, recognize them merely as problems whose solutions are available only through consumerism, internalized oppression takes over. I am suggesting not that detachment from the body - from what Adrienne Rich calls "its bloody speech" - is women's fault, but that when women participate in the silences around menstruation, they allow others to speak for them. Today it is rarely women who define the meaning of their bodily processes and take self-directed action to experience them in ways that are healthy, sustainable, and, for some, enjoyable and renewing. Menstruation is one of those bodily processes, but it is not the only one. Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, menopause, nutrition, exercise, health care, even sexuality across the lifespan, are similarly co-opted by social institutions and discourses. Not those who inhabit the bodies, but physicians and other health-care providers, along with corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and their marketing machines, shape our cultures of embodiment. And there are those who feel strongly that feminists - whatever their wave - must resist such so-optation."

- New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation by Chris Bobel