Agency, Resistance and Embodiment in The Context of PMS : a Qualitative Study

Sammanfattning: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) was originally coined to describe the various changes that many women experience the days before their period. Today, we understand PMS as a complex phenomenon that not only involves the materiality of the body, but also discursive ideas and cultural mythology around women and femininity. The field of PMS-research is fragmented and includes a medical, a social constructivist, and, more recently, a material-discursive-intrapsychic perspective. This study takes its starting point in the latter approach, which allows for a multidimensional analysis of both material, discursive, and psychological aspects of PMS. To avoid pathologization, the use of premenstrual change, rather than -syndrome when discussing material experiences of menstrual cycle-related experiences, is supported and encouraged. Theoretical concepts such as bio-power, the body politic, and sexual difference, are used to make sense of the material which consists of three semi-structured group discussions and one interview with seven German women between 21 and 30. The study centers around how these women negotiate and make deliberate choices around PMS and menstruation, including embracing and/or resisting PMS as a material-discursive concept. The study aims at gaining insight into how we can make sense of PMS as a social and embodied phenomenon. Findings suggest that rather than considering premenstrual change as disempowering or as splitting menstruators lives into bad days and normal days, it can be viewed as a translator between the needs of body, psyche, and being. Premenstrual change, together with menstrual cycle-related pain, can furthermore form the basis for a supportive sisterhood.