Out for Blood: Essays on Menstruation and Resistance (SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action) Hardcover – Import, 1 November 2016
Breanne Fahs . State University of New York Press . English
Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Women's Studies category Winner of the 2017 Distinguished Publication Award presented by the Association for Women in Psychology Transporting the reader to worlds in which Komodo dragons prey on menstruating women, artists prowl the streets of Spain in blood-stained pants, and the myths of women bleeding in synchrony with each other are drawn and redrawn, these eleven essays on menstruation and resistance evoke thought-provoking tensions between silence and confrontation, shame and rebellion, and compliance and disobedience. Fusing together gender and feminist theory, critical body studies, political activism, and menstrual anarchy, Breanne Fahs illuminates the troubling omissions of menstrual coming-of-age narratives in the museum, the outdated terminology of "feminine hygiene," and the moral panics about blood that erupts from in and outside of our bathrooms, classrooms, and cell phones. Borrowing from a multitude of voices—single moms, trans teenagers, zine makers, menstrual artists, college students, tour guides, French philosophers, and culture jammers—Fahs forcefully argues for a new culture of menstruation, one where the joys, rhythms, and controversies of menstrual cycles collides with the defiant, shameless, and bold new possibilities of menstrual resistance.
Categories: Action & Adventure
About the Author
Breanne Fahs is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, where she specializes in studying women's sexuality, critical embodiment studies, radical feminism, and political activism. She has a B.A. in women's studies/gender studies and psychology from Occidental College and a Ph.D. in women's studies and clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. She has published widely in feminist, social science, and humanities journals and has authored four books: Performing Sex (SUNY Press, 2011), an analysis of the paradoxes of women's "sexual liberation," Valerie Solanas (Feminist Press, 2014), a biography of author/would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, Out for Blood (SUNY Press, 2016), a book of essays on menstrual activism and resistance, and Firebrand Feminism (University of Washington Press, 2018), a book about radical feminist histories and their links to contemporary problems of sex, gender, and justice. She has also co-edited two volumes: The Moral Panics of Sexuality (Palgrave, 2013), a collection that examines cultural anxieties of "scary sex," and Transforming Contagion (Rutgers University Press, 2018), a collection about the dangers and subversive potential of contagion. Her current projects include Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution and/or Apocalypse, a collection of historical and contemporary feminist manifestos, and Notes from the Edge, a book on sex, bodies, and madness. She is the founder and director of the Feminist Research on Gender and Sexuality Group at Arizona State University, and she also works as a clinical psychologist in private practice where she specializes in sexuality, couples work, and trauma recovery. For more information about her work, please visit www.breannefahs.com.
