Menstruation and everyday school life or - "You don’t need to be fixed, my queens – it’s the world that needs fixing"

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark, this paper discusses how young menstruating bodies are made troublesome in the context of everyday school life. To explore the nuanced and complex emergences of menstruation, and how these offer (im)possibilities for young menstruants’ joy for everyday life participation, I draw on feminist new materialism (Braidotti, 2002) and critical crip and disability theory (Fritsch, 2015; Hedva 2016). These theoretical perspectives allow for an analysis in which menstruation is seen as emerging through multiple relations of bodies, blood, things and institutional infrastructures. Furthermore, I discuss how the menstruating body as trouble can be viewed as an affirmative critique, which might suggest new pedagogies of menstruation.