Since reading Legacy Russell’s, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto I’ve been positing that Menopause is a glitch. Russell states that “…a glitch is an error, a mistake, a failure to function” which really struck me in the same way Menopause (1) does – my body is unable to produce a child due to the infertility that Menopause draws and no longer functions in the way it once did, its glitch-ing. However, in re-reading the text and further considering my claim, perhaps the distinction to make is that the symptoms of menopause are glitches and that Menopause itself as a function is not a glitch – as every menstruating body evolves into the Menopausal space. It is generally not an anomaly to become Menopausal (2).
The symptoms of Menopause are varied from case to case but amongst other symptoms can include hot flushes, emotional instability, hair loss and hair growth in unusual locations, changes to the shape of the body and vaginal dryness. These symptoms are usually treated with hormones, ensuring that the Menopausal body remains as manageable and as readable as possible in its original female form. Russell explains, “…when the body is determined as a male or female…the body performs gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individual. A body that…remains indecipherable within binary assignment is a body that refuses to perform the score…this glitch is a form of refusal.” Guided by this mode of thinking, to refuse hormones for the symptoms of Menopause is to refuse the systems and conventions of being female in a western patriarchal society (3).
In my current body of work, the symptoms of Menopause take the form of material, essentially re-making the conditions of Menopause in a gallery context. In formalizing these symptoms into material and shifting them to the gallery, they become body-less, also unbecoming gender and in turn, becoming glitches that exist in the in-between. Through this removal, the materials of Menopause become mystical, sensory, grotesque, though they remain familiar to the body and to the senses, these materials summon a response that is just slightly ungraspable.
“We use “body” to give material form to an idea that has no form, an assemblage that is abstract” – in unbecoming a body these materials (symptoms) refuse the systems in which a body is expected to exist, reforming a space unencumbered by conventions and resulting in a space where broadened and evolved interpretations, relationships and experiences can take place.
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1. The use of the word ‘Menopause’ in this text also acknowledges the symptoms of Peri-Menopause.
2. Acceptations to this generalization might include cases of early menopause due to hysterectomies or excessive use of hormones and other medical conditions.
3. There is also an argument here that in refusing hormones one also resists the capitalist systems of corrupt pharmaceutical and government corporations.
Glitch Feminism, A Manifesto, Legacy Russell, Verso, London, 2020