Cycles of Silence: Why Menstrual Health Disappears in Science Fiction
Science fiction promises radical futures, yet the genre repeatedly stumbles over a basic biological reality shared by roughly half the human population: menstruation. When worldbuilders construct elaborate languages, political systems, and technologies, they often forget to reckon with the cyclical bleeding that shapes billions of lives.
This omission reflects deep cultural taboos about menstrual blood. Science fiction inherits these taboos from mainstream literature and projects them onto imagined futures, creating worlds that feel complete but miss the bodies that would inhabit them.
Australian readers may notice this gap more sharply. The removal of the Goods and Services Tax on period products in 2018, the rise of Melbourne-based brands like Modibodi and TOM Organic, and ongoing debates about menstrual leave have made menstrual health a public topic here, making the silence in speculative fiction feel louder.
The Genre's Long History of Sanitised Bodies
Classic science fiction inherited a tendency to treat the body as either a vehicle for the mind or an obstacle to overcome. Female characters in pulp-era magazines were often written as companions to male heroes, present to motivate plots rather than experience their own bodily realities. Menstruation, like pregnancy and menopause, was considered too messy for the clean chrome of the genre.
This sanitisation persisted even as the genre diversified. Even works imagining radical social transformations assumed that bodies would simply adapt to new conditions without planning or accommodation. Technology was expected to solve biological problems invisibly, so the future would handle menstruation without discussion. The cost is visible when readers try to trace how a spaceship or colony would manage menstrual supplies, privacy, or pain management. The texts rarely offer answers, and this silence implies such matters are trivial or shameful, neither of which holds up under scrutiny.
Worldbuilding Without Half the Population
Roughly 1.9 billion people menstruate worldwide, according to recent global health estimates. Trans men, non-binary individuals, and some intersex people also experience menstruation, making it far from a strictly female concern. When worldbuilders ignore menstrual health, they fail to account for a significant portion of any plausible population.
Effective worldbuilding requires attention to food production, waste management, sleep cycles, and other biological necessities. Menstruation belongs in this category. It involves hormone fluctuations that affect mood and energy, requires infrastructure for hygiene and pain relief, and shapes social interactions through rituals and shared experience. Feminist critics have noted that this incompleteness often tracks with the gender of the worldbuilders themselves. All-male writing teams produce futures that reflect their own blind spots, and the push for diverse voices in speculative fiction is therefore not merely a matter of representation but a craft issue affecting the plausibility of the worlds being built.
Menstruation in Orbit: Practical Problems and Creative Solutions
Space travel poses unique challenges. In microgravity, fluids behave differently, raising questions about how menstrual blood would be managed in sanitary conditions. NASA has historically treated menstruation as something to be suppressed through hormonal contraception during missions, a choice that reflects assumptions about whose bodies are worth accommodating.
Speculative fiction offers a chance to imagine alternatives. What if orbital habitats designed waste systems that composted menstrual products safely? What if long-duration missions included dedicated spaces for pain management? What if alien worlds had their own cycles intersecting with human biology in unexpected ways?
| Approach | Treatment | Example or Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Suppression | Hormonal control eliminates periods | NASA's mission planning |
| Adaptation | Products redesigned for microgravity | Becky Chambers' work |
| Ritual | Menstruation integrated into culture | Indigenous futurist narratives |
| Ignorance | Topic avoided, implications unexamined | Classic space opera |
| Celebration | Cycles marked as communal events | Feminist utopian speculation |
The "ignorance" column remains the most populated in published fiction, but the other approaches show that richer treatments are emerging.
Australian Innovations and the Menstrual Health Gap
Australia has become a hub of menstrual product innovation. Melbourne-based Modibodi has built a global market for reusable period underwear, while companies like TOM Organic and Lunette have pushed sustainable cup and pad designs. These brands emerged partly because Australian consumers, shaped by outdoor culture and environmental consciousness, demanded products suited to beach swims, hiking trips, and remote fieldwork.
The legislative landscape has also shifted. After years of activism around the 2018 removal of the GST on menstrual products, Australian states have experimented with free period product programs in schools. The Victorian government's initiative to provide free pads and tampons in public schools has become a model watched by other jurisdictions. Yet gaps remain. Remote communities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia still face period poverty exacerbated by supply chain issues, and Indigenous women report higher rates of menstrual disorders with lower access to specialist care. Australian speculative fiction has barely begun to grapple with these realities.
Disability, Menstrual Justice, and Access
The intersection of disability and menstruation is particularly underexplored in speculative fiction. Disabled people who menstruate face additional barriers, from sensory sensitivities that make traditional products unusable to mobility issues that complicate bathroom access. Imagined futures rarely consider these barriers at all.
More grounded approaches, ones that imagine accessible infrastructure and adaptive technologies, remain rare. Discussions about making creative spaces inclusive, such as the work examined in How the Winnipeg Fringe Festival Can Become More Accessible for Disabled Artists, point toward the structural thinking that speculative fiction could adopt. Menstrual justice for disabled people requires both physical access and cultural recognition. Imagining futures where every bathroom includes a range of product options, where pain management is taken seriously, and where cyclical changes are accommodated in work and school schedules would represent a genuine advance rather than a technological afterthought.
Towards a Bleeding Tomorrow
Some contemporary authors are beginning to address these gaps. Becky Chambers' "Monk and Robot" series imagines a post-capitalist society where bodies and their needs are honoured rather than optimised. Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy addresses gender in ways that destabilise assumptions about biological sex. Indigenous futurists are bringing ritual and cyclical time into speculative frameworks. These works demonstrate that menstruation can be integrated into worldbuilding without becoming the entirety of a story.
A passing reference to a character's cycle or a description of how a colony manages supplies can enrich a narrative while modelling better possibilities for readers. Read the archives of feminist publications like SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS, follow Australian publishers such as Twelfth Planet Press and the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, and support writers who take bodies seriously. The futures we imagine are the futures we make possible, and there is room, finally, for cycles to be part of the story.