Disgusting, weak and empowering: the meanings that Scottish female karate practitioners attach to menstruation

Menstruation has been interpreted, across many societies, as a symbol of impurity and of women’s unsuitability for sport. In Scotland, menstruation remains surrounded in taboo and stigma, where women face expectations of continual bodily management to ensure that menstruation remains socially hidden. Yet, within the last decade there has been an increasing momentum of elite female athletes acknowledging and speaking publicly about menstruation, challenging its taboo position in sport.

This article will explore the meanings that Scottish female karate practitioners attach to menstruation within karate settings, and the extent to which they resist or reinforce stigmatising narratives of menstruation. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews with 10 female Scottish Karate practitioners aged between 18-48 years old. Findings suggest that new narratives of an empowered menstruation are echoed within the female karate practitioners’ reflections, where female karate practitioners are caught between both perceiving periods as disgusting and embarrassing, and simultaneously desiring to resist such narratives and reconstruct periods as ‘normal’ and healthy.