Nascer, tornar ou reivindicar-se mulher? A identidade de gênero e o discurso de ódio sob análise no combate à pobreza menstrual no Brasil

Abstract

The concept of gender can be considered one of the most contested fields in postmodern society. What it is and what constitutes it are factors that diverge and clash with one another, intertwining with identity politics and creating an incendiary amalgam that makes any conversation about the origin and application of this term highly sensitive. From a “feminine” perspective, and particularly in relation to menstrual poverty as a deliberate state policy, the differentiation between sex and gender falls upon theories of social construction and formation of gender—not as a pre-discursive identity, but as a temporal and situational construct. This study seeks to elucidate the roots of the thin line separating the biological from the sociopolitical through a case study supported by the NGO Projeto Deixa Fluir, an organization operating in the third sector and advocating for the inclusion of people affected by menstrual poverty. Using as a sample space the comments on an educational and informative post on the NGO’s Instagram page, which employed the term “people who menstruate” as one of its institutional references to its target audience—alongside “women” and “Brazilian women”—this research aimed to assert that the clash of ideological discourses (Orlandi, 2005) and the maintenance of socially enforced power through gender differentiation (Butler, 2018) contribute to the perpetuation of trans-exclusive policies. This, in turn, fuels the hostile divergence between radical feminism (TERF) and individuals outside the gender binary system, hindering any perceptible progress in integrating socially, politically, and economically marginalized people.