PREMENSTRUAL TENSIONS IN THE CRIMINAL LAW: DO WOMEN NEED A DEFENCE FOR “THAT CRIME OF THE MONTH”? Oh! Menstruang woman, thou’rt a fiend, From whom all nature should be screened! 1 The Premenstrual Problem Premenstrual problems for the “female of the species” 2 are by no means a new phenomenon. In fact, a closer look at what has been wrien on the subject of women’s hormonal health and menstrual miseries can take us back several centuries. 3 Clearly, throughout the course of his-story, there has been a tendency on the part of society in general – and oſten men in parcular - to demarcate the ‘menstrous woman’ 4 as being something ‘Other’. 5 In more recent mes, this has led to certain women being sidelined and set apart - somemes quite literally 6 - on a monthly basis, purely because of their perceived differences; 7 their bouts of “periodic witchiness;” 8 and their “pre-monstrual” behaviour. 9 1 Anon; Ancient English poem cited in de Beauvoir, S., The Second Sex, Trans. C. Borde and S. Malovany- Chevallier ((2009) [1949], Random House: Alfred A. Knopf). 2 A phrase borrowed from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The Female of the Species, in Kipling, R., Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edion 1885-1918, (1919, London:Hodder & Stoughton); line 32 of Kipling’s verse is parcularly pernent – “She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else”. 3 Symptoms that would now be classified as premenstrual were first recognised by Hippocrates around 400 BC. 4 Levicus 20:18. 5 de Beauvoir, S., supra, n 1. 6 This refers to the pracce amongst some cultures of banishing women to a ‘menstrual hut’ whilst they are experiencing their monthly bleed, as they are considered to be unclean and forbidden to live within the family circle - Buckley, T. and Golieb, A., Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruaon (1988, Berkley: University of California Press). 7 Morantz Henig, R., Dispelling Menstrual Myths N.Y. Times, Mar 7, 1982, 6 at 64 – discussing in more detail the view of menstruaon as a disability. 8 A colourful term aributed to Dr. Erle Henriksen, former Head of Gynaecology at the University of Southern California, speaking at the Annual Congress of the American College of Surgeons in 1956; see also Medicine: Witches Every Month, TIME Magazine, Oct 22, 1956. 9 The effect of women’s hormones have oſten been compared to Dr. Jekyll’s transformaon into the unrecognisable monster Mr. Hyde: Chrisler, J.C., Hormone hostages: The cultural legacy of PMS as a legal defense, in L.H. Collins, M.R. Dunlap and J.C. Chrisler (eds.), Charng a new course for feminist psychology, pp 238-252 (2002, Westport, CT: Praeger). 1