Menstruation: Discussing The Bloody Stigma
As you can probably tell, this particular post is going to be centered on a rather unpopular, yet totally natural topic: the topic of menstruation.
Now, before I get virtually slammed for referring to the topic of menstruation as an unpopular one, I’d like to elaborate on why I’ve chosen this particular word to introduce my topic. I’ve deemed the term menstruation as an unpopular topic because it is a subject that many men, and even women are deathly afraid to talk about. For as long as I can remember, the topic of menstrual cycles has been a conversation that is best kept behind closed doors, because apparently nobody wants to hear about our “lady business.” And when the topic is allowed to roam freely, it stirs up more controversy than most congressional debates. It’s safe to say that there’s a continuous stigma attached to the fact that periods exist, and that in most cases, blood often erupts from bodily cavities when periods are present. And it is because of this eternal stigma that I’ve been motivated to start this discussion with you all.
Homework Assignment: Travel back in time to the first discussion you had about menstruation.
Did you first learn about menstruation through a mandated Sex Ed course while in junior high? Did your parents sit you down and embarrass you with the dreaded birds and bees discussion? Were you lucky enough to have had an understanding of how and why menstruation occurs, or were you unlucky in the fact that nobody bothered mentioning it at all? And when you did eventually find out, how did the discussion make you feel? If you’re a man, did the thought of a woman bleeding freak you out? If you’re a woman, did the thought of you, and other women bleeding freak you out? And if you’re gender neutral and/or unassigned, did the thought of anyone bleeding, yourself and others included, freak you out? Chances are, some of you will answer yes to this question, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t on that boat with those of you who did.
I was ten years old when I first learned that menstruation was a thing. It wasn’t something that my mother and I spoke about, and it happened long before I even understood what Sex Ed was. In fact, my knowledge didn’t even begin as a discussion, but as a discovery, if you will. My aunt was babysitting me, and my cousin and I were watching television in my aunt’s room. After showering, my aunt came into her room to get dressed, and as she was drying herself off my cousin pointed while shrieking in horror, “JESS! LOOK AT THAT STRING!” I stopped watching television and glanced in my aunt’s direction and sure enough, there was a string hanging between her legs. Before my cousin and I had a chance to ask any questions, she looked at us and said, “It’s a tampon. I have my period and I use tampons so I don’t bleed all over the place.” I don’t remember what I thought about periods when I was ten, but I do remember the string, and how it taught me that I’d too use tampons one day.
Now, even though I had seen a tampon and knew what they were used for, nothing prepared me for the day I got my period.
I was twelve years old when I got my period, and I was at my friends house when it decided to grace me with it’s presence. I remember feeling a sense of overwhelming humiliation as I approached my friend to ask if she had anything I could use until I went home. To make a long story short, she didn’t have any “period supplies” at her house because she hadn’t started her period yet, so I rode my bicycle home with hopes of arriving without bleeding to death. While I didn’t have much help in the “lady department,” I caught on rather quickly and understood what to do when my period came, but I grew more and more embarrassed as each month passed.
My grandmother didn’t talk about periods with my mother, and my mother didn’t talk about periods with me.
I grew up around men who used “that time of the month” as an insult to the women around me, so I grew up knowing that I didn’t want anyone to know when my time of the month was. These feelings didn’t subside, as I got older, in fact they got worse because menstruation continued to be a topic that nobody wanted to talk about. I met straight men who swore they wouldn’t touch their girlfriends if they were bleeding, gay men who made jokes about women bleeding for 7 days without dying, straight and lesbian women who swore they didn’t get touched when they were bleeding, and people of all genders who just avoided the subject all together. It became less of a conversation about nature and more of a conversation about being dirty vs. being clean. The stigma surrounding menstruation was continuous in my circle, which further proved that menstruation was an unpopular topic, and unfortunately, it still is.
And this is where I say a huge thank you to both the feminist movement and the Internet, because although the period conversation may still be an uncomfortable one to have, it is now a conversation that is being had — all over the world, by millions of people!
Numerous amounts of men and women are blogging, vlogging, sharing stories, and even engaging in conversations about menstruation. There are search engines that can link us to a world of valuable information about our bodies, and many of the sites we are directed to have anatomically correct photographs that go into detail about what our bodies do when they menstruate. The conversation is now on everyone’s lips and while many people are still stunned and offended by the mention of a period, it is still a conversation that is circulating through various outlets. This my friends, is what I call progress.
I plan to elaborate on this subject a bit more in the future. I’d like to research the cultural influences that contribute to menstrual shame, talk about how homeless individuals are affected by menstrual shame, and cultivate an overall understanding on both the external and internal elements that contribute to this ongoing problem.
But until then, I’ll leave you with an article about Kiran Gandhi, a woman who has become infamous for running a marathon while menstruating — and doing so while letting her blood run freely.
***************************************************************************************{About Jess G. Jess is a thirty-something-year-old LGBTQ activist who dabbles in radical feminism, wife-loving, and baking.}
