I remember doing a reading for one of my books. I was at an independent bookstore in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I had just started reading out the first chapter of my book Blood Ready. Two young men walked in the bookstore, perhaps drawn by the woman poet who was having a reading right after I read, or perhaps drawn by the books on display in the window. I had just gotten to the part where I talk about menstruation. The two young men turned around and walked back out faster than they walked in. It was amusing…sort of…but it also spoke to a secret in our society, a secret that isn’t secret, a secret we try to keep hidden but fail. That secret? Women bleed. Every month. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Tonight, an essay about menstruation.

BLOOD

 Men seem to be terrified of blood – of menstrual blood, anyway. Most men will do everything to avoid it, or even mention of it. Want to make a man uncomfortable? Ask him to go to the store and buy you some tampons. Some men have trouble just knowing their wife stuck tampons in the grocery basket he’s pushing. The menstrual cycle (more commonly called the ‘period’) has been the source of jokes for comedians, and horror for men of all sorts.

In some places, like India, women are required to separate from the rest of humanity when they are menstruating. They spend the time in a small hut, and many of them die each year of asphyxiation from the fires they use to try to get some heat in the awful conditions. The Christian Bible states that a woman who has her period will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, and everyone who touches her during those days will also be unclean. Cleansing was required for the woman, and even for those who sat on a chair she sat on.

Periods are also a source of jokes and disgust for teenage boys, who will get as far away as possible from a girl who bled through her tampon and stained her pants. When a girl isn’t doing what they want, they might say “She’s on the rag” or whatever the current manifestation of that is in the younger generation. Other girls may join the mocking if the girl on her period stained her pants; perhaps they hope they might be spared the same if they appear to be “one of the guys”.

Hypatia, female mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer in Alexandria in the fourth century, is said to have found a way to deter unwanted suitors…and all suitors were unwanted to her. She had more important things in her life than men. So when a man came around, she showed them her menstrual rag. It created an immediate repulsion, although she is said to have been beautiful.

In spite of all that, I never thought I would see a presidential nominee from a major political party refer to a woman as “bleeding from her…wherever.” He denied he meant it that way, but of course everyone knew he did. That was the point. He was signaling to his base that he was one of them, a juvenile frat boy who could spout ugly misogyny. I’m surprised he didn’t fart; isn’t that what ‘real men’ are supposed to do?

Much of the oppression of women has come down through the ages to arrive at the modern world for one main reason – our reproductive role. Women bear the children. Oh, yes, men have a role, too. But men are larger and stronger than women, and women have the valuable, energy-intensive large gametes they require to procreate. So marriage was created, and all sorts of laws making women property. Why? To ensure a man he had sole access to the female, and he had offspring that were truly his. To make sure he would leave his DNA behind when he shuffled off this mortal coil. He wouldn’t have expressed it that way, of course. We didn’t know about DNA in those days.

There seems to be a permanent meme about women and their periods. For some reason, many people believe women simply can’t think during their periods. They just lose their minds, or something. For some people, they believe this extends for a week before the period starts, and a week after it ends. That leaves one week, at most, where a woman is capable of functioning. Really? Of course, many people think a woman can’t think while she’s pregnant either. Or once she starts menopause. It seems our reproductive cycles turn us into great big masses of unthinking, bleeding (or not bleeding) flesh.

Yes, there are jokes about men thinking with their penis, and losing their mind over sex. Those jokes aren’t necessarily funny, either, but they are also not harmful in the way the jokes about women are, the way disgust over menstruation is. The idea that men think about sex constantly hasn’t prevented them from getting high paying jobs, becoming lawmakers, judges, doctors, professors, engineers, or actually any other job. It hasn’t led to men being locked away in huts for a week of every month, ugly little cold dirty huts without companionship. It hasn’t led to them being considered unclean to the point no one can touch them for seven days.

As I am writing this, I am reminded of that scene from the movie Carrie, where she is frightened because she just started her period and doesn’t know what’s happening. Instead of sympathy and help, she gets mockery, as the girls crowd her in the shower, throwing tampons and pads at her, shouting “plug it up”. She cowers in the corner. Her mother, when she hears, screams invectives about her being a bad girl. No one is willing to help her understand what is happening. Of course, the most famous scene follows…she is at the prom, elected prom queen through the scheming of her classmates, and while she stands there, flowers in her arms, tiara on her head, smiling perhaps for the first time in the movie, someone dumps a bucket of pig blood on her. We all know what happens next. No one lives through the movie except one girl…and it wasn’t Carrie.

I have a confession to make. When I started my period, I had the same reaction as Carrie. No one told me anything. I thought I was dying, that I had some horrible disease. When I told my mother, she turned me over to my older sister to explain. My mother couldn’t talk about this perfectly ordinary function of a woman’s body. She had been made to feel ashamed of her own menstruation, and too ashamed to save her daughters from the fear that comes with ignorance. I guess it’s a good thing I had an older sister.

Today, I don’t see much sign things have changed. Some women will talk in public about their menstrual cycles, but for the most part, women still do their best to keep it hidden. Women who go through menopause or hysterectomy are considered fortunate not to have to deal with it anymore. It isn’t pleasant, I’ll admit, but I think it would be more bearable if it weren’t treated like something shameful, if women weren’t made to feel like they were doing something wrong.

The time has come to remove the stigma from menstruation, to remove the covers that hide it (unsuccessfully) from the world, to remove the idea that women are somehow slaves to their period and unable to function properly because of it. Funny how most of those people who so worried about my being unable to work because of cramps, or whatever, never seemed to think it prevented me from sweeping floors or cooking dinner or washing dishes. In the end, periods, shameful as they are made, seem to be just one more aspect of ‘woman’s work’.