Understanding the Stigma around Menstruation as a Direct Form of Misogyny

Understanding the Stigma around Menstruation as a Direct Form of Misogyny Lauren McNeil

*Author’s note: I understand that not all women have a menstrual cycle, and not all who experience menstruation are cisgender women. However, for the purpose of this paper, I will be discussing the effect menstrual stigma has on women, whether they be cis or trans.

Most women never forget the first time they got their period. I was eleven years old and in the fifth grade. I had been playing at a friend’s house, when suddenly I had to use the bathroom. When I pulled my pants down, eleven-year-old me was utterly shocked to see blood in my underwear. Just a few weeks before, all of the girls in the fifth grade were squeezed into one classroom and forced to watch a video about our looming menstrual cycle, so I understood WHAT it was. However, I was mortified. Nobody else in the entire fifth grade had gotten their “time of the month” yet, (at least not that I knew of). I felt abnormal because it had come way too early. I was too embarrassed to tell my friend, so I made up an excuse for having to go home so abruptly. I was too embarrassed to tell her mother why I had to politely decline a ride home out of fear I would get blood on the seat of her car. I was even too embarrassed to tell my own mother at first, which is why I waited about three hours after I got home to tell her what had happened. When I finally did tell her, she cried. She was “so proud of the woman I was becoming” and wasted no time teaching me everything I needed to know about a pad, and the week that lay ahead for me and my “monthly visitor.” I could not for the life of me figure out why she was so happy, because I wanted to crawl in a hole and die in that moment. How was this anything worth celebrating? The boys in my class all said that periods are disgusting, and the

teachers told us that we need to hide our periods from them. Was she never taught that? Does she know?

The next day, my mom loaded me up with pads to take to school. I will never forget how scared I was to walk into Bellevue Elementary School that day. I didn’t tell a single friend, teacher, or faculty member about my newfound “visitor.” I had to find creative places to hide my pad when I got up to go to the bathroom every hour and a half, (being new to the process, I had no judgment for how long those puppies could last me) and the thought of someone knowing what was up was enough to make me sick. (Or was it the cramps?) For years to come, I would feel shame and embarrassment from my menses. But the real question is… why?

Now that I look back on it, I think about how terrible it is that I was made to feel like my body’s natural process was something I had to hide and be ashamed of. I wasn’t born with the preconceived notion that my period was an evil thing. The only time I find it truly evil is when those damn cramps come around. So why, at the age of eleven, was I already made to feel like I should hide it?

The unfortunate truth is that society made me feel like my period was something to hide.

I’m not sure how much of my shame was any one person’s fault, but rather, I feel as though it was a collection of stigmas pressed on me as a young girl. For instance, when I first learned about my period, it was in that small classroom full of fifth grade girls. After a video depicting

every detail in animation form, we were given a sample pad, a pamphlet about the process, and some mini-deodorant (was this to tell us our period co-existed with being dirty or were they just trying to tell us we smelled? I’ll never know). When we left the room, everyone was being very secretive about what we had watched. The teachers didn’t inform the boys of our video, and we didn’t let them see what was in our little “goodie bags.” So right from the start, I was made to feel like boys shouldn’t know about our period. It was a “girl thing,” and boys were not to be bothered with girl things.

Why I felt the need to hide my period from my girlfriends I still don’t understand. I lied about the fact I had started my period when anyone would ask. Once in the sixth grade, I even had an accident in reading class. Instead of telling my closest friends what had happened, I came up with any bullshit excuse I could think of, one of my best being that I “sat on a strawberry Pop Tart this morning.” Once my friends all started getting their periods, I felt some relief, but not much. All of us were very secretive about our periods, sneaking pads and tampons out of our backpacks and hiding them in the sleeve of our shirt until we got to the bathroom. When we would ask to go to the bathroom and a teacher said no, we would quietly sit down and pray to the sweet Lord above that we wouldn’t leak through our pants. On top of the constant fear of

embarrassment, we were made to feel shame and guilt. Any time we were emotional or angry

about something, any boy around would make comments that we were probably just on our

period. When any boy overheard my friends and me talking about our period, we would be met

with the famous question: “EW! Why do you have to talk about that stuff around me? That’s

disgusting.”

As women, we are taught to come up with nicknames in order to refer to our periods, because just flat out saying, “I’m on my period” is apparently too risqué. Absurd phrases like “Aunt Flow is visiting,” “I’m painting the town red,” “Flying the Japanese flag,” “Shark Week,” “Riding the cotton pony,” or my personal favorite, “blowjob season.” These are code words only known among girls, so the boys don’t have to know when we’re “riding the crimson wave.”

Not only are we told to hide our menstruation in everyday life, but also in the media.

Artist Rupi Kaur recently did a photo series addressing the stigma around periods. She posted photos on Instagram that depicted her lying in bed with a blood stain on her pants and the sheets.

Ironically enough, Instagram removed the photos twice, because they “did not follow the site’s community standards”. Yet how often do we see pictures of naked women, drugs, or acts of body shaming on Instagram? According to writer Erika Sanchez, “The company’s decision to censor an image of period blood sent the message that women’s bodies are acceptable — if they’re sexually desirable,” (Sanchez). Likewise, she pointed out that men have no problem watching violent movies or playing graphic video games, but the mere mention of menstruation is disgusting to them.

The taboo around a woman’s period is even brought into the workplace. Another photo series about menstruation titled "Beauty in Blood" by Jen Lewis, shows macro-photographic images of Lewis' menstrual blood in water (Moore). The photo series was published in an issue of Cosmopolitan, and although none of the photos were graphic, it was enough to eventually get that issue banned from many offices and waiting rooms. So even though the goal of the photo series was to show that your period is nothing to be ashamed of, the opposite message was sent when it was deemed “not suitable for work”. In public restrooms, the term “feminine product” is applied to machines designated to dispense pads and tampons, and is on the bin where you should dispose of them. Why can’t we just call them tampons and pads? Are those terms too risqué? Not to mention the fact that taxes are placed on tampons and pads in most states, because in the eyes of the government, they are seen as a luxury. According to Cristina Garcia of the California State Assembly, “women in California pay about $7 per month for 40 years of tampons and sanitary napkins. Statewide, it adds up to over $20 million annually in taxes” (Larimer). I can’t help but wonder if they would still have a luxury tax if they weren’t seen solely as feminine products. For crying out loud, we even see it in technology. When deciding to write this paper, I texted my friend on my iPhone to tell her what I’d be writing about. She is a Gender Studies major and wrote her senior composition about the stigma around menstruation, so I wanted to let her know. As you may or may not know, Apple has this convenient feature that uses predictive text algorithms to guess what word you are trying to type out, and will

autocorrect if they feel like you’ve made a spelling mistake. Because I’m a terrible speller, I misspelled the word “menstruation” in my text. When I went to fix the mistake, no spelling suggestion came up. Puzzled, I typed the word again, waiting for Apple’s algorithm to predict my word. It didn’t. I started to get curious, so I began to type out the word “tampon”. Nothing.

Baffled, I took to the internet to see if I was just being paranoid, and sure enough I found several articles with complaints about how words like “menstruation” and “tampon” are indeed left out of Apple’s autocorrect feature. Other words left out of this feature are words that are deemed inappropriate, like “shit,” “asshole,” and “fuck”. To me, this sends the message that those words are not allowed, and that any mention of menstruation is inappropriate.

The shame and stigma around menstruation is a direct form of misogyny. Women's bodies are sacred, wonderful things – but only if they are pleasing to men. The hiding of tampons, the code words, the embarrassment of menstrual blood; it is all to keep men in the dark so they aren’t bothered by something that is actually a beautiful and important process of a woman’s body. The more we hide, the more ignorant men become about menstruation. I have met full grown men that don’t know how a period works, what it does to a woman’s body, or even how a tampon functions. It is our generation’s responsibility to teach girls AND boys that Traditionally “male only” products such as condoms and performance enhancing drugs like Viagra do not receive any kind of sales tax, whereas items like tampons and women’s birthcontrol items typically do. Menstruation is nothing to hide. We should be showing the entire fifth

grade the video about menstruation, not just the girls. We should use legitimate medical terms, rather than hiding the fact that “Aunt Flow” is paying another visit. We should be celebrating the photo series about menstrual blood, rather than sending the message that we should be censoring it. And for the love of God, if I’m a middle school girl who has to go to the bathroom to change my tampon, I should feel no shame in telling the teacher who told me to sit down that I’m on my period. The moment we start to perceive menstruation as beautiful and natural is when we finally begin to respect women. Menstruation, while it can be a pain in the ass, is actually pretty cool.

When you understand the things a woman’s body does every month, and when men begin to understand it as well, the stigma around menstruation will begin to diminish.

Works Cited Aciman, A. (2016, September 13). The iPhone should let us swear, damn it. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from https://qz.com/779821/ios-10-why-the-duck-wont-apple-aaplletiphone-softwarelearn-to-autocorrect-swear-words/ Jupp, E. (2015, February 16). Periods: the menstruation taboo that won't go away. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/healthandfamilies/features/we-need-to-talk-about-periods-9638267.html Larimer, Sarah. "The ‘tampon tax,’ explained." The Washington Post. WP Company, 08 Jan. 2016. Web. 10 Aug. 2017.

Moore, L. (2017, January 06). These Gorgeous Photos Will Change the Way You See Your Period Forever [NSFW]. Retrieved April 26, 2017, from http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a40138/these-gorgeous-photos-willchangethe-way-you-see-your-period-forever-nsfw/ Sanchez, E. (n.d.). OPINION: Menstruation stigma is a form of misogyny. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/menstruation-stigma-is-aformof-misogyny.html Zamon, R. (2015, March 30). The Most Important Argument About Periods You'll Ever Read.

Retrieved April 26, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03/27/rupikaurinstagram-photo_n_6953770.htm