Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

SMCR 2013: By the Numbers

May 13th, 2013 by Chris Bobel

With apologies to the Harpers Index, we present you with a snapshot of the upcoming 20th Biennial Society for Menstrual Cycle Research Conference held at Manhattan Marymount College, June 6-8, 2013.

 

Number of presenters on the program: 125

 

Number of these that are students: 32

 

Activists, artists, and clinicians: 32

 

That are Gloria Steinem, world-renowned feminist pioneer: 1

 

Number of Google hits for her iconic essay “If Men Could Menstruate”: 8,980

 

For  the words “Kim Kardashian Pregnancy Weight Gain”: 22, 2000

 

Number of countries represented by all presenters: 12

 

Other than the U.S: 11

 

Number of presentations that are research projects: 60

 

Workshops: 7

 

Posters: 17

 

Plenaries: 4

 

Performance Pieces: 2

 

Poetry Slams: 1

 

Number of scholarship requests made by conference attendees: 39

 

In 2011: 6

 

Number of presentations focused on MENOPAUSE: 13

 

On MENARCHE: 17

 

Number of presentation abstracts that mention the words LIBERATE, FREEDOM, JUSTICE or CHALLENGE: 18

 

That mention the words SHAME, SUFFER and PAIN: 15

 

Red Riding Hood: 1

 

The film Carrie: 1

 

Pharmaceuticals: 4

 

Education: 10

 

Gender, Men, Women, and/or Girls, : 133

 

Number of Days Before the Conference: 24

 

Days left until you can register: 24 (you can register on site)

Years you will have to wait for the next SMCR conference : 2

 

Creative Commons 2.0 // WordItOut.com

 

Join Us! Be Counted!

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Posted in New Research | 5 Comments »

#Making Menstruation Matter—For All the Wrong Reasons

April 15th, 2013 by Chris Bobel

Oops!

Somebody fell in it.

And by it I mean the tired old WomenCan’tDoStuffBecauseTheyAreWomen pit–a veritable snake hole crawling with misogynists, essentialists, and old school protectionists.

Image adapted from public domain photo // Design by Anne Bobel Zelek
[Actual menstrual status of shooter unknown. That's the point, people. You can't tell]

Terri Proud, a newly hired Administrative Assistant in the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services, landed in the pit recently when she (allegedly) made comments about women’s menstrual cycles in combat. She was fired, and her boss, Colonel Joey Strickland, was asked by the Arizona governor to resign (apparently, Strickland hired Proud against the Governor’s wishes).

According to the Arizona-Sonora News Service, when asked about women serving on the front lines, Proud said “Women have certain things during the month I’m not sure they should be out there dealing with….”

Proud says she was misquoted. Was she or wasn’t she? Even if the quote is verbatim, I struggle to imagine a government official’s capacity  to register the absurdity of this comment, but maybe I am just cynical. Suffice it to say, there is surely more to this obviously political  here, but I’d like to focus on the menstrual dimension.

The assumptions about what women can and cannot do while menstruating make for a long and logic-defying list. The rationale for menstrual prohibitions is sometimes religious  (e.g., bans on menstruating women from religious rites, sex, and food preparation). There’s another category of no-nos beyond the menstrual taboo, though.  Women can’t do [fill in the blank] because their periods render them incapacitated or otherwise put them at risk. Many people still believe a woman should not camp or hike in bear infested woods because their menstrual odor will render them bear bait.  Not true. Often, women themselves are constructed as the predators during their PRE-menstrual period. You know….PMSing women are dangerous, even potentially homicidal. And women can’t be trusted to make decisions (or serve on the Supreme Court) because they are Out Of Control.

But we know differently. Women—during all phases of the menstrual cycle—can do all manner of things,  all the time, thank you very much, including jobs that are not, shall we say, menstrual management-friendly. They fight forest fires. They collect data in remote field sites. They orbit space. They are perform brain surgery.

Yet, PREJUDICE against women is often JUSTIFIED because they menstruate. The Disability Rights/Inclusion Movement has taught us that often, the most pernicious barriers to inclusion are perceptions, not the actual limits imposed by our disabilities. That’s certainly the case here. Let me go out on limb here: if women were respected, if women were valued, if women were seen as competent peers, then the fact of their menstruation would be less of a “disability” and more of a fact of a life.

But you know what? I want to give Terri Proud the benefit of the doubt for a minute. When pressed about her comment by The Arizona Daily Star, Proud said “I don’t have a problem with women being on the front line if that’s their choice….I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘No, you don’t have that right.” In the same story, Proud is described as harboring  a “curiosity”  about “how menstrual cycles are handled” and noted “that whether or not that hurdle is being addressed is a real issue, even if it isn’t talked about. Women are designed differently from men and need to have their needs met on the front lines.” And I say to that: well done Terri Proud, Menstrual Activist.

Because she is right. Menstruation is a reality, and menstruators need support and resources. Managing our menses can be tough when we don’t have access to facilities, or privacy, or both. Anybody that’s been camping while on their period can tell you that (bears notwithstanding) this IS a REAL issue. So she is right to ask (even if she is merely doing so to recover from blurting out something really dumb) What is the US military doing for women in combat? Now with the ban on women in (officially recognized) combat positions is no more, a change in policy that is expected to open 230,000 front-line positions to women, this question demands answers.

One answer: Suppress menstruation through the use of extended oral contraceptive pills. That is an option, yes, but it might not be the right one for every woman. Even beyond many menstrual cycle researchers discomfort with the one-size-fits-all approach to dosing cycle-stopping contraception (readers of re:Cycling are no stranger to concerns about this trend), there is a deeper concern about the implications of just making the menses go away.

Cycle stopping contraception, Liz Kissling has argued, enables a particularly new manifestation of the docile neoliberal subject. The feminine non-mensturating body, is not, as popularly believed, liberated, but rather, one held even tighter to the hegemonic male standard. Place this compliant amenorrheaic body in the context of the military and a curious paradox is revealed. The submissive soldier? The docile woman packing an assault rifle? Really? Seems both oxymoronic, and hardly like a gain in the fight for women’s equality.

Instead, can we imagine an expanded universe of menstrual management options?

  • Reusable cups and sponges provided for free (with eww-effect reduction training included) ?
  • Cycle stopping contraception offered as an option (not a mandate)—including an honest discussion of risks and benefits?
  • Quality reproductive health care in which menstrual health is a part of a comprehensive whole?
  • Work cultures, even remote ones, that acknowledge cyclical and variable human needs of all sorts?

Otherwise, if women must alter their very bodies to “fit in” and be taken seriously in their jobs, show me the ground we have gained. Cuz when I look down, all I see is the bottom of the same ole stinky pit.

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Posted in Communication, FemCare, Health Care, Humor, Media, Menstruation | 6 Comments »

Little Girls! Just Say Yes to Your Dreams!

March 18th, 2013 by Chris Bobel

Seen this one yet? (or the (eerily) related “Birth Control on the Bottom“?)

We posted “Sassy Girlz Candy Birth Control Pills” (written by Carissa Leone in 2011) in our regular installment Weekend Links on Feb 2. I had a mixed reaction. And when a couple re:Cycling readers described the video as “nasty,” I knew we needed to dig in a bit.

Let’s discuss.

There’s something very absurdly funny about eating birth control, even if the women are still tweens and the birth control is merely mulit- colored jelly beans intended to get young girls in the pill-popping groove before they are saddled with a baby and an half-finished high school education.

First of all, women CAN eat their birth control, donchaknow… Warner Chilcott brought to market their chewable, spearmint flavor oral contraceptive, Femcon Fe, for women who have difficulty swallowing pills and apparently, find stopping for 30 seconds to swallow water.

But I digress (I guess I just want to be clear that we are ALREADY munching our pills).

It is hard not to love how this sketch takes down the pandering to the girl tween market. Oh lordy. There’s so much potential there! (one estimate figures that kids aged 8-12 years are spending $30 billion OF THEIR OWN MONEY and nagging their parents to spend another $150 billion annually!) Little girls quickly move from Disney to diets, from fingerpaint to fake eyelashes, from tutus to belly shirts…..I have seen it with my own girls and it feels, frankly, like an inexorable force.

Viral sketch writer Carissa Leone graciously replied to my questions regarding the piece. When I asked her what inspired her, she channeled her Women’s Studies training (go team!) and supplied her two main reasons:

(1) “I saw a little girl on the subway,holding a baby doll in one of those pretend baby slings…and I thought, “If only she really knew what motherhood was like. I wonder if anyone has explained the authentic experience. I wish she were carrying a briefcase and reading a teeny issue of Ms. magazine instead… “

AND

(2) “The idea that women can/should have it all, in terms of relationships and families and career still seems to be put forth as a tangible (and”correct”) goal in Western culture. It’s a pressure I and many other peers feel, and one that I don’t think is truly possible, or necessarily awesome.”

And Big Pharma takes a hit, too, per the spot’s director, Brian Goetz, who offered this when I asked him about what led to the sketch:

“I wanted to do the video because the script spoke so well to the branding of pharmaceutical commercials, where no matter what the product, as long as you say there’s a problem and that you have the solution, throw some happy people and fun b-roll in it, you’ve got a successful campaign. On top of that, it’s always fun to legitimize terrible ideas in sketch comedy. And if that means having multi-colored jelly bean birth control pills, all the better.”

But I think there’s more to it that that.

Why do I find myself laughing and crying at the same time? Well, I just finished my advance copy of Holly Grigg-Spall’s forthcoming Sweetening the Pill  or How We Became Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control (out this Spring with Zero Books). In it (and here as well, on this blog), Grigg-Spall makes the case the hormonal contraceptives have become so normative that we, as consumers, permit an imperfect (at best) product to flourish even while other options may be more appropriate. The one-pill-fits-all mindset is so pervasive and bores in so deep, so young, Grigg-Spall argues, that when someone says, ‘hey! I don’t want to be on the pill,’ these—what she calls “pill refugees” — are hastily branded as irresponsible, antifeminist, or just plain dumb. That is, the pill gets constructed as our savior, our liberator, our saving grace, even when its not.

And that’s where this spoof enters….since the pill IS all these things, let’s get those girlies on board NOW! Why wait? Good habits start young, after all. And product loyalty is not just for toothpaste and laundry detergent….

And so, “Sassy Girlz Candy Birth Control Pills” is super smart feminist critique. It calls out the enduring wrongheadnessness of romanticizing motherhood and co-opting what I would call a tragically hollowed-out pseudo feminism harnessed to push product:

  • Little girls playing Mommy is cute, and kinda bullshit!
  • Its never too early to teach little girls about options!
  • She’ll know that birth control means winning a college scholarship

Yup. There’s lots of problems with that. Thanks to the feminist satirists to help us see.

But I have to say one more thing.

Leone and I discussed (what I consider) the unfortunate below-the-belt invocation of gender dysphoria to as she put it, “most absurd, heightening beat” in the sketch (here’s another, more recent example of same, on SNL). I don’t think trans or gender queer or otherwise gender variant people should ever serve as punchlines, as I told Leone so in our email exchange. When I inquired about this moment in an otherwise spot-on sketch, she said that is was never intended it as a negative perception of transgendered kids. But still  it is, and I think it points with a big fat finger at how much work we still need to do to move trans issues from margin to center.

Let’s push forward without leaving anyone behind. Let’s laugh at feminist satire that avoids (even unintended) transphobia. Let’s keep our targets clear and our allies clearer. Let’s say YES to that dream, for real.

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Posted in Advertising, Birth Control, Communication, Film, Girls, Health Care, Humor, Independent Film, Internet, Language, Media, Pharmaceutical, Pregnancy, Reproduction | 4 Comments »

An Antidote for Feminist Fatigue?

January 21st, 2013 by Chris Bobel

I am demoralized.

The gang rapes in Delhi India and Steubenville Ohio and EVERYHERE, ALL THE TIME, have me feeling hopeless and fatigued.

Soon, I will face 30 undergraduates in my introductory Women’s Studies class, and I will, again, attempt to contextualize rape and link it to the pernicious and enduring realities of hegemonic masculinities, misogyny, and social constructions bodies as commodities.

And I will hear victim blaming, neocolonialist attacks on the global south, the forced binary of good vs. evil, and other apologia for why, how, when and where rape “happens” as if it is an unstoppable force that some of us (the chaste, the modestly dressed, the sober, etc) can avoid.

And I will go home and cry in my pillow.

So I am looking for inspiration to go on, to keep talking and, the harder part, listening, and not give in, not resign myself to ‘this is the way of the world. Don’t fight it, just accept it and move on.’

This 5 minute PSA created by Jason Stefaniak and Siobhan O’Loughlin helps. A lot. It is a clarion call to embodied autonomy, and I am so grateful to the creators and the funders who made it possible.

You can read the full text here, but here’s the first few powerful lines:

This is my body.
I do what I want with it.
This is my body.
I make my own choices.
This is my body.
I use it as a canvas, tattoo it, decorate it, and pierce it.
I take medicine if I want to and only undergo medical procedures I choose.
I eat what I want, exercise for my health, and wear what I like.
I fall in love with whomever, fuck/sleep with whomever and marry whomever I choose.
I decide when and how to become a mother.
This is my body, not yours

These decisions have nothing to do with you. If I’m not hurting you or stopping you from pursuing your inherent right to happiness, it’s none of your business. This is my body, not yours.

Stefaniak released “This is My Body” on July 23rd, so it is hardly ‘news’, but that fact hardly diminishes the URGENCY of the message. Can you imagine a world in which we lived by such a simple credo that reminds us of these truths:  My body is NOT your blank screen on which to project your anxieties or your fantasies (or both). My body is NOT your property, NOT your business opportunity, NOT your playground, NOT your battlefield.

Watch and affirm our work–which simply must be our COLLECTIVE work— to RESPECT the INTERGRITY of everyBODY, everyONE.

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Posted in Activism, Communication, Film, Independent Film, Internet, Media | 3 Comments »

This Time With Feeling! Making the Menstrual-Reproductive Justice Connection

December 24th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

Rejection stings.

A couple weeks ago, I received  the following ‘thanks, but no’ to a  proposal I sent to a reproductive justice conference,

Dear Chris Bobel,

Thank you for submitting your proposal, “How Menstruation Matters to the Reproductive Justice Movement”…..Our staff has spent the last few months evaluating proposals and building an initial workshop list. We were inspired by the volume of quality proposals that we received. All of them helped us in the planning process.

 At this time, however, we are not accepting your proposal for the 2013 conference.

Ouch.

As I typically do, I immediately headed to the deep dark brooding place of self-recrimination. That’s where I go. But as I set afoot on this well-worn path to my special ugly place,  I did something I don’t usually do; I paused, lifted my head and looked around.

As I did, I wondered, if just maybe, the rejection was not the result of the deficits in my proposal, but rather, a reflection of the broken link between menstrual awareness and the broader movement for embodied autonomy.

In other words, maybe the rejection was not as much about me (and my failings) but more about the world around me, and ITS (meaning OUR)  failings as a culture to see how a certain bodily reality is part of a larger whole.  Maybe the fact that a team of progressive reproductive justice activists and scholars saying NO THANKS to an opportunity to make the essential linkages between the menstrual cycle across the lifespan and reproductive justice is an indication that WE still have SO MUCH WORK TO DO to help people see this crucial connection.

I know I am not alone in feeling like the spotted elephant on the Island of Misfit Toys (seasonal reference: DONE!). Sister menstrual warrior Laura Wershler recently wrote the following when I this blog post-in-progress:

Caring about menstruation and the menstrual cycle makes me almost a freak in the pro-choice world. I get ignored or criticized a lot because people don’t want to ask or answer some of the questions I keep trying to pose about choice around non-hormonal contraceptive methods. 

So what’s a freak to do? We could stamp our feet and curse those who don’t see what’s pretty obvious to us, but that won’t raise the awareness.

This is on us.

Yes. Rejection stings, but maybe this time, I can take something away far more productive than the usual self-flagellation. Maybe this time, I can take it in as a clarion call, a motivation for a deeper commitment to help others make the menstrual connection, to, spread the #menstruationmatters message (thanks again Laura Wershler).

This means more conference proposals (and a thicker skin for more rejections). More writing. More blogging. More teaching. More radio interviews. More everything.

Who’s with me?

 

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Posted in Activism, Communication, Menstruation, politics, Reproduction | 7 Comments »

The Little Boy and the BFG

November 26th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

Photo by Andrea Mason. Used with permission

His mother told me she was in the shower and when she came out, there he was. “He kept pushing them through the applicator and saying, ‘A flower!’ and then trying to sniff them,” she explained  (and the t-shirt, by the way, is just a wonderful coincidence).

So why is this such a charming yet cringe-worthy moment captured in time?

A sweet little boy innocently explores some curious objects, ‘flowers’ to him. They are not charged with a snicker and an ‘ohmigod.’ They are not products just for women’s deep dark ‘down there’. They are neither yucky nor gross. In fact, they are FASCINATING and FUN! And that’s because our menstrual shaming culture has not worked its insidious magic on him yet.  Today, these tampons are just flowers. [And a fun fact here: in the Middle Ages, the word “flower” was commonly used to signal menstruation, according to scholars Etienne Van De Walle and Elisha P. Renne]

As I studied this photo, dissecting the typical reactions it surely elicits, my mind wandered to my favorite passage from the Roald Dahl classic, The Big Friendly Giant. In it, Sophie, the little girl who befriends the massive and gentle protagonist with his own unique vocabulary, attempts to explain the impropriety of open, let’s just say it, fart talk.

Everyone is whizzpopping, if that’s what you call it, Sophie said. Kings and Queens are whizzpopping. Presidents are whizpopping, then why not talk about it? Glamorous film stars are whizzpopping. Little babies are whizzpopping. But where I come from it is not polite to talk about it.

Redunculous! Said the BFG. If everyone is making whizzpoppers, then why not talk about it?

Exactly. Everyone farts, so why the hush hush? About one-half the world’s human population menstruates (most for multiple decades) but we are expected to pretend we do not.

Redunculous, but oh-so-common. So when a little boy brings evidence of menstruation into the light of day, we think, if only he knew what THOSE THINGS WERE REALLY FOR! The horror!
But what if he knew AND he didn’t care? What if he knew and he STILL thought they were still fun to play with, still reminded him of flowers?

What then?
 What would menstruation feel like, for menstruators and everyone else, without the yuck factor? How would resistance to shame reshape our menstrual culture? Our menstrual practices?  Our attitudes toward our very own bodies, whatever they do or do not leak? These are not new questions—we ask them again and again on this blog and that’s just here. And yet, while we are clear that menstrual shame is counterproductive, even damaging to quality of life, most of us are still pretty stuck there. What do we actually DO differently to normalize menstruation? Isn’t this how we remake the world, one simple act at a time?

Can we begin with this sweet little guy? Let’s try. What do we say to him when we find him on the bed, about to peel open another super tampon?

Uh..no, honey…those are just for Mommy. Those are not for little boys. Let me have those (as we hurriedly scoop them up and hide them, better this time).

OR

Do we say something else, something that refuses to inject these wads of cotton and rayon with a mysterious negative charge, and just, matter of factly, states their purpose—the same way we would respond as if he had broken into a box of Band-aids or Q-tips. If he has a follow up question (sometimes they do at this age; sometimes not), we answer.

What would YOU say to our little tampon enthusiast?

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Posted in Activism, Communication, FemCare, Humor, Language | 9 Comments »

In Defense of Hating My Period

October 1st, 2012 by Chris Bobel

Okay. Enough. I gotta say something.

 

Because I am committed to various efforts to reclaim the menstrual cycle as a vital sign and subvert the dominant narrative that menstruation is obsolete and/or a badge of shame, many people assume my periods are all drum circles, red jewelry and a week-long love affair with my Diva Cup.

More insidious still is the pervasive assumption that thinking differently about our cycles necessarily points to LOVING our cycles. As if there are ONLY two choices on the menstrual menu: I’ll have the Obsolete Shaming Nuisance or My Cycle is Womb-alicious. That doesn’t work for me as I suspect it does not work for others. There’s a whole lot of territory between refusing to see menstruation as meaningless OR as proof positive that my body is unruly, out of control, and a source of deep-seated shame AND embracing my menses as the Sine qua non of my gender identity or the gift that keeps on giving, about every 28 days.

I gotta ask: can’t I resist the shame and still find the monthly uterine shedding a royal pain in the vagina? Because, dear reader, that’s how I feel about MY menstruation. Most of the time, I really hate my period.

I am a heavy bleeder– a seven full days of gushing, clotting, and without fail, staining usually both my sheets and my underwear. My period is a week of carrying an extra pair of underwear with me in my backpack, sleeping on a towel (that always bunches up and makes me miserable as I try to find a comfortable sleeping position) and scrubbing stains out of my underwear.

I do not celebrate my flow during my menses. At the same time, I am grateful that my body is signaling All Operations Normal and Functioning. Yes. I AM appreciative of the reminder to practice self care, to slow down, to pause…. but  I rarely do, if I am honest.  Truth is, even in the context of all this gratitude for what my body is doing to keep me healthy, I groan when Aunt Flo comes a-calling.

But admitting that has not come easily because I am privy toan awful lot of menstrual talk (on this blog and in the wider world) and the two OPTIONS ONLY discourse is pervasive. You either hate it (shame on you for shaming on you) or you love it (Fool. Join the 21st century!). See?

My point is simple. Let’s not trade one dogma for another. Messages on either pole fail to listen to women and instead, PRESCRIBE how we should THINK about our embodied experiences. Some menstruators DO welcome their periods and find ways to celebrate them. Some menstruators spend Day 1 on the floor of the bathroom, clutching the rim of the toilet. Some menstruators are damn grateful to see bloody panties as a signal of Not Pregnant or Right on Schedule and then pretty quickly shift into dogged management mode. Some menstruators  _________________ (your experience here).

The different menstrual world I want is a bigger one, one shaped by a more  (not less) pluralistic menstrual discourse that makes the way for as many menstrual attitudes are they are menstrual experiences. This stuff is personal and individual and yet, because of FemCare ads, industry-sponsored menstrual education in schools and increasingly Big Pharma’s awkward melding of high tech body meddling so that women can menstruate like their Paleo ancestors, it is hard to hear our OWN voices over the din.

Here’s my voice: thanks for the free monthly wellness check but I wish it were not so much work. But I will be damned if I will whisper that I need to change my pad or be seduced by a slick ad campaign that enlists me as a paying research subject. I just need better pads (longer, anyone?) and maybe a terry cloth fitted sheet. And someone to do my laundry.

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Posted in Communication, Language, Menstruation | 25 Comments »

Making Menstruation Matter–a new award 40 years in the making

September 3rd, 2012 by Chris Bobel

In 1978, feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem penned a brilliant satire first appearing in Ms magazine and later in her collected essays  Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. In it, she blew the lid off how gender ideology (read: sexism) shapes how we “do” menstruation.

Nearly 40 years old, this piece STILL hums. Have you read it?

Where tongue meets cheek, Steinem was able to break the menstrual taboo of concealment in under 1000 words. Her bold thought experiment stimulated a conversation that we will keep having until something big shifts in the menstrual discourse.

Until then, Steinem wryly asks:

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?


Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:


Men would brag about how long and how much.


Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.


To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.


Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free.

Nearly 40 years out, this prose should be nothing more than a quaint artifact of how things USED TO BE. It should be as relevant today as powder blue leisure suits, wide belts and platform shoes. But the gendered root of the menstrual taboo endures.

Because “If Men Could Menstruate”, near and dear to menstrual cycle advocates old and new, and emblematic of Steinen’s long career of speaking up for women and girls, the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research is pleased to announce that Ms. Gloria Steinem has been chosen as the first recipient of the newly established Making Menstruation Matter award.  This award recognizes a journalist, activist, artist, public figure or organization that has meaningfully contributed to the public understanding of menstrual cycle-related issues. The intention of the award is to honor and encourage thoughtful dialogue about the menstrual cycle beyond the academy.

Timing is everything.

At the same time that “If Men Could Menstruate” was published, The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research was forming. Now more than 3 decades later, it seems most appropriate to honor the courage Gloria Steinem has shown throughout her career in articulating and calling attention to women’s realities and imagine something better. To quote Peggy Stubbs, SMCR president:

The intersection of her lifetime achievements and our Society’s interests, is no doubt, an example of how far-reaching Ms. Steinem’s work has extended. For our part, we want to let her know that her work has and continues to energize ours. And we know there are others who, like us, have been and are similarly inspired by Ms. Steinem to continue to work in their own ways to enhance the quality of girls’ and women’s lives.

SMCR will present the award to Steinem during the 20th biennial conference, to be held in NYC, June 6-8 2013. Details on attending the conference and the award ceremony are available here.

Join us to honor Gloria Steinem and hear her remarks about a piece that is timeless, but shouldn’t be.

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Posted in Activism, Celebrities, History, Language, Literature, Menstruation | 1 Comment »

It’s Time to Throw a Menstrual Party!

July 9th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

Does the notion of a Menstrual Party smack of an oxymoron?

For most, that’s a yes. And that’s why we need one.

There’s so much more to Period=Yuck, and a good party can show us how much.

Like any winner social event, this party  is a time and place to gather and connect—with the added benefit of  increasing our menstrual IQs.

Our friends at Be Prepared Period and You ARE Loved are hosting their First Annual Online Menstrual Party on Friday, July 13 from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET. They are the perfect hosts for such an event, because they intimately understand the pressing imperative of menstrual know-how.

Readers of re:Cycling may remember You ARE Loved, the courageous educational foundation established by Lisa Elifritz, in honor of her daughter Amy Rae Elifritz. Amy Rae died from TSS in 2010. Because of a tampon.The Elifritz family is suing Playtex for negligence and liability, and they allege medical malpractice at the hand of the hospital where Amy Rae was treated. This grieving family rightly seeks accountability and justice and a world where not one more girl or woman succumbs to TSS. As Elizabeth Kissling reminds: we have to teach girls and women that “the femcare industry isn’t looking out for them—they’ve got to look out for themselves.”

Prepared Period and YAL have been deploying social media to get this message for a year now. Their online educational chats have grown from a few to fifty or more participants discussing a new topic each month. Past topics include “Periodic Stories: Ours and Yours”, “Exploring the Many Feminine Hygiene Options”, and “Puberty and Periods: Guiding Tween and Teen Girls”. So the July 13th menstrual party is their 1st anniversary.

The party can be accessed via Twitter using the hashtag #PeriodTalk, and will include conversation, questions, polls and lots of interaction on a variety of menstrual products and plenty of essential Q and A. There will also be numerous giveaways. FREE STUFF! Additional information, including links to register for multiple product giveaways, is available on the Tweet Chat pages of the Be Prepared Period and You ARE Loved websites.

Show up for Amy Rae. And stay for yourself and girls and women everywhere.

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Posted in Activism, FemCare, Girls, Menstruation, Toxic Shock Syndrome | No Comments »

Flipping the Image: Try New Semen-Off!

June 11th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

Cartoon created by Lisa Leger, with photo by Λ |_ ν- Γ Ø // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

At the 2007 conference of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, a presenter cited the famous satirical essay by Gloria Steinem, If Men Could Menstruate, as inspiration for ”flipping the image”  to raise awareness about an issue.

 

Remembering this and frustrated by the marketing of cycle-stopping contraception, Lisa Leger created this spoof ad for a drug that suppresses an integral part of the male reproductive cycle.

She says,

I work in a pharmacy setting and monitor the medical journals to observe how the pharmaceutical industry markets drugs to both doctors and patients. An ad framing male ejaculation as a bothersome and icky inconvenience mirrors the way cycle-stopping contraceptives are marketed to women as a modern way to escape the hassles and mess of menstruation. By flipping the image and taking the same marketing tactics that are used toward women and using them toward men, the absurdity of suppressing a vital body function for the sake of convenience is revealed.

 

Lisa Leger is an SMCR member and fertility awareness educator who works in a community pharmacy setting on Vancouver Island. Her cartoons featuring the adventures of Wanda the Wandering Uterus have appeared in Femme Fertile, the newsletter of Justisse Healthworks for Women.

 

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Posted in Humor, Men, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »

Are We Stalled?

May 14th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

What is worse? A problem unnamed or a problem named and denied as our own?

In a recent class discussion, a (white) student shared that she while she was in high school (a racially diverse high school, she explained), “everybody got along and racism was not a problem.” But now, since taking my class, she sees there IS racism around her.

The denial of racism in our own lives. This denial, like so many others, is certainly not uncommon, especially among those protected by some measure of privilege. Sometimes our denial is less passive (I didn’t know better); sometimes it is more active (I sure do know, but the knowing is painful and expects me to DO SOMETHING and I rather not, thank you very much).

This reminds me of the responses I typically hear from my students when we discuss menstrual shame. When I show commercials like the one below, they tell me they are NOT ashamed of their periods. They talk openly about their cycles. This menstrual taboo I speak of—old school. When I probe and ask if they carry their menstrual products around in the open, then, they tell me, “No…that’s just not something you do.”

 

A student denies racism in her high school, but sees it OUT THERE. Young women deny menstrual shame while concealing their tampons. These contradictions vex me. What gives?

I think we are in the midst of what sociologist Arlie Hochshild calls a ‘stalled revolution.’

Hochschild uses this concept to explain how the feminist movement helped women pursue careers but stalled before it (and by it, I mean WE) succeeded in dramatically altering the gendered division of household labor. I think the concept applies here, too.

We see racism but NOT HERE, not involving ME.  We follow the rules of concealment even while we deny that we are embarrassed. I am not ashamed; other people are. We can name the problem, but we cannot, will not, claim it for ourselves. That’s where the engine cuts out. That’s where we are stalled.

We live in a culture where racism is DISCUSSED, at least. Look at the tremendous response to the murder of Travyon Martin for a recent example. And we ARE  talking more about periods and about our bodies; the very fact that Kotex launched its ’break the cycle’ campaign in 2010 is fair evidence that the menstrual discourse IS enlarging. But forgive me if I am not jumping up and down with glee. After all, there’s more talk about EVERYTHING now. We have more ways, more means, more access to express and connect, instantaneously.  Some might argue we talk too much; we tweet and post and text before we think. Sometimes talk is just…talk.

Are talking toward change? Or we just talking, talking, talking about other people’s racism, other people’s shame.

What will it take to re-start our engines and both name and CLAIM the problems for ourselves?

 

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Posted in Advertising, Communication, FemCare, Menstruation | 17 Comments »

When Menstrual Talk Comes Home

April 16th, 2012 by Chris Bobel

For the last decade or so, like so many others who read and write for this blog, I have been researching, reading and writing about how we think, talk and act (out) about menstruation. My particular interest is the various interventions that some brave activists make to disrupt the dominant narrative of menstruation.

But this post isn’t about my work or even the work of others. Not exactly.

This post is about my daughters and what sometimes happens when my work comes home.

In 2006, when my oldest daughter  was 13, we had one of many Mom-initiated short talks about her approaching menarche in the (of course) car. Posing as a super nonchalant mom, I casually asked:

ME: So what do you think your period will be like?

HER: I will hate it.

[GULP...I was grateful she could not see her feminist mother’s face completely cave in]

ME: Why do you think so?

HER:  All my friends hate theirs.

Later that year, her first period. My daughter did not share this with me, rather, I “discovered” this new development on my own. That evening, after we talked, she agreed—none-too-cheerfully—to a dinner at a local Mexican restaurant, but we were not permitted to discuss “the event.” The next day, I set the kitchen table with candles, tea and her favorite dessert—just for the two of us—and I presented her with a lovely bag to store her menstrual supplies (that I am pretty sure she never used).

Getting her ears pierced

Photo by Aaron Conaway // CC 2.0

We had decided, years before, that when she began menstruating, she would get her ears pierced. So we went to Claire’s and did the deed, but again, no fanfare—just a mom taking her teen daughter to get her ears pierced.

From that point forward, we rarely talked about her menstrual experiences, though I tried and failed several times.  For example, I suggested she try cloth pads (and why), but she was not the least bit interested

When my book on menstrual politics came out, my daughter  was 16. She and 4 of her friends, all dressed in red dresses, circulated trays of  menstrually-themed (read: red) appetizers at my book party. The party favors, the decorations, and the conversation were all highly MENSTRUAL, and I heard no titters, detected no blushing between my girl and her pals.

So did my daughter HATE her period, after all? Maybe not, but she, the child of a feminist committed to challenging the dominant cultural narrative of menstruation, became a girl, who, at best, managed her period. And I wanted better for her.

Today, my second daughter is 8.  She is 9 years younger than her older sister.

Since she could talk, she has called attention to my period. When she glimpses me changing my pad on the toilet  (yes, we have an open door policy), she typically remarks:

“You are having your period, Mama.”

“Yes, Honey, I am.“

She speaks as if her first period might be any day. It could be, but I doubt it. Her trajectory toward puberty seems to be moving at a pretty average clip.

She is very excited about getting her ears pierced when she begins menstruating. She loves wearing stick on earrings and clip ons; this is a girl enamored with ear bling. But she has never once asked if she could get her ears pierced BEFORE her menarche, even though several of her friends have theirs pierced now. I think she likes the link between menarche and ear piercing, seeing it as an established rite of passage.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Activism, Girls, Menarche, Menstruation | 11 Comments »

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