Plenty of folks readily expressed their disgust at the idea of menstrual blood on display (ack!!!on the mouth??) but few were willing to dig into WHY this disgusted them and how that disgust hurts women and girls…..if they dared to really look first, at those blood-smeared lips, and then, at themselves.
Moine’s models, silent and unblinking, issue a challenge. When we meet their gaze and contemplate their deep red mouths, we are forced to look back at ourselves, and at each other.
Why is there a menstrual taboo, anyway? And who and what does it serve? There must be an awful lot at stake when people work so hard to keep it alive.
This week Moine is exhibiting her work in London. Placing her portraits in the context of a V-Day show makes explicit the connections between the denigration of women’s bodies and violence against women and girls. Continue reading...
If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you likely saw the new Dodge Charger ad “Man’s Last Stand.” If not, drop what you are doing and watch it right this minute and sound the gender panic alarm!
There’s a crisis!
Masculinity is endangered! The women are taking over!
Men are-day in and day out–emasculated by the nagging, demanding, self-centered women in their lives and their trivial concerns (vampire lust! hairless sinks! fruit for breakfast! civility toward family members!)
It is so bad out there, apparently, that men need to recapture their manliness by “driving the car (they) want to drive.” (I don’t know what’s more offensive here, women-as-problem or car-as-solution)
The blogosphere and its environs is a-buzz with the work of MacKenzie Fegan who found, in her words, the commercial uh….“oft-putting”. She posted this response. Not sure I would have chosen the same complaints to highlight, but I did cheer with this dig:
“I will get angry and you will ask if it’s that time of the month.”
Crisis? If only there were oneand that tired old excuse for not taking women seriously was on the way out!
Specifically, we’ve questioned the assumption that menstrual FLOW management is girls’ biggest menstrual problem (it is not, says at least one recent study–cramps are!). And we’ve been MORE critical of so-called altruistic solutions that are, underneath the (silent?) disposable wrapper, little-more than consumer socialization. Menstrual shame, sexism and poverty are not ameliorated though the cultivation of brand loyalty. Girls need information, support and the tools to develop awareness of their bodies while learning to live sustainably–this does not come in the shape of a box of single-use products that ends up clogging landfills.
Making green products available to girls while supporting economic growth and self-sufficiency in the Global South seems a more enduring and girl-centered initiative and there are number of projects that are doing just that. There Elizabeth Scharpf’s SHE initaitive in Rwanda and Lunapads donation program in collaboration with a number of related initiatives:
As of Feb 8th, freelance writer, re:Cycling guest blogger, and oral contraception watchdog Holly Grigg-Spall (check out her blog “Sweetening the Pill”) will join the Bitch magazine blog team. She will opine on women’s reproductive health—news stories, developments, research, and more.
I have been a long time fan of Bitch and expect to love it that much more with Grigg-Spall burning up the blogscape with her take on things.
All this iPad humor has got us thinking about menstrual humor more generally–what’s funny (to some) what’s not (to others), why and why not.
In the end, anything-menstruation is almost always met with either
1) a shudder and a swift topic shift
OR
2) an uncomfortable laugh that reinforces once again, the menstruation-rule-we-live-by.
Then there’s our friends Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin who brilliantly and creatively write and perform menstrual humor that is genuinely funny without being offensive to women. But their work is truly exceptional.
Usually, the humor is more like this classic from Kids in the Hall. Finally giving up the luddite’s fight, I joined Facebook this week and look what I found: this page referencing a sketch starring Dave Foley
The over-the-top earnestness of this guy is funny, sure, but that’s not all that’s going on.
Yeah—he offers a lot more appreciation for the menstrual cycle than even I aspire to– but is the premise–that a guy could offer something other than disgust (or at best, indifference) to menstruation– really that hysterical?
Granted, the concluding passage (below)had me laughing, but like most (all?) satire, after the laughs die down, I’m left wondering: why IS that funny, anyway? Continue reading...
Interior of Red Tent, Belly & Womb Conference, Baldwinville, MA, 2005
The act of reframing the menstrual cycle–as a source of deep awareness and even, power–is hardly news, and yet, it seems that way to most of us.
Liz Kissling sent me this link to a 2002 essay written by Gina Cloud. Here is a classic passionate call for a new (or very old, perhaps) way of responding to menstruation. While I bristle at the essentialism at the root of this reframing, I certainly appreciate any effort to reclaim the menstrural cycle and render it as more than a nasty nuisance that depends on consumerism to make it go away. Cloud renames the menstrual cycle, the “sacred cycle” and PMS as “powerful monthly insight.” For her, the week before a menstruator’s period is a time to “get clear” and unblock what she calls the “repression of expression” most women are socialized to practice every day.
Cloud numbers among a steady stream of women–health educators, midwives, at least one physician, and lay women dedicated to empowering women through resisting more conventional attitudes about menstruation. They have written books, led workshops and generally promoted the idea that menstruation can and should be seen as a not a curse, but a gift. Continue reading...
The definitive women’s health sourcebook, Our Bodies, Ourselves written by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is undergoing revisions for its 40th anniversary (and 9th) edition. Lots of folks in the women’s health community are involved in the revision and that’s a good thing—multiple voices, multiple perspectives.
I am among those reviewing the chapter on Sexual Anatomy, Reproduction, and the Menstrual Cycle in collaboration with others, such as health educator and activist, Esther Morris Leidolf, founder of the MRKH organization (MRKH=Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome, a.k.a. congential absence of the vagina)For years, Esther has been nudging me to be more inclusive in my research, writing and teaching of people with variant sexual anatomy. And she did it again.
While reviewing the content on MENOPAUSE in this chapter, she questioned the definition of this biosocial transtion used (that is, the cessation of menstruation, specifically, 12 months after the last menstrual period (LMP)).
She asked: What about women who don’t menstruate?
What about women who may not have vaginas or others with variant sexual anatomy that prevents menstuation. Many of these women still experience other menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes and mood swings. Continue reading...
It is not a coincidence that a blog centering on disability (specifically the consequences of living with blindness) hosts a narrative like this, one that makes strikingly clear the importance of challenging the denigration of SOME bodies.
We at re:Cycling are heartened whenever we hear that we are not alone speaking up in the aisles of grocery stores (and everywhere else women’s (and their bodies) serve as the punchline).
I love shopping at Trader Joe’s late in the evening right before it closes. The crowds thin out, restocking of shelves begins, and the employees start pumping some raucous dance music. They also start gossiping, about their shifts and managers, about which area is the most boring assignment, about budding employee romances and new products.
The land of euphemisms is a fantasy land. It is awash in pink. It never rains. The houses are made of gingerbread and the clouds of cotton candy. Look! There goes My Little Pony!
It is a safe and happy place that keeps us innocent and pure. Wait? Was that Strawberry Shortcake?
That MUST be the reason the cultural mandate of using euphemisms to describe body parts and bodily functions persists, right?
Don’t forget to wash your private parts, honey!
But I DON’T think we are safer when we refuse to use REAL words to describe our REAL bodies.
Rather, as a big believer of the language-constructs-reality school of thought, I think that refusing to call a vulva a vulva contributes to the dissociation at best, and neglect and even hatred, at worst, of our bodies.
Name it. Own it. Understand it. Respect it.
The Vagina Monologues leads with a hysterical list of expressions for the vulva (NOT the vagina, as we know). Continue reading...
Over thirty years ago, Roger V. Short argued that regular menstrual cycling is probably a health hazard and thus, we should try to “keep the ovaries and the female reproductive tract in a state of quiescence when reproduction is not desired” [1]
More recently, Timothy Rowe, Head of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, University of British Columbia, claims that “the pill keeps a woman’s reproductive organs quiet and healthy”[2]
As a philosopher of science, I find the concept of a “quiescent” bodily organ fascinating, troubling and great fodder: there is nothing so tempting to a philosopher of science as a vague, unscientific and value-laden concept.
Short and Rowe use the concept of “quiescence” to describe a presumably defined state of the uterus, but the concept is vague. It’s also unscientific—it calls to mind the promises made for “stimulated” immune systems and “cleansed” livers at my local health food store. And, the quiescent uterus raises old value-laden associations between women and passivity. If the dormant, quiet, and weak uterus is healthy, is the active, energetic, and strong uterus unhealthy? Continue reading...
You welcome it, bemoan it, or just live with it. However you feel about your period, we’re pretty sure most of you would rather spend your cash on a three- to five-day supply of Ben & Jerry’s than this 250-plus-page tome that teaches you about menstruation in the animal kingdom and the origin of tampons.
Menstrual activists Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin sprung into comedic action and put together this oh-so-clever response ’cause they know a knee-jerk reaction to the big M when they see it.
Luckily, Redbook readers can and do think for themselves! Quint remembers her ahead-of-her-time Grandma who knew a thing or two about our favorite topic IN SPITE of her subscription to a particular ladymag.
I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, I missed the viral web-based marketing campaign “Men with Cramps” launched in 2006 by Dandelion for P&G’s ThermaCare. (Dandelion, by the way, calls themselves a “brand-sponsored storytelling company”. I. Am. Not. Making.This.Up) The campaign generated 1.3 million views and over 15K mentions in blogs and chats and critical acclaim with a 2008 Bronze Effie Award. Nothing like a good story, I guess.
Full disclosure:
I find the campaign hilarious. This is very witty satire. The parodies of “doing science,” of Ken Burns-style documentaries and especially of MASCULINITY are beautifully executed. As I watched the series of short videos, I laughed so hard my partner had to take his work to another room (and I had the audio on headphones). But it was the kind of laughter that felt naughty, betraying, even forbidden (and alert readers already know we at re:Cycling are consistently suspicious of “the forbidden”).
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
We at re: Cycling have been tracking the African-girls-miss-school-because-they-menstruate equation for a while now.
As of Feb 8th, freelance writer, re:Cycling guest blogger, and oral contraception watchdog Holly Grigg-Spall (check out her blog 
The definitive women’s health sourcebook, Our Bodies, Ourselves written by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is undergoing revisions for its 40th anniversary (and 9th) edition. Lots of folks in the women’s health community are involved in the revision and that’s a good thing—multiple voices, multiple perspectives.
Them was fightin’ words.
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