Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
The lovely ladies of LunaPads have made a sweet little video that explains why you should make the switch from paper products to cloth pads – in less than 90 seconds!
If you’ve already made the switch, this is an easy way to persuade your friends. You can email it, Tweet, share it on Facebook, heck, cue it up on your smartphone and show it to ‘em!
Photo by Gnarls Monkey // CC by 2.0
A whole bunch of anti-choice political organizations are co-sponsoring a national protest against birth control pills, but they say it’s not about killing babies or controlling women; it’s all about the environment!
The following is released by the American Life League and the following groups:
WHO: American Life League , Human Life International, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Pharmacists for Life International, Archdiocese of Mobile Respect Life, Operation Rescue, Jill Stanek, Generation Life/Brandi Swindell, Life Education Ministry, Pro-Life Unity, Movement for a Better America, AMEN (Abortion Must End Now), Pro-Life Action of Oregon, Children of God for Life, Expectant Mother Care/Chris Slattery, Mother and Unborn Baby Care, Defenders of the Unborn, California Right to Life Education Fund, Delaware Pro-Life Coalition, Life Guard, Homeschoolers for Life, Focus Pregnancy Center, Central Texas Voices for Life and Dubuque County Right to Life
WHAT: Protest the Pill Day 2010: The Pill Kills the Environment
This year, birth control advocates are celebrating 50 years of decriminalized hormonal contraceptives. American Life League and our co-sponsors don’t think half a century of contaminating our waterways is something to celebrate. Study after study has shown that hormonal estrogen in the water has severely damaged the ecosystem and our health.
Join American Life League and co-sponsors as they launch the largest nationwide protest against the birth control pill.
You know what, American Life League? ALL prescription drugs, not just birth control pills, contaminate our waterways, both through human excretion and production waste. And some of that “hormonal estrogen” is from the hormone supplements taken by middle-aged women. Are you protesting hormone “replacement” therapy, too?
[via Miriam at Feministing]
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/486046904/ // CC BY 2.0
Only a latter-day Rip Van Winkle could avoid knowing that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of Enovid, the world’s first birth control pill. Hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles have marked this anniversary.
Many incorrectly credit the pill with giving birth to feminism. As Elaine Tyler May notes in the current issue of Ms., the pill didn’t start the feminist movement but was in the right place at the right time:
The timing could not have been better. The feminist movement gained momentum just as the Pill became available. With the ability to control their fertility, women could take full advantage of new opportunities for education, careers and participation in public life.
But in the midst of all this celebrating, we’ve neglected another anniversary: 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson’s congressional hearings about the pill’s safety profile, which arguably did launch the women’s health movement.
Today’s the day, ironically enough on Mother’s day, that marks half a century since the FDA approved the pill for contraceptive use in the USA. And, for better or for worse, it’s become part of the fabric of our culture, and allowed women to have both family and a career by providing reliable family planning. Although, as many have commented, the pill may get more credit than it deserves, it serves as a powerful symbol of women’s liberation and sexual freedom.
Recently, in the Vancouver Art Gallery, I learned that, around this time, feminist painters were bringing the body back into art, challenging the largely male trends of abstractionism. Ironically, at the same time, feminist psychologists were working to remove the body from the psychology of women, challenging the prevailing wisdom that the narrative of woman is the narrative of her womb, and that when it ceases to be productive, so does she. How does the pill, with its chemical silencing of women’s reproductive endocrinology, fit with this interplay between owning and disowning our female bodies? And how can we own our bodies without allowing them to be our only defining features?
Back in 2000, when my Menstrual Monday journey began, an ever-reasonable friend had pointed out it took 13 years for Julia Ward Howe to establish Mother’s Day. Being a holidaymaker, and more on the creative side than reasonable, I poo-poo’d my friend’s caution. Seriously – Julia Ward Howe didn’t have the Internet! Thirteen years is two centuries in Internet time!
Eleven Menstrual Mondays later, I humbly look forward to the year 2012, and raising a glass (of tomato juice) to Julia Ward Howe, unmoved by any doomsday scenarios erroneously attributed to the Mayan calendar. Holidaymaking is just not as easy as it looks!
Display of Uterine Flying Objects (UFOs)
On the other hand, Menstrual Monday parties are rather easy to throw. Here’s all you need to do:
Display of MOLTwheels and FloFlags
If you like working with fabric, check out Have a Hester at MOLT, and learn about scarlet letters and flow-dyeing. Right now I’m enamored of red shop rags – I add glitter glue, and use them to package MOLTwheels – the mini-frisbees in the photo. See what ideas you and your guests can come up with.
I notice I’ve mentioned a couple of things that require spending money – the most intriguing question to me this Menstrual Monday is: Where is the intersection of feminism, menstruation, and entrepreneurship? I’m wondering: How can there be a transformation in attitudes toward the red stuff, without a corresponding transformation in where women’s green stuff (money) is being spent?
Strawberries and spinach: Food for thought, indeed.
Okay, Kotex? Here’s the deal: We’re only gonna stop feeling the shame when we take ownership of our periods. And we’re taking it back from you, dude. So you can’t reclaim our periods for us. You’re some of the people we’re reclaiming them from. Got it?
Sarah Thomasin at Bluestockings
Last Sunday evening, at the Lower East Side bookstore (and feminist Mecca) Bluestockings, Chella Quint attempted to begin her 5th installment of a performance built from her zine Adventures in Menstruating. However this piece, Here’s The Science Bit, was quite rudely interrupted by Mother Nature, in tweed, presenting a pink and red wrapped box. Mother Nature who typically appears in Tampax adverts, exclaimed “It’s your monthly gift!” Chella seemed pleased to accept it. This confused the woman. “But…but, she stammered. It’s your monthly gift?!” Chella reminded her that she was quite happy taking it, thank you very much, and proceeded to open up the box (wondering why boxes are a running theme in fem care advertising.) For the next hour, as the paper flew and big red bows zoomed around the room, the gifts kept coming from Chella and co-performer, Sarah Thomasin, now donning lab coats.
Chella (a contributor to this blog) and Sarah’s writing on the fem care industry is spot on. Since 2005, they have produced the zine and now a blog which attempt to poke and prod the hawkers of pads and tampons out of their shameful marketing strategies. This evening they re-examined ads from the 1950’s for Zonite, a douche so powerful yet “safe to tissues” (??!) and Modess, a menstrual product pre-wrapped (i.e. disguised) in plain brown packaging. Of course, as Quint pointed out, the only other product to be wrapped in this manner were bombs.
Frequent re:Cycling contributor David Linton was profiled last week in The Online Rocket, the student newspaper of Slippery Rock University. Professor Linton gave a talk on campus about the role of men in advertising for menstrual products.
Today is International Women’s Day, and the subject line above is the IWD theme for 2010. Search here for events in your area.
Tina Turner didn’t sing THOSE lyrics, but what if?
Those that follow re:Cycling may recall-with a grin and a cringe–how Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick sent many Guardian and Salon Broadsheet readers to the “icky” place, where unexamined assumptions run amok.
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.
Introducing Leak Chic.
Chella Quint celebrates Fashion Week, recently ended in London and New York, with clot couture.
StainsTM. A removable stain to wear on your own clothing as you see fit. A fashion statement that really says something, and that something is, ‘Screw you, Madison Avenue. I’m taking this one back. I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve and my blood on my pants. I’m gonna reclaim the stain, reclaim my blood, and reclaim my period.’ Because people, I’m telling you red is the new black.
Read more at Adventures in Menstruating.
The American Psychiatric Association has pushed back their timeline for the 5th version of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. The new psychiatric bible was originally scheduled to come out in 2011, but has now been delayed to 2013 .
Initial drafts have been posted to the web page, but the controversial and provisional (that is, not yet officially accepted) diagnosis of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) does not yet appear ready for comment. Which is a shame, because traditionally SMCR and its members have had a lot to say about PMDD, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to consider and critique its new incarnation. Here’s a recent post as an example.
PMDD was first introduced in the DSM-III-R as Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder. The “late luteal” was meant to include cycling women who did not bleed, for example, those with a hysterectomy but preserved ovaries, but was criticized because “luteal phase” implies ovulation, and assessing ovulation was not part of the diagnosis.
Paula Caplan (e.g. this article) and other members of the SMCR were vocal in their challenge to the psychiatric label. Paula Caplan wrote a book about her experiences with the DSM process (They Say You’re Crazy), and the SMCR produced the following position statement:
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