Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Celebrating Period Poetry in New York City

May 21st, 2013 by David Linton

The World’s First Menstrual Poetry Slam, The Red Moon Howl, will occur the closing night of the SMCR conference, June 7, at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.  Featuring the works of noted poets such as Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, and Ntozake Shange as well as new works by emerging poets such as Coriel O’Shea and Maria Billini, the evening event will offer a variety of artistic perspectives on the menstrual cycle.

 

Given the history of menstrual lore and the way knowledge of the cycle has been shared by women over the span of human history, it is particularly appropriate that the topic of menstruation find an outlet in the form of poetry, the original form of oral creative expression.  The event will literally “give voice” to a commonly hidden, taboo topic.  In keeping with the conference theme, “Making Menstruation Matter,” the poets and performers will offer yet another contribution in the ongoing effort to bring the period out of the closet.

 

The evening will not be limited to just those who are on the performance roster.  Everyone planning to attend the conference is encouraged to prepare a piece for the open mic portion of the evening which will open the event.

 

Some questions have been raised about the nature of poetry slams.  Frequently such events have a competitive element as participants vie with one another for the favor of audience or judges.  That’s not the case this time.  Instead, the organizers are emphasizing the fact that the main difference between slam poetry and the more traditional, familiar variety is that poems presented in the slam setting are meant to be “performed,” that is, read or recited out loud so that the fundamental elements of the human voice engaged with the nature of spoken words can be savored by those in attendance.  In this regard, the poetry slam is a reinvigoration of the original sources of the poetic impulse.

 

Following the conference, video samples of the performances will be available on line.  Stay tuned for more information.

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Posted in Activism, Language, Literature | 8 Comments »

A Week of Vaginas

April 3rd, 2013 by Mindy Erchull

The Cast of the 2013 UMW Production of The Vagina Monologues || photo used with permission from JB Bridgeman and the cast

A surprising amount of my time last week was spent thinking about vaginas.  In part, this was because I had plans to attend  the Friday night show of The Vagina Monologues on my campus.  It’s always a great show, and this year, one of my students was directing it.  During the course of the week, however, a former student of mine also posted a news story about the use of the word vagina on my Facebook wall.  All of this led to me reflecting a lot of people’s comfort and discomfort with this word.

The Vagina Monologues does address people’s comfort, or lack there of, with vaginas (or vulvas – although the way the two terms are conflated is a topic for another post) and women’s sexuality.  My focus was a bit different.  I was thinking about the word vagina itself….

In the late 1990s, when I was a senior in college, I had the wonderful opportunity to see Eve Ensler perform The Vagina Monologues as a one woman show on my campus as part of the dedication celebration for the newly funded Women’s Studies chair which would allow for the formal creation of a Women’s Studies major.  Since I was one of the students most involved with the program, I was given one of the few tickets for students.

Since so few students attended the show, Sunday brunch conversation the next day largely consisted of a discussion of The Vagina Monologues over dining hall french toast sticks. One of my friends was very uncomfortable with the conversation because I was consistently using the word vagina “in mixed company”.  I try to be respectful of others’ limits, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how to talk about this show without using the word vagina. Plus, it’s not a slang or pejorative term – it’s a formal anatomical name for a body part.

Given that The Vagina Monologues were part of my plans for the week, this experience immediately came to mind when my former students shared a Jezebel.com post about a tenth grade science teacher facing investigation and possible disciplinary action for using the word vagina in an anatomy lesson. Seriously? Once again, this is a formal biological term for a body part.  Yes, it’s a body part associated with sex and reproduction, but we need to be able to use these words.

photo taken by Mindy Erchull

When I teach Psychology of Women and get to development, reproduction, and women’s health, I typically have to spend a few minutes just saying vagina repeatedly until the giggles stop, the discomfort dies down, and we can actually move on with the content of the class. Yes, words have power – but we don’t get like this about the words knee or forehead. People run around in “Save the Ta-Tas”  t-shirts. Why can’t we say vagina?

One of the fundraisers the students staging The Vagina Monologues did this year was to sell buttons that say “I ♥ My Vagina”. Yes, we should love our vaginas and the vaginas of our consensual sexual partners. I also think we should love the word vagina. Let’s stop being scared of this one.  Don’t shush people if they say it in public. Don’t try to come up with covert ways of referring to vaginas without using this word. Just say vagina.

Vagina. Vagina, vagina, vagina. Va-gin-a.

Give me a V, give me an A, give me a G, give me an I, give me an N, give me an A.  What’s that spell?  VAGINA!

Come on – say it with me: Vagina!

Be loud. Be proud. Love and respect vaginas, but also embrace the word.  Some words need to be normalized. It astounds and saddens me that this has not yet happened with vagina. Let’s change that starting today.

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Posted in anatomy, Language | No 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 »

The Quest to Give Cervical Fluid a Name!

September 25th, 2012 by Kati Bicknell

 

Photo by Acaparadora // CC 2.5

Cervical fluid, the sticky/creamy/stretchy/slippery substance produced by the cervix is arguably the most important substance on earth. Without it, the human race would be shortly extinct, yet not many people even know what it is. This is unacceptable, and you and I are going to change this.

In case you don’t know, Cervical Fluid plays a vital role in helping women get pregnant, avoid pregnancy, and figure out health issues, yet its name has remained merely a description. Cervical fluid is too important to be forever described but never properly named.

Cervical fluid is incredibly valuable. Without it, life as we know it would literally cease to exist. Fertile cervical fluid keeps sperm alive once it is inside the vagina.  It provides nutrients, a hospitable alkaline environment, and aids in transportation. Cervical Fluid helps the sperm survive, sometimes for up to five days, while waiting for an egg to be released. Cervical fluid is like a soccer mom, providing snacks, protection, and transportation to the sperm, while they are on their way to the big game.  Without her, there would be no game, and getting pregnant would be virtually impossible without outside intervention.

And that is just ONE of the many ways cervical fluid makes our lives richer. It also tells an awful lot about the state of a woman’s hormones, which can play a key role in many health issues.

OK, so we’ve established that cervical fluid plays a vital role in the continuance of the human race, not to mention women’s health.  But with just a description for a name, we are faced with an intractable communication problem: unnamed bodily substances have a particular propensity to make people uncomfortable, and currently many people get scared off or grossed out by cervical fluid’s various descriptive identifiers.

You’ll hear it referred to as “Cervical Mucus”, “Vaginal Discharge”, “Vaginal Mucus”, and the slightly less gross-sounding “Cervical Fluid”. It’s not fair.  What if semen was called “Testicle Mucus”, or “Penile Discharge”?  Imagine if saliva was called “Oral Mucus”, or “Mouth Discharge”?  It’s not, for a reason! Even feces gets its own name!  You don’t often hear it referred to as “Solid Anal Discharge”. Each of these substances has an important role to play in the health of the human body, and hence, they have been given names, not just descriptions, so that we can acknowledge and understand them.

This quote from The Simpsons episode The Principal and the Pauper  illustrates my point:

Lisa: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Bart: Not if you called ‘em stench blossoms.

Homer: Or crapweeds.

Marge: I’d sure hate to get a dozen crapweeds for Valentine’s Day. I’d rather have candy.

Homer: Not if they were called scumdrops.

You get the point.  Something can be lovely and beautiful and wanted, but if you call it by an unappealing name, no one is going to give it a chance.

Now, I personally LOVE cervical fluid. It has taught me a great deal about my fertility and my health.  It’s a crime that this stuff is not more not widely popular. I posit that if cervical fluid had a more euphonious appellation, people would be more interested in hearing, talking, and reading about it.  Which would lead to understanding and wider acceptance. This Quest to name Cervical Fluid has broad-reaching social implications. With wider understanding and acceptance of this most sacred substance, women would own their fertility again. The sense of panic and confusion that many women experience when thinking about their reproductive health would diminish and eventually vanish.  There would be fewer unplanned pregnancies and more wanted pregnancies. More wanted pregnancies would lead to happier families and, ultimately, a happier world!  For the betterment of women everywhere and the world at large, cervical fluid needs a name of its own!

I propose we give cervical fluid a name within six months. I will be working towards this goal. If you want to help, please leave your thoughts about this and your suggestions for cervical fluid’s new name in the comments below. Together, we’ll make history.

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Posted in Fertility, Language | 16 Comments »

Brassieres and Red Ribbons

July 6th, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest post by Karina Billini

In the beginning of my college career, I was given powerful advice: “In every class you take, apply your craft. Challenge it and challenge yourself.” From gay studies to Child Development, I have taken the opportunity of higher education to explore myself as a writer. So there I was in my last semester as an undergrad, taking the most spoken about course at Marymount Manhattan College—Social Construction of Menstruation. As a theatre and creative writing student, I haven’t had much explicit exposure to the social construction of menstruation. Yes, I have been exposed to it through Always commercials and even the opinions of my female friends, but never within my craft. The only thing I have been exposed to that is relevant to menstruation is The Vagina Monologues, which is not really much. Plus, I had NEVER stumbled across any menstruation-themed poetry. So, when my class was presented with the rubric for our final project, I decided to put together a poetry collection of menstruation-themed poetry and yes, even write my own for the very first time.

I have always liked a challenge, particularly one that deals with the legitimacy of my craft. In the academic world, poetry has always been seen as flowery. Many fail to acknowledge it as a potent social commentator. Poetry is not just about the aligning of words for lovely rhythm and vivid imagery, but to provoke the minds of its readers and be the voice for the growing unheard. Poetry allows the preservation of the human experience and all its aesthetics that can sometimes be drowned out by the stiff language and observations of theoretical work. For example, the poetry of Audre Lorde really spoke for women of color who were, at that time, written into invisibility within the mainstream movements for woman’s rights. I think about Langston Hughes’ poetry and how it beautifully and explicitly illustrated the struggle of African Americans. If poetry can help illuminate the menstrual experience and possible attack some of its negative social constructions, why isn’t there more menstruation-themed poetry? Why is it that when I Google menstruation-themed poetry, the results are so scarce? Why haven’t I written any poetry on menstruation?

As a female playwright and poet, I thought I wrote explicitly on the woman experience. I have dramatized attacks on gender inequality, given birth to strong female protagonists, and poetically sculpted what I thought woman should be. I have even let my readers become Peeping Toms to my womanhood, allowing them to read my struggle with the power dynamics of love, sex, money, and education. However, I never wrote about the major factor that played in all my experiences as a woman: my body. As I decided on my final project to be a collection of menstruation-themed poetry, I realized that I never wrote about this phenomenon that had such a tremendous impact on my shaping as a woman.

Why haven’t I? Why was I so brave and comfortable to allow my readers into the playground of my bed and the fallen country of my broken heart…..but not menstruation? Why was it second nature for me to script words like “sex” or “fuck”, but not “menstruation” or “vagina”? After all, I had spent most of my childhood waiting for my first period and will continue to revolve my calendar around my cycle for the rest of my menstrual life. I had secretly pocketed away my menstrual experiences in the manner that I slip neon-colored pads into my purse’s interior pocket. I had done it for the same reasons: 1) learned/inherited embarrassment and 2) maintenance of “lady-like” appearances (whatever that means). I was not writing, but being written, shaped, and formed by these societal norms.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Art, Language, Menstruation | No Comments »

FemFresh Fails — and we think it’s Funny!

June 27th, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Here’s Chella Quint, of Adventures in Menstruating, with more ad busting and shame busting. For even more, see her post at Ms. blog.

Chella Quint is just back from delivering a TEDx Talk, ‘Adventures in Menstruating: Don’t Use Shame to Sell’, link coming soon!

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Posted in Advertising, FemCare, Humor | 1 Comment »

Sorry, You’ll Never Get the Good Blood…

June 21st, 2012 by Heather Dillaway

Photo by Mark Sylvester, Courtesy of and ©Free Range Stock

How do you tell a preschool-aged boy that he’ll never menstruate?

I thought I was doing a great thing. Ever since my daughter was born I’ve spun a positive story about menstruation for her. Even when she was 2 and 3 years old I’d tell her it was the “good blood,” the blood that meant you were healthy and could maybe have babies some day if you wanted them. Now she is 7 years old and I continue to tell her that the good blood is a healthy thing and that someday soon she will have it too. I came up with the idea to call it “good blood” because I didn’t want her to think of it as something I was hiding or sad about. I wanted her to be informed and think positively about her future as a woman.

BUT, my son is now 4 and he has been listening to the same story. About a year ago he asked me when he would get the good blood. I tried to tell him that he would not get it and he cried and said he wanted to be able to be healthy like us. He said he wanted to be able to have babies some day. Still today he talks to me sometimes about the fact that he won’t get the good blood and he is sad.

I’ve thought a lot about how to be a good parent to a girl and a boy. I’m a firm believer that gender is mostly created by us and, despite biological or physiological differences between women and men, we can change how people act, think, and orient themselves if we want to. At least in part. Yet I think that talking about the “good blood” backfired on me to some extent. In redefining menstruation as positive for my daughter, I left my son by the wayside a bit. I still struggle with what to do about this. How do I redefine menstruation in a positive way without making my son feel bad?

I’d love to hear readers’ own stories about this, because I think this is something we should talk about more fully. How do moms talk to their little boys about menstruation? And when they talk about it, what do they say? Boys will grow up to have so many privileges that women don’t have but you can’t explain that to a 4-year-old very easily. And sure, you can say, “Everyone’s different and special in their own way,” but that’s a pretty empty statement for a 4-year-old who’s keeping track of all the things that others get that they don’t.

So, starting with the assumption that boys should learn something about menstruation and eventually will find out that they will not menstruate, how do you say, “Sorry, you’ll never get the good blood” in a positive and productive way?
I’m looking forward to the responses on this post!

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Posted in Communication, Girls, Language, Men, Menarche, Menstruation, Philosophy | 2 Comments »

It’s My Period and I’ll Have a Party If I Want To

April 6th, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Today’s post was created using the web tool Storify, and may take an extra moment to load in some browsers. If the page fails to load, please use your refresh/reload button

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Posted in Girls, Internet, Language, Menarche, Menstruation | 3 Comments »

Understanding Research: Buyer Beware

April 2nd, 2012 by Paula Derry

xkcd.com // CC 2.5

I certainly believe that scientific research is important.  Research uncovers new knowledge and prunes away facts that are not accurate.  However, in our society, research is also a coinage to justify views of reality. A Biblical scholar might invoke a sentence from the Bible before holding forth on his own interpretation or opinions. In a similar manner, a scientific study might be cited or a scientist quoted to justify that something is real before jumping off into one’s own thoughts, opinions, theories, or justifications.  If a scientific result can be invoked, we can believe that something is true. Is there an unconscious?  Freud said so, but he’s out of date.  Are we intrinsically social beings?  Evolutionary theorists argue. Does meditation really result in an altered state of consciousness?  If I present results from research, preferably using a high tech measurement like a brain scan, or if I can come up with a theory that uses words like “neural nets” or “neurotransmitters,” then I can believe all of these things.

What’s wrong with this? Isn’t this science doing its job of uncovering truth?  There are two things wrong with this. One is that not all knowledge is scientific knowledge.  The second is that scientific results are often portrayed inaccurately in our society.

With regard to the first point, I’ll just give a few examples.  von Bertalanffy, a systems theory scientist, wrote that even a physicist will chase his (sic) hat when the wind blows it without knowing the mathematics determining which way the hat will blow.   Einstein famously said that not everything that was important could be measured, and not everything that could be measured was important.

But what I really want to talk about here is the second point.  We are inundated with scientific results in newspapers, websites, and other places. Most often, a brief summary of research is followed by broad generalizations about what the research means.   However, the outcome of research is not simple facts. Experiments are complicated things that must be evaluated by readers and understood in context.  When I was a graduate student in psychology, every class included practice in critiquing research.

To understand research, certain mathematical ideas are important.  “Statistical significance” is important to both accurate interpretation of research and to inaccurate or misleading reports. If you’ll bear with me, I’ll run through what I mean. Suppose you have a coin. If you toss the coin 100 times, it will come up heads about 50 times, not exactly 50 but close. Why?  That’s just the way the world we live in works, there are laws of probability. Since there are two possible outcomes—heads or tails—each will come up about half the time. If I toss my coin 100 times and it always comes up heads, I’ll probably conclude the coin is biased.  Why?  Because it just doesn’t happen; it’s extremely improbable, in the world we live in, that an honest coin would do this.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Language, Menstruation, New Research, PMS | 7 Comments »

Fog Warning Ahead

March 29th, 2012 by Heather Dillaway

As I embark on my 40th year I look ahead to menopause. I guess there is a good chance I’m approaching some foggy years. Brain fog, that is.

In the past week a flurry of online news articles review new research findings on the “brain fog” that many perimenopausal women experience. The brain fog is more easily understood as a slight memory problem, if you take the time to read through the various news stories. A new study analyzed how 75 individual women, aged 40 to 60, rated their memory performance based on factors like how often they forgot details and how serious their forgetfulness was. Researchers also gathered information about the women’s overall health, mood and hormone levels, as well as other menopausal symptoms, and tried to figure out the extent to which this “brain fog” exists. According to news reports, about 41 percent of the women in the study reported having forgetfulness that was “serious,” and those who felt that their memory problems were serious were more likely to score poorly on tests of working memory and attention. Some women who rated their memory problems as serious also reported some depression and other symptoms like hot flashes and sleeping problems. Other researchers suggest that the memory problems women experience are related to changing levels of estrogen in a woman’s body at menopause, but interestingly this new study did not find links to changing hormone levels.

The whole notion of “brain fog” is interesting, and I am suspicious of it as a strictly menopausal symptom. What about the brain fog we all experience when we’re tired or sick or just way too busy? Defining brain fog as a “menopausal” (really, perimenopausal) symptom further defines middle-aged women as somehow less than functional and set them up to be taken less seriously.

Putting this issue aside, though, what I actually find most interesting about all of the news coverage of this study is just how different each report of the study is. I am reminded that we should all be careful of which report we read about a study. For example, the first article I read on this study was placed in the Los Angeles Times and focused on the possible connections between menopausal brain fog, depression, and dementia. I was left feeling like the author of the article inferred that all menopausal women might have depression or dementia and that they should seek treatment. After reading this article I was angry because I felt as if I had been warned that midlife brain fog was the beginning of an inevitable decline for all women. Then I read a WedMD piece that simply described the study and did not concentrate on depression, dementia, or the need for treatment, and I wasn’t really sure what to make of the research study. Finally I read an article by a HealthDay reporter which quoted one of our own, SMCR member Nancy Wood, who reminds readers that “a number of other stressors in life, from work to taking care of children and parents, that pile up around the same time as menopause can hinder memory and ability to concentrate.” In addition, this article’s author states that “memory problems are not necessarily an early sign of dementia” and cognitive ability is regained after other perimenopausal symptoms subside. This third article concluded that the research study is helpful because findings suggest that brain fog is real – that women aren’t crazy – but that it is normal and not that detrimental to women’s long-term cognitive abilities.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Communication, Health Care, Hormones, Internet, Language, Literature, Media, Menopause, Menstruation, New Research | 3 Comments »

What’s missing from Mother Jones’ birth control calculator?

February 22nd, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Source: Public Domain

In response to Rick Santorum’s recent assertion that birth control only costs “a few dollars” and therefore there shouldn’t be such a big fuss about denying insurance coverage, Mother Jones published a birth control calculator this week that estimates your lifetime costs for birth control, based on your current age. The calculator asks you to enter your age and then select your preferred method. Options include the pill, IUDs, Implanon, injections, the patch, the vaginal ring, and surgical sterilization. (It doesn’t specify sterilization for women or for men, but given the context of the current debates, I’m assuming the calculator estimates only the cost of female sterilization.) It also fails to take into account that, in reality, most women use more than one method throughout their reproductive years.

Now, I know that aside from the cost of reference books, charting supplies, and perhaps a course or two to get started, using Fertility Awareness Methods is free, but condoms and spermicide aren’t. And as NPR reported on Tuesday, it can be difficult or inconvenient to get those methods covered by health insurance. Diaphragms and cervical caps aren’t cheap either, and they both require physician visits to be properly fitted. Diaphragms last a long time, but they do need to be replaced every few years. It’s been a while since I needed one, but I’m pretty sure that my health insurance covered the cost of my diaphragm, although I had to pay out-of-pocket for the accompanying spermicide gel. In my student days, I got both at my school’s Student Health Center, covered by the student health insurance fees that we were required to pay whether we used the student health center or remained on parental insurance.

I’ve written before about my bewilderment at the diaphragm’s disappearance, but I’m increasingly frustrated that the current political debates about the pill are contributing to the apparent erasure of all non-hormonal methods of birth control. The pill has become synonymous with birth control in some quarters, without consideration of the profound implications of that swap for women’s health.

I am not opposed to the pill, by the way. I want it to be available, I think it should be covered by health insurance, and I want it to be safe. But I also want women to have complete, accurate, accessible information about all of their birth control options. And let’s get all of them covered by health insurance.

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Posted in Birth Control, magazines, politics | 1 Comment »

On Menopause Definitions

December 28th, 2011 by Paula Derry

Guest Post by Paula S. Derry, Ph.D.

In a recent blog post, Heather Dillaway commented on the uncertainty, confusion, and frustration she felt as a menopause researcher, given the lack of consensus about the most basic aspects of the menopause transition. Researchers don’t agree about their definitions, and can’t even agree on what needs to be defined. She asked for reactions to her entry; I’ve found that my reaction has grown into this separate post.

Fire in the Head by Beate Knappe // CC 2.0

I, unlike Heather, am not a sociologist. I’m a health psychologist. My training and current work include analyzing, critiquing, and making sense of experimental research and theories. I have also developed workshops for community women and for professionals whose aim is to provide health-promoting information and decision-making heuristics. I have given a lot of thought to the issues that Heather raises, and this is as far as I’ve gotten with them.

To me, there are many layers of issues involved. The first is the fact that the science — about the physiology of menopause and the processes leading up to it — is limited and incomplete. Part of the reason that professionals disagree about whether the life course of menstruation has five stages or seven, or why women have hot flashes, or even why women have a menopause, is that we don’t actually know. We simply do not have the scientific facts. We don’t understand what the underlying process is or how it works. Given this uncertainty, professionals must make judgments about how to define terms and what their hypotheses (or best guesses) are about underlying processes. A second fact, along with our limited real knowledge, is the tenacity with which professionals assert their judgments and argue against competing views. People disagree and they hold strongly to their positions—about language and the facts. To me, it makes sense to have definitions of stages of menstrual life that are objective and easily measurable (like the STRAW staging system) for researchers who need to compare results with each other. It doesn’t make sense to assert that this system, based on expert opinion and not on experimental facts, actually defines when a particular stage really “begins.” It makes sense to say that experimental research supports the idea that changes in the thermoregulatory center of the hypothalamus are important processes if you’re trying to understand hot flashes.  It does not make sense to conclude that these brain changes in themselves explain hot flashes; other factors must also be involved.

I think another source of confusion is that menopause is not one thing, but many. It is a circumscribed biological change (lack of periods and what leads up to them physiologically) and also a psychosociocultural matter. We have a term for when girls begin to menstruate (menarche), a separate term for the larger biological changes of which menarche is a part (puberty), and another term for the biopsychosociocultural changes of which puberty is a part (adolescence). I think these kinds of distinctions are confused with regard to understanding menopause in part because there is cultural confusion about midlife (or mature adulthood or whatever term you use) as a life stage.  There is no cultural consensus about this stage of life.  And, indeed, this isn’t surprising.  Some women are planning retirement while others are training for a new job or career.  Some are grandmothers while others are raising a young child.  My opinion, also, is that we as a culture have a paucity of concepts of mature, responsible adulthood and what it means.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Communication, Language, Menopause, Philosophy | 4 Comments »

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