You don’t know what my cramps are like…So RELIEVED I am not pregnant…Tampon commercials: it is not. like. that.
It’s something that’s happening TO me; it’s not part of me.
It struck me when she said that.
It happens to you.
It’s not part of you.
What do you think about that?
Is that how it’s like for you?
Your menstrual cycle.
Thank you, Alexandra, for emphasizing this schizophrenic view we as women commonly have about our menstrual cycles.
“It’s happening TO me” is straight out of Dark Ages patriarchal female conditioning! (But our mothers, doctors, boy friends or partners do NOT own our cycles–we do.)
We MUST change this so girls, teens and women understand and own their own cycles. This attitude toward cycles, my (unpublished) research shows, is related to abnormal cycles (leading to increased cramps and heavy flow and all the things we don’t like about them). Most importantly this dis-association from our reproductive selves causes silent ovulatory disturbances (in regular menstrual cycles that don’t make enough progesterone but have normal estrogen) that I believe are the root of women’s risks for the major disease of older women–osteoporosis, heart attacks and breast cancer.
Let me put it a positive way–women can and do feel “at home” with their menstrual cycles. This leads us to become whole, self reliant, autonomous adults.
That sense that part of us doesn’t belong to us, that it is somehow managed or controlled outside of ourselves is the root of most women’s reproductive and contraceptive (and perhaps health) problems. We in the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research and the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research must make it our number one priority to transform this ubiquitous western woman’s feeling that her menstrual cycle doesn’t belong to her. Women’s Minds and Menstruation are one–we own them!