Screenshot of Jezebel.com article “Singer Has Maybe-Fake Period Onstage, Tragically Grossing Out Man”
A couple of recent web site items capture a wide range of male responses to Close Encounters of the Menstrual Kind.
First, consider a peculiar blog post by a man named David Barton Wallace who does music reviews, this time a piece titled, “Brazilian Girls go with the flow at Highline.” He felt obliged to preface his review with a parenthetic comment: “Warning: This review is not for the squeamish,” because it included descriptions of what appeared to be the lead singer of the group getting her period on stage while wearing a tight, white body suit.
As pointed out a few days later on the Jezebel site (which has previously offered a positive item about the June SMCR conference in New York City) in an amusingly snarky post titled, “Singer Has Maybe-Fake Period Onstage, Tragically Grossing Out Man,” it seems that the huge stain across the front of the performer’s outfit was surely fake, part of some sort of transgressive commentary. In fact, as seen on the YouTube post of the performance, another red stain also appeared over her left breast. The Jezebel article roasted the reviewer thoroughly and listed all of the portions of his article that expressed “how grossed out he was.”
Perhaps Mr. Wallace was unfamiliar with the earlier incident of a woman rocker, Donita Sparks in the band L7, who actually weaponized her period during a concert in England in 1992 by pulling out her tampon and throwing it at some hecklers in the crowd.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum of male engagement with menstruation is an item on a site called The Good Men Project in a section titled, “Dads & Families.” The specific article by a man named Robert Duffer is labeled, “Should Dads Talk To Their Kids About Menstruation?” Of course, the answer is a resounding “YES” and, for the most part, it’s a sound and sensitive discussion, including comments by SMCR Board member Mindy J. Erchull, Ph.D. from the University of Mary Washington. Yet even this well-intentioned discussion hits a sour note early on with the following sentence, “I have a boy, 7, and a girl, almost 6, who I’ve stopped from singing ‘I’m Sexy And I Know It,’ by saying no, you’re not, (which I would say to any douchebag singing that song).” How a “sensitive” guy, writing on The Good Men Project site has not learned that calling anyone a “douchbag” is an obvious use of a mysogynistic expression is a puzzle to me. Perhaps it’s one of those “two steps forward, one step back” situations.
The best thing we can say about these appearances is that it suggests that men are at least finding it necessary to confront their previously unexamined feelings and presumptions and prejudices about menstruation in their midst.
