Feminist Flow 16/07/20

Usually, I resent any notion that I resemble in any way, shape or form some angsty teen stereotype. Once I went into a strop with my dad when he told me to “take a look at yourself Annie, you’re a walking cliche”, when I would regularly leave the house clad in Dr Martens and a washed-out denim jacket. Humming along to Morrisey’s warblings about searching for an occupation, subsequently obtaining one and then entering into a state of sanctimoniously recognised depression as a result of aforementioned career obtainment. 

I, at the time a relatively middle-class 17 year old who’s only jobs up until that point had been retail sales assistant and pizza-chef. Fear not,  I sense the mocking sneers from my side of the screen and yes, looking back, the irony of my reaction to Tony’s chastising is not lost on me. However there are times, like now for instance when I catch myself, spoon poised over a half finished tub of ice cream propped next to me, hot water bottle resting on my menstrual cramping stomach, that the situation feels so ridiculously like something from a pre-teen rom-com that I really have to take a step back and assess just who the hell I think I am. 

I think it is a flaw carried by many individuals of my generation that we often over-estimate a) our importance in the grand scheme of things and b) our originality. Even this, this very article that I’m typing right this minute, lacks a certain profoundness that could perhaps only be accredited to the very first person who wrote about her period, or who attempted to sedate the monthly pain with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. 

The thing is, it’s not that no one is writing about periods or even that there is no community for those who menstruate to share their experiences through the medium of relatable complaints or embarrassing stories. It’s that, shockingly to me, even despite this new lead of conversation around bleeding from our uteruses (thanks for that one Mama N), there’s still taboo around periods as a topic. How can something that literally signifies our ability to reproduce and create and harbour life, possibly deserve the stigma that surrounds it as something inappropriate to bring up in casual conversation? Even some of the most feminist minded women I know still hide their tampons (or more modernly their 'diva cups', what with the onslaught of consciousness around environmental sustainability) from work colleagues to avoid any sort of unwanted or feared attention. To put it bluntly, I don’t understand how the same male friends that will openly and vulgarly discuss in detail their own bowel movements, suddenly become squeamish and offended if we even allude to our shedding uteruses. 

Furthermore, as Sandy Toksfig highlights, it is utterly maddening that periods are not discussed more openly given that they aided us, all of us homosapiens alike, in the development of our monthly calendar. This we can induce from the simple reason that prior to work meetings, a few bevvies with the lads, and family arrangements with their in-laws, men would have had no reason to know when roughly 28 days was passing. Why would they, when they weren’t the ones seemingly randomly bleeding every 3-4 weeks? 

I’m not saying that my modern-day impassioned rant about menstruation (my feminist flow if you like - pun very much intended) is in any way a comparison to the creation of a systematic organising of the passage of chronological time. Nevertheless, we need to talk about bleeding, people! As women, surely we have enough to deal with what with the gender pay gap, and cat-calling and daily gender prejudices, need I go on? Then on top of all that we have the deep and uncomfortable and quite frankly sometimes cripplingly painful inconvenience of periods whether we want children or not. We got a shit deal on the biological burdens front, I’ll tell you that for nothing.