Period

Bloody Good Period, set up by fellow Mancunian and all round good egg Gabby Edlin, specifically targets female asylum seekers. Gabby founded the mission after she volunteered at a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees in north London and realised sanitary products were classed as ‘emergency items’ – meaning they weren’t readily available to all women visiting the organisation. Women who have escaped from the terrors of their own country deserve a decent, stress-free and clean period. It’s the least we can do while providing them sanctuary.

Let’s be clear. None of the women I spoke to about the end of their periods missed the blood – even the most passionate bleeders. For that sentiment, I have to turn to the words of someone described lovingly by her fans as ‘the poet laureate of periods’: Sharon Olds. The American writer and academic, now in her mid-seventies has written extensively about periods and the female experience in most of its forms. In ‘When it Comes’, Sharon sums up an awe and majesty about periods I haven’t seen as exquisitely put anywhere else. If you have the chance, I recommend reading.

Lara Briden, a New Zealand-based naturopath (a holistic practitioner who uses herbal and natural remedies) couldn’t disagree more. The author of The Period Repair Manual, Lara believes your menstrual cycle is a ‘monthly report card for good health’. For her, a monthly bleed is not the important part of having a period. The period is a side-show; the tax women pay for having a natural cycle. For Lara, it’s all about having a natural ovulation cycle so women can make hormones – namely natural progesterone and oestrogen – which she calls ‘deposits into the bank of long-term health’, bringing benefits for bone density and one’s immune system. She says, ‘For most women with no menstrual conditions or illnesses, periods should be a small event we can manage.’

A woman must wait for her ovaries to die before she can get her rightful personality back. Post-menstrual is the same as pre-menstrual; I am once again what I was before the age of twelve: a female human being who knows that a month has thirty days, not twenty-five, and who can spend every one of them free of the shackles of that defect of body and mind known as femininity.

MRKH (full name Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, named after the doctors who discovered it). A broad-brush definition means the reproductive system starts to grow but doesn’t fully develop.

She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’ The doctor carried on reading out the report and using medical language. It was clear she didn’t know what to do or say. She also told me my condition was extremely rare and affected one in 50,000 women. I later learned this was far from the truth – it actually affects one in 5,000 women.

Shame is a deeply ingrained worm. It burrows deep and can take years to locate and banish. It cuts across both genders in different ways. But if you manage to happily have period sex for the first time because this chapter has made you consider what’s actually been holding you back and reassured you of your concerns, I am one satisfied lady.

Let’s give it up for the men and women who are nonplussed. These are the men and women who don’t really mind if they need to lay a towel down. If their lover is up for it, and there happens to be a period in play, they don’t care either way. These men aren’t into showboating about period sex. Nor does the blood do anything for them, except perhaps add a touch of welcome lubricant. It’s just sex at a slightly messier time in a woman’s cycle. This means they haven’t been indoctrinated by religion or wider society to see women as shameful dirty animals while menstruating, best avoided until cleansed. Nor do they think of them as gross or kinky for wanting sex during their flow.

But only straight white men could convince themselves that they are dominating a woman when they are literally eating her shit. Who is really dominating who?’

We may have thought we’d said it all about being a woman. But we haven’t. Not even close. The period taboo must die a death and with it all the negative nonsense still believed about women and by women, rendering them less than men.
You cannot legislate a taboo out of existence. Such a cultural shift has to come about through decisive actions, leading by example and sheer force of will – which women, menstruating or not, certainly aren’t lacking.
You know it. I know it. Together, we know it and can make the change happen.