Stop Menstruation Stigma. Period.
Menstrual cycle. Moon cycle. Whatever you want to call it, every single person with a reproductive system experiences one week, every single month, where they bleed. If 49.6% of people experience this, explain why society still tenses up when they hear the word ‘period’.
The mindset that your period is disgusting, shameful, or abnormal has been drilled into our heads to the point where we forget that it is a standard bodily function. Whispering ‘do you have a tampon’, to stuffing a pad into your pocket, women have been forced to keep their period secret in fear they’ll be shamed. Talking about your period in a group of other women is freeing, until everyone immediately changes the subject as soon as a man walks into the room.
Menstruation is such a taboo topic of discussion when in reality it’s such a natural bodily function. The severe amount of shame associated with menstruation pushes this untrue belief that menstruation is somehow “disgusting”.
Period products are often kept in the back of stores where the majority of people can’t see them immediately. For example, the other day I walked into my neighborhood grocery store looking for a box of tampons and circled the entire store until I finally found them in the back corner of the last aisle. Condoms are kept right next to the pharmacy in the ‘health’ aisle for all to see while tampons are kept hidden in the ‘beauty’ aisle.
Don’t Hide It. Period. is a brand committed to reducing period stigma one inspirational hygiene product at a time.
Most men are so uneducated when it comes to female reproductive health, that they automatically assume an angry or emotional woman is on their period. Traditional sexual health lessons we were forced to watch in middle school go in depth about the male reproductive system while barely touching on women’s health. This lack of menstruation education enforces the uncomfortable stigma around periods as well as conditioning women to keep their health silent. A man asking “is it that time of the month?” and “is your period making you moody?” is proof of the outrageous and offensive behavior undereducation teaches.
According to Menstruation Stigma Must Stop. Period. by Jill Litman, menstruation is a “topic that people are usually uncomfortable talking about and is typically a topic that is only discussed behind closed doors. This is because cultures all over the world have developed detrimental concepts and beliefs about menstruation.” Misrepresentation of sexual health is also a major problem in developing countries, the abundance of myths about the true meaning of where your period comes from, misinforms many young girls who don’t have the resources to understand the truth. For example, Litman also states how “in Venezuela, many women are forced to sleep in huts for the duration of their menstruation. In rural Ghana, menstruating women are forbidden from entering a house with a man or cooking food.” With this treatment and lack of education, women don’t understand how to feel about their period, given the fact they’ve been forced into a corner of humiliation since their upbringing.
These must-read books are about period empowerment, menstrual equity, and raw truths relating to menstruation.
All in all, everyone should be comfortable with talking about periods since we all came from a woman's body. No one should be shamed for having their period, it is and has always been a normal and healthy process. It’s important to be educated on all types of reproductive systems, it’s the only way we can break stigmas and desensitize ‘uncomfortable’ topics.
The only way society can move forward is by having conversations. Talk about your period freely, don’t whisper to your friend when you need a tampon. Speak openly about your health and only stay within your comfort zone, not someone else's. Don’t let someone belittle your emotions and automatically assume any feelings you have are because of your period. Overall, we all need to abandon the objectionable and insulting stigma that has been created around all female sexual health, or else we will never make progress. Society has made so many advancements in other aspects of sexual health, it’s time our period deserves a chance.
