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When I was little, my mother instilled in me the idea that menstruation was really absolutely no big deal, with no significance or effect, or, sensation beyond blood painlessly seeping from my vagina, and that when it happened, it would mean nothing other than I can technically become pregnant; she would buy me pads, and that would be that.
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The implication, or my interpretation of my mother’s attitude, was that while there is a tiny number of women who find their periods painful, these women are probably just kind of neurotic and likely their issues are psychosomatic. Menstruation equals blood, the end. Don’t get me wrong though: my mum is a wonderful and compassionate person, and I think her assumptions about menstruation were based simply on her own experience, the messages she was given as a child, and also the fact that she really never talked to anyone else about having her period–certainly not her own mother, and not even her friends—which simply speaks to the era and the sort of family in which she grew up. For my mother as a young woman, menstruation was *never* discussed, and was basically utterly shameful. Her ability to see menstruating as a purely pragmatic, biological, nothing-doing thing, is a significant expansion for someone of her generation.
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For several years before my own menarche, I felt some curiosity and anticipation over the prospect of bleeding, but overwhelmingly, a sense of horror and dread. This was related to the horror and disgust that I felt in general about becoming an adult woman, which I understand now as a quite sophisticated attenuation to the toxicity of gender, and the realization that being a woman means to be sexualized and objectified. This awareness manifested in me as disordered eating, along with deep trepidation in regards to my first bleed. On one hand, the requirement of womanhood is sexy sexiness. On the other hand, being female means blood coming out of my vagina, and everybody hates that. I did not want to be a woman. It seemed an un-winnable game.
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The summer before I had my first period, I did a soccer camp. For some reason, probably related to hormonal changes in my body, I had a lot of discharge during this soccer camp–everything felt wet all the time, and I was terrified, hourly, that this was it: I was getting my period. I remember running to the bathroom over and over again, because I could feel *liquid* in my underwear. The coach was male, the other participants were not my close friends. Whether this was entirely true or not, I was convinced that if I did get my period then and there, that I would be ostracized, vilified, and shamed beyond measure. I hated that soccer camp.
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One morning, when I was fifteen (or was I sixteen?), I woke up feeling like I was dying, with horrible sharp pains in my abdomen, that were debilitating. It was so horrible, so excruciating, that my mother was at a loss, and called the doctor to make an appointment for me. We went to the doctor’s office instead of going to school that day. In the bathroom of the waiting room, I saw blood on my underwear. It was, on one hand, a relief to see that there was a reason, of sorts, for this terrible pain, but it was even worse to realize that my periods were not going to magically appear without incident, like they clearly did for my mother.
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My mother tried to be understanding, but it was clear she didn’t get it. I also remember feeling a sort of inchoate longing, a sense that this should be significant, this should be positive, that this should, somehow, mean something, that I should be honoured in some way. I was, somehow, different, but I had no way of verbalizing this, and in the land of ultra-secular, materialist 90’s Vancouver, I had no reference-point for ritual or even a passing concept of what “rite of passage” could mean, let alone what this might look like.
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Despite this sense of absence, and despite the absences that I think really defined/define my generation, my mother was also unique in many of her beliefs, and she sensed, in a profound (and profoundly countercultural way), the health implications of using industrial menstrual products. She had heard about toxic shock syndrome, but even prior to that, had intuitively sensed that tampons were noxious, and that since the blood was flowing out, it might be best to let it flow. She told me I was welcome to use tampons, but that she didn’t think they were terribly healthy, and I concurred: I could never handle what I felt was an invasion of my body by foreign object. (Full disclosure: I use a diva cup for what amounts to maybe one hour per cycle, if I happen to be at a public yoga class while bleeding, but I remove it immediately afterwards).
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Throughout my teens and twenties, every time I had a period I experienced brain fog, four days of diarrhoea, horrible cramping, and a malaise and discomfort that made normal life impossible. But I also experienced some conflicting feelings; desires, even. I remember sitting in my room naked, watching a line of blood trickle down my leg, fascinated. I would sometimes put my fingers in my body, in my blood, and pull out and pick apart the pieces of the matter that came from my body: touch, smear, smell, taste. It was a sort of pica. Of course, menstruation isn’t “just blood”, it’s tissue, membranes, the first soil of human life. I would never have been in trouble for these primal explorations, but I could imagine my mum, if she had ever walked in on this, raising an eyebrow, and my feeling just a little bit weird about it. I look back on it now, and realize this was the only ritual I had, these amorphous, tenuous attempts to place myself in the context of the conscious wild.
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The fact that bleeding changed me, made me different, made me magical, also made me feel, in a way, like an already-failed feminist. Because of course, the feminism of the 90s, the dawn of the third-wave, meant that biology is nothing. Look at all the smiling beautiful women on tv, who enthusiastically pour that mysterious clear-blue liquid over their snow-white pads made with this new material or that! The purpose of industrial menstrual products is so that we can seamlessly integrate into the workforce (and of course, make money for the corporations who sell us the idea that our bodies are filthy and have to be sanitized contained, controlled). I heard stories about those primitive and sexist tribal peoples who banished women from the community for days, preventing them from working, or preparing food, leaving them on their own until their bleeding ceased. What a horror it would have been to have lived in a time or a place like that! What a privilege it is to now be expected to carry on like nothing’s happening: to work work work, because of course, our bodies can be plugged and shut up, and ignored. Progress.
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I gave birth to my first child when I was twenty years old. Pregnancy and certainly the birth process, was transformative for me in profound ways. Making life, and becoming a mother was instrumental to my beginning to love and appreciate my body, the incredible, gorgeous process of gestation, and in particular the power and beauty of simply being a woman: our femaleness, the rhythmic reality of our fertility.
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Maybe it’s related to the biological changes that happened in my body, but perhaps it is also (more so?) related to the changes in my feelings about being a woman, that my moon-time is now much less painful or upending. In fact, I have recently come to love having my period. The association I have with my moon-time is Power. I have given birth in power. I have found a coven of sisters, and a life that is woman-centred, family-focused, tribal, in a way. I have also, frankly, become radicalized, and my feminist (“real” feminist, ha) politics have given me a lens through which I have been able to analyze, and process, the pathological attitudes of my childhood, given by the sickly masculinist, misogynistic culture that continues to dominate.
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Relative to many contemporary western women, I have had few periods: many pregnancies, many months of breastfeeding, lot of babies. I don’t resume my cycle until one year after giving birth (pretty much on the dot with each child), and right now is one of the longest periods of time in my adult life that I have not been pregnant. It is strange, but also freeing, and I am enjoying not growing another life at the moment. I’m enjoying my fertility. I’m enjoying my body.
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Many years ago, I started using cloth pads, which I prefer in every way to the chemical-soaked industrial disposable ones. I like the intimacy I have with them, I love washing them by hand. The pads I have were made by another woman out of cotton velour and backed in wool felt, and they are lovely. Increasingly though, when I can, when I’m at home, I just wear an old pair of pants or a skirt, and bleed. I’ll fold up a towel and put it on the sofa when I’m sitting down, and bleed into the towel. I never wear a pad or underwear at night, I just put a wool soaking pad, or lately, one of my beautiful new full-moon pads made by a beautiful friend and fellow-birth worker in BC. I wake up in the morning with my thighs stained with blood, and my fingers too, because, well, I’m an earthy, real, sensual, human woman. And I’m delighted with myself.
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When I read the recent article(s) about Kiran Gandhi, and her running of the London Marathon while bleeding without “protection”, with blood staining her pants, I found myself moved to tears. I was moved by this woman’s beauty, her authenticity, her courage, and by the fact that we live in a world in which it is, unfortunately, indeed courageous to reveal visual evidence that we bleed, that we are female.
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The most fascinating aspect of Gandhi’s story is the reaction that it received. I shared it on my bauhauswife Facebook page and the reaction was only slightly less offensive than the comments section after the HuffPo article. I am saddened beyond belief to be confronted (continuously) by women who themselves express views that reflect the patriarchy, and the established, normalized misogyny. Disgusting. Dirty. Disrespectful. Unsanitary. Bio-hazard. This is what it is to be a woman. There were several positive responses to my posting of the article, but there were quite a few negative responses as well. I lost a number of “likes” on my Facebook page, and I also banned several people who had posted unacceptably hate-filled comments.
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There were also a few women who expressed a sort of mild form of discomfort over Gandhi’s act, by claiming that their objection is simply because bleeding (like that) is a public health concern. Really? So as long as the blood isn’t *seen*, then we’re fine. I’m sure that every day, there are *billions* of women who take their tampons out and maybe don’t quite wash their hands properly—surely this occurs, as there are *billions* of women who bleed all the time, everywhere. The only way to *ensure* public safety from menstruating women, of course, is to make sure we are kept separate from the rest of society. The expectation that our blood will never be seen, that we will never miss work, that we will carry on like nothing is happening (which some women can achieve, but others not) serves the same symbolic purpose as isolation–a form of punishment. I have heard other women say that they just don’t really understand why Gandhi would do such a thing—they’re indifferent to her protest, but sure, the choice is hers. But the thing is, for so many women, the choice between concealing our menstrual blood, or incurring the wrath and shaming of the rest of humanity doesn’t represent much of a choice. Most women, myself included, do not choose to have blood seeping through our pants in public. But the fact is, even if we are studiously arming ourselves with a multitude of forms of “protection”, the vast majority of us will find ourselves, at some point in our lives, with blood all over our backsides, in public. And in these cases, it is a transgression, an offence, and a disgust to others. This is why what Gandhi did was brave, and beautiful. Women bleed.
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And yes, blood can carry disease. Every body fluid carries disease. Human beings drool, and sneeze, and wheeze, and seep, from every orifice, *at all times*. Marathon runners fall and scrap their knees. Blood. Marathon runners develop blisters, which sometimes bleed. Menstrual fluid, in fact, contains a lower HIV viral load, than would the blood from a wound, as menstrual blood is intermingled with other fluids and membranes; diluted. But somehow, the fact that this material comes from our vaginas, is especially hideous. When the issue of hygiene or sanitation is invoked, especially in the case of a woman whose blood was staining her own pants, while running through the streets (not a health risk to anyone else), what do we mean when we speak of hygiene? Whose hygiene are we concerned about, when we talk about hygiene in the context of menstruation? Tampons are incredibly unhygienic for the women who use them—and not only because the materials used in their manufacture are so phenomenally pernicious, but because keeping blood inside our bodies for an extended period of time while it essentially rots, isn’t a great idea. Letting the blood pour from our bodies is much cleaner, healthier, and more hygienic—for us. But of course, women are supposed to be concerned, above all, about others—we are taught not to make others feel uncomfortable, not to take up too much space, not to offend with these disobedient bodies of ours.
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Many people (and even Gandhi herself) have suggested that her bloody marathon is an act of solidarity for women who don’t have access to menstrual products in developing countries, and who therefore cannot attend school. This is bullshit. (No, not the solidarity part—read on) Women in developing countries cannot go to school, *not* because they have yet to be provided with poisonous, industrial, bleached, chemical tampons, but because they live in a culture (as we all do, to differing degrees, in different ways) where there is such a stigma towards, and hatred for, normal female bodily functions, that they are shamed into submission. The suggestion that it is for lack of kotex that women are subjugated is in fact a pretext that serves to excuse the fundamental social structures that keep all women oppressed. I have been in many situations throughout my life where I have been caught somewhere without pads and my period has started, and I have folded a handkerchief and stuck it in my pants, or rolled up toilet paper and made do with that, or taken an old t-shirt folded, and placed in my crotch. Women in other countries can, and do, use washable rags, etc. Figuring out how to absorb blood is not difficult. Leaves and moss are widely available in many environments. The suggestion that using rags, or moss is unacceptable, or icky, is misogyny. Women have not had commercial tampons for a lot longer than some of us have had them. The suggestion that we are dependent on the massive venal corporations who sell us this garbage, is disgusting.
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In any case, I love Gandhi for publicly challenging the fantasy that as long as we don’t see or know about women’s blood, that somehow we are protected from the filth of femaleness. Women bleed: all the time, everywhere. And it is because of our blood that you are here. So you’re welcome.
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(In the coming months, I hope to write some more about the kind of ritual and ceremony I’ve had to create for myself, around my fertility, and what I hope to offer my daughter, when she comes into her her fertility. xo)