Nobody Wants To Talk About It. Period.

“Hey, Joe, catch this!” (Raul throws a box of “Real Men Bleed Real Blood” tampons across the room to Joe.) “I bought these last week. They’re the latest on the market and they totally rule! I can just feel them sucking out the blood!”*

If men menstruated, this is probably how it would be handled--as something to brag about, something to be proud of. And of course, rather than hiding their tampons and trying to deodorize their vaginas, men would toss their “masculine enhancement products” around like footballs, displaying them every chance they got. But men don’t menstruate and the social response to menstruation is very different.

After writing “Panties,” I said that I would write a column about menstruation. People laughed at me, saying, “Nobody wants to talk about menstruation.” (Read, it’s not something that men do, so it’s not important.) Stubbornly, I checked out a book at the library called “The Curse” to look into the cultural history of menstruation. It was a nice, thick book, weighed about 4 pounds, and had a nice cover. I meant to read it, or at least skim it, but somehow I found myself much more drawn to the collected editions of Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse” cartoon. I finally accepted that I didn’t want to read 300 plus pages about menstruation and returned “The Curse” to the library. I did look up menstruation on the internet, but other than several sights about Islamic law on menstruation, I didn’t find much. There were a few porn sights showing what I assume to be naked women, pulling what I assume to be tampons out of their crotches**, and a newsgroup of men heralding the virtues of having sex with their “ladies” when they were menstruating. I tried to let the subject go.

But the things that nobody wants to talk about are exactly the things that we need to be talking about. There is something important in the silence.

I know, I know. It’s not a complete silence. There are ads about “feminine protection” devises. But that doesn’t count as breaking the silence. I mean, what are they trying to protect us from? Oh, yeah, I forgot--the shame, stigma and inconvenience that go along with being a woman. That’s why it’s called “the curse.”