Looking back, I understand this moment and the day of my first period as the first of many encounters with shame. My stretched Nina, my great-grandmother, must have recognized something in me. Later that night, in her bedroom, which smelled like cat litter and had everyone’s winter coats piled on the bed, she told me a story. It was only after my great-grandmother shared her story that other members of my family started talking. A pattern emerged. I would talk to a relative who would say, “Oh, but you really need to talk to my friend who’s a Gemini,” or “There’s a girl I know who had her period on 9/11,” and then that person would say, “That makes me to want to ask my mother or grandmother, because I’ve never heard any of these stories either.” And so stories started coming my way, in small floods. After years of listening to people’s accounts, something changed inside of me. I began to see the story as it lives under the skin and permeates us. But why did I feel comfortable talking about periods now, in my 30s? For years, I felt embarrassed. Then, later, I was embarrassed about the fact that I was still embarrassed! However, I couldn’t help but feel it. We can only go so far on our own, especially unlike shame, which is a force outside of us. Fortunately, the collective culture around me changed, bit by bit, and brought me in as part of the tide. This is why I believe in sharing these intimate stories about menstruation and history as they live under the skin and struggle within us. We are changed by what we read and encounter, in ways we don’t even realize, until someday there is a critical mass of people who are also changed in tiny ways. And when we recognize each other, we feel empowered to talk.
“I can’t say it’s my first time, as I’ve been lying since the sixth grade”: Judy Blume
It’s March, a month past my 14th birthday, and I still haven’t had it. One day after school my mother picks me up and says we are going to see her “lady” doctor. The doctor is not a lady, he is a cold, formal, old man. I’m scared out of my mind when without warning or explanation, she does a pelvic exam. No one prepared me for this. I don’t want his hands inside me pushing. It hurts. Never mind that he later assures my mother that I am normal and that I will get my period. I cry all the way home, furious with my mother for betraying me in this way. “Why didn’t you tell me what he was going to do?” I repeat again and again. But my mother has no answer. She seems surprised by my strong reaction. That April, my friend Stelli invites me to spend the weekend at her family’s lake house. When we’re getting ready for bed, I pull down my underwear and see a sticky brown stain. I have no idea what this could be. Maybe I didn’t wipe right? Ewwww… I gather my underpants and put them in the pocket of my suitcase. That night, the sticky brown stain returned. Again, I put on my panties and hide them with the others. It doesn’t even cross my mind that it might be my period. Not until Sunday morning, when I’m sitting on the toilet and I feel something pouring out of me. It’s undeniable – it’s blood – it’s my period! I am ecstatic. But I can’t say anything because then Stelly will know it’s my first time and I’ve been lying since sixth grade. I nonchalantly ask her for a pad. Her mother sweetly asks, “Is this your first time?” “Oh no,” I tell her, “but I didn’t expect that because I’m irregular.” When I get home from my weekend with Stelly, I tell my mother the news. “I really got it!” I say. My mother tells my father, who congratulates me. I feel like the luckiest girl alive. It’s not so much that I’m a woman as that I’m normal. And maybe now I will finally grow breasts. Years later, I will write a book about a girl who is as desperate about her period as I am about mine. Judy Blume is a writer. Her many books include Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret
“If men had periods they would brag about how long and how much”: Gloria Steinem
In the 1970s, Gloria Steinem wrote an essay titled “If Men Could Menstruate.” At the time the essay was published, it was considered satire: So what if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women couldn’t? Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, masculine event. Men would brag about how long and how much. Young boys would speak of it as the jealous beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies and stag parties would mark the day. To prevent monthly job loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Dysmenorrhoea Institute. Sanitation supplies will be funded by the federal government and will be free. Statistical research would show that men won more Olympic medals during their period. Politicians would cite menstruation (“men-struation”) as proof that only men could serve in battle (“You must give blood to get blood”) or that God himself (“Give this blood for our sins”). Male liberals would insist that women are equal, just different. and that any woman could join their ranks if she were willing to inflict a great wound on herself every month. Of course, intellectuals would argue that without this biological gift for measuring the cycles of the moon, how could a woman master any discipline that required the ability to measure anything? Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of cyclic wisdom not to need any more. In short, we would discover, as we should have already guessed, that logic is in the eye of the beholder. The truth is, if men could menstruate, the justifications for power would go on and on. If we let them. Postscript In the decades since I wrote If Men Could Menstruate, the subject of women and menstruation has become much more likely to be discussed and also the subject of serious and respectful study. This is partly because women are much more likely to do the studying and also because a critical mass of studies has confirmed the fact that human beings are more alike than different. Indeed, in 1972, Ms magazine published an article by Dr Estelle Ramey. He explained that men have monthly cycles too. In Japan, where high-speed trains had a tragic accident rate, this rate was cut in half by male workers who became aware of their lunar cycles. What needs study now is the pressure that “masculinity” puts on men to dominate, to measure success by the failure of others, and to resist childcare or other work that requires simple human kindness. Both women and men pay a high price for this myth. Gloria Steinem is an author, political activist and feminist organizer
“I was on the train coming from Poland to the German border”: Nina Bassman
I was 13. It was 1940. We were leaving Poland and the deportation of the Jews. The atrocities committed by the Germans were getting worse. Ghettos were forming. My uncles in Belgium and France went through enormous difficulties to get visas and passage for us to leave. To get to Belgium, we had to go through Germany. My story takes place on the train arriving from Poland at the German border crossing. The train stopped and we were told to strip completely so the customs officers could search us. The guards mainly looked for hidden jewels and searched the most private places. It was horrible. I had hidden the yellow star of David in my shoe, but it was discovered. In my horror, I completely lost it and peed in my pants. But when I looked down, what I saw was actually a stream of red. I ran into the apartment and my mother saw what was happening. He hurried to the toilets at the end of the train and grabbed several rolls of toilet paper, one of which he shoved down my underwear. Somehow he could do it so discreetly that my two sisters and brother never found out. He whispered to me that now I would be a big girl that he would have to depend on, that this would happen every month. But most importantly, he told me, in Belgium and France, where we were going, they had excellent napkins, much better than in Poland. Nina Bassman was a “hidden child” during the Holocaust
“Your period was kept a complete secret”: Xiao Ling
During the Cultural Revolution in China, toilet paper was strictly limited. This was really discrimination against girls. My family – with three girls – used to get by by taking the thickest brown paper towels and cutting them into strips for daily bathroom use, saving the toilet paper for when we had our periods. Being the second oldest, I knew what to expect. But I was still worried. I knew the arrival of my period would put a strain on our supply. Back then, your period was something that had to be kept completely secret. The day he arrived, my family and I were scheduled to do our manual labor at a local park, planting and cleaning up. My parents offered to write a note to excuse me from work, but I insisted on going. I was so sure that such a note would immediately reveal what was going on. Xiao Ling immigrated to the US with her family after the Tiananmen Square massacre
“I wanted the world to know”: Florence Given
Most of the girls in my class would sneak their tampons down the toilet, hiding them under their sleeves so no one would notice. Not me. I wanted people to know. I would keep a Tampax pearl hidden in my leopard sequined pencil case and zip it up slowly, the gesture so deliberately drawn out that it would attract the attention of the girls closest to me. Like a child who dresses in his mom’s clothes, I mirrored the behavior…
