Читать книгу Period. - Emma Barnett - Страница 12

And yet we vilify them, disproportionately.

We know that men, particularly recent American presidents, have difficulty with them. But women also hush up other women on the topic, mainly out of fear that they will be seen as weak. Just because periods come out of our nether regions and, by their nature, are messy things, women worry this renders them worthy of censorship. But why? Is there just a horror and shame linked to blood in the pants? Granted, many men wouldn’t want to talk about their bleeding haemorrhoids. But they aren’t a normal monthly part of life and a vital sign of health. Quite the opposite. Or is it something that runs deeper and proves that women have bought into the age-old myth that anything uniquely female is filthy, reductive and not quite right. That we are broken and yucky in some way.

We can’t continue as a human race without periods – and yet we still can’t acknowledge their existence. In the twenty-first century. I am not calling for women to walk down the street in short skirts with their tampon strings dangling out, armed with megaphones screaming: ‘Look at us! We’re bleeding!’ (Although if you want to do that – go for your life, sister.) But what I do want is for this juvenile shaming attitude towards women and a vital part of our anatomy and health to stop being such an embarrassing mysterious and dirty secret.

Most women I know wouldn’t walk to the toilet in their office – a place they go every single day – without a dainty ‘special zip-up bag’ (ladies, you know what I’m talking about here) or even their whole handbag, just to take a tiny tampon into the loo for a change. Can you imagine if men bled for a week every month? Some form of menstrual leave would have been written into HR policies around the world, period-pain-bragging would be an Olympic sport and bleeding males would dramatically stagger to the office bog with their tampon proudly gripped in their fist. There would be no need to hide sanitary products in tiny zip-up bags. But men don’t have periods. And history has meant that they were the ones who designed society and the world of work without women – or our monthly downpours – in mind.