Hey Leah! I'm so grateful to you for writing about these topics- discussions around periods, the reality of embodiment, and culture change are beyond welcome. I see this week's conversation so clearly in my experience as an athlete, prompted perhaps by Sophia Yen's reference to cramps during "the SAT or swim meets." I ran Div. 1 cross country and track in college, and I spent well over 8 years of my life wishing ~not~ to have a period (and being jealous of the "simpler," faster bodies of my male teammates). Our training, racing, and academic schedules were already so demanding, and starting your cycle on the eve of a major workout or competition (or exam) felt more like a liability than a signal of strong, healthy womanhood. I remember celebrating when I skipped my cycle for a year, thinking that it said something about my fitness (which couldn't have been farther from the truth). Looking back--especially now that I'm a few years out-- consistent cycles and a few "slower days" would have likely been beneficial for all of us. Maybe we would have had fewer injuries, fewer broken bones, fewer heartaches.
Female athletes (and thinking particularly about female distance runners) are often placed on an accelerated, shortened timeline: the idea that they will peak athletically in college, at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old (unsurprisingly, this is a timeline built around men- Lauren Fleshman's letter "Dear Younger Me" states this so beautifully). If you lose your period in the quest for (short-term) greatness, so what? This culture needs shifting- and there have been a lot of hopeful developments here, especially over the last five or so years. The victories of Kiera D'Amato (who recently set the American record in the marathon at 36), Sarah Hall, Shalane Flanagan, Sara Vaughn, and so many others have proven the value of cultivating a long-term approach to women's health and athleticism. Women's bodies are amazing- especially when we allow them to be women's bodies.
Of course, there is another discussion here about the importance of valuing ourselves and our bodies for what they are, not because of what they can do (or can't do). Rooting our identity in a sport or a record or the ability to "go 24/7" is a dangerous and dehumanizing (and very tempting) thing. Maybe the vulnerabilities of our bodies are a shadow of a beautifully inefficient God, one whose time and measure of value/worth is not our own. But that's a conversation for another day. So many thanks!
Not period-related, but around the time COVID-19 vaccines became available, I was working on a production team on a film shoot with an incredibly busy schedule (6-day weeks, 12- or 14-hr days). My team's leaders gave us days or half-days off for vaccine appointments and recovery from side effects if necessary. No paperwork, no formal requests - I just let them know which days I'd booked my doses, and they arranged our team's schedule so that we could easily cover for one another getting vaccinated. This kind of improvised accommodation made me feel supported by my team leaders and coworkers, far beyond the matter of vaccines. When other health issues came up on our team (migraines, allergic reactions, doctor's appointments), we were ready to step up for one another because our team leaders set a precedent for support.
This forms part of a broader push that doesn't 'just' try to make women into better men, but which also tries to make all humans into better robots. This is medical but it is also philosophical, as our decisions and our behaviours are measured against the ideal 'rational' response.
In terms of 'What are the best accommodations or cultures you’ve experienced that leave slack for the interruptions of ordinary life?' my answer would be those cultures that integrate life and work. For me personally, that's been farming. *However* farming is also an example of why abolishing some of the barriers between work and life, which enable those accommodations, is dangerous. Without an amelioration of the worst commercial pressures, abolishing those barriers is an invitation for work as a totalising, life-destroying force, as is seen often in farming.
one of the most fascinating things i've ever read on the subject is this malcolm gladwell piece from 2000 on the development of the pill, the period timeline it gives you, etc.
something that really stuck with me is his point that prior to industrialization, women would begin menstruating several years later, cycle less often due to less reliable nutrition, and spend much more of their life pregnant, which means the average woman in preindustrial society would menstruate (and ovulate, and etc) on average 100 times in a lifetime and the average woman in industrial society 400- which is one possible reason why things like ovarian cancer, PCOS etc, are on the rise- but what that tells me is that the thing our bodies do under the stimulus of industrial society, reliable nutrition etc, is *already* an evolutionary aberration- which doesn't necessarily mean we should run out and throw MORE chemicals at the problem, just that normal isn't necessarily the recourse we might think it is?
The accommodation/cultural shift I would love to see is children at work, especially breastfeeding babies. There is just no reason that, at the very least, an under-three-month-old who is breastfeeding couldn't go to work in a sling. It would be so good for mothers who work outside the home to be able to bring a baby during that fourth trimester, and good for society to have closer bonds between mothers and babies. I am assuming, of course, that in this situation there would be no safety concerns with having the baby present.
Hi Leah, long time reader, first time commenting. Thank you for excellent topics that always surprise me and help me think. I've always been a person who was bad at slowing down my life. I'm wired to get a lot of satisfaction from being productive. So for me, breastfeeding my baby/toddler to sleep is one of the big things that gives me slow time in the seasons of my motherhood. Just having that twice or three times a day of laying down with my child really takes the steam out of my nonstop drive to accomplish things. Now that I have had four kids, I really appreciate the necessary slowness. Once the baby is weaned, the demands of a big household fill in the time like it never even existed. :-P Nursing babies to sleep truly brings a humbling "sabbath" moment into my daily, hourly life like nothing else, unmatched by anything I did before I had kids, too (such as regular menstruation).
It seems like everything about women's bodies is under-researched. I accepted the "thalidomide, and it's unethical to experiment on pregnant women" line for a while, and then the covid vaccine came out. Somehow we managed to become confident that the covid vaccine was safe during pregnancy in a very short amount of time. It was a priority, and the official recommendation went pretty quickly from "talk to your doctor" to "yes definitely get the vaccine if you're pregnant." I don't know all the details of how that happened, but I do know that it happened because it was a priority, and I believe that if morning sickness, endometriosis, and other things suffered exclusively by women were made a priority, we could make some progress toward relieving that suffering.
Also, I think first-trimester leave should be a thing. But you'd have to reorganize society in a big way to make this feasible and respectable. We'd have to quit trivializing the huge and burdensome task of bringing new life into the world, and begin to honor and respect it. And we'd have to actually believe that pulling over on your commute or stepping out of work to vomit is unacceptable (i.e. an unacceptable expectation), even if it's only women who do it.
I agree that first trimester accommodations are needed for mothers who work outside the home and those who stay home with their kids. I've been a working mom and a stay at home mom during the first trimester and both scenarios are intensely difficult. I'm in the middle of my fifth first trimester now. My husband asked me what I needed. I said I need someone to show up and be me for about three months.
Maybe there would be better therapies and solutions for it if it was better researched. What's amazing to me is that so many women suffer in total silence because they don't want to announce their pregnancy until the 12-week mark. I need so much help in those first months that waiting until 6 weeks is a stretch.
Yes to all this. If we started announcing pregnancies earlier, or at least telling people, it would probably wear away at the stigma and feeling of being alone that is associated with miscarriage. We'd all find out that it's actually fairly common, you're not the only one, and it's not your fault. Societies that value the next generation and the women who endure pregnancy to bring it about - those societies are less individualized and more accepting of the idea that we can't do everything, and more comfortable with people coming to your home to help.
I always announced right away, for exactly that reason. I figured that the people I wanted to know I was expecting would be the same people I would hope for support from if I miscarried.
First trimester leave!! That is a wonderful suggestion. I worked through my first, was at home with my second and now third. I still had kids to take care of during those successive pregnancies' first trimesters...... but the 8-5 nature of work during that first experience was another level of torture. And I don't even have it bad compared to other's women's nausea!
Yeah! But it would require a huge shift in society. Who would hire a woman at risk of pregnancy if you knew she was going to take 2-3 months off at the beginning of pregnancy and then some time off for postpartum? I'm sure it's illegal but there are ways to just not hire a person you're concerned about. And there would definitely be a stigma.
Re SAHMing, I have been relying on my husband and babysitters to feed my toddler because my food aversions are so intense! I have also literally fallen asleep on the couch while "watching" my toddler, and I am VERY grateful for baby gates. Motherhood is harder because it's 24/7, but professional work is harder because you can't fall asleep on the job. I think being okay with having help is important, and it's something our society isn't especially good at. I benefited greatly from my own experience babysitting after I graduated from college, and I'm glad we're able to offer that opportunity to other young women right now.
I think there's a lot to unpack on the topic of periods, accommodations for them, and proposals to limit them altogether. When I had a period, my symptoms were all well within the range of normal and probably on the milder side, but I am still very happy not to have a period now that I have an IUD. It's bad to use birth control to cover up the symptoms of a disorder like PCOS or endometriosis instead of treating it, but it's also important to acknowledge that a typical menstrual cycle entails some amount of suffering which may not be entirely necessary. Framing the alleviation of this suffering as "catching up" to men is rooted in toxicity, but for women like me who have tolerated hormonal birth control very well, it is an alleviation of unnecessary suffering.
I also think it's worth entertaining the idea that it is not actually healthiest for women to experience as many periods over our lifetimes as we do now! The number of periods the average women has now is about 450, which is triple or even quadruple the numbers from a few hundred years ago. As always, it's probably too under-researched to say, but it's not a crazy idea to me.
I am going to respond to your very specific and useful point in a very broad way. Apologies--it's how my mind works--hopefully it comes round to an insight eventually. I've just been doing a review session with my students on Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology." For Heidegger, when we view things through the lens of modern technology, we view them not as things in themselves but as resources for exploitation for some further purpose. So forests become "natural resources," and humans, "human resources." To the question of what cultural shift I would bring about if I could, it would be to expunge the idea of humans as "human resources" from our minds. It seems to me that seeing humans first and foremost as ends in and of themselves, and not as things to be used to achieve some further end (like, say, economic activity), would be a really productive first step in correcting our notions about what needs to be 'fixed' in people. Maybe people and their bodies and their frailties aren't the problem. Maybe the problem isn't the square peg, but the round hole. Perhaps this is uselessly vague. I think what I'm trying to say is that I agree with you, Leah, that women, periods included, should be taken as themselves and not as defective men, but that the point can be made even more broadly--men too can fail to be efficient economic actors, or to be happy as efficient economic actors--men too can be poorly served by being viewed as cogs. A more humane economics would be one that acknowledged that the objective isn't to fit people into the system but to build the system around people.
Reminds me, too, of this conversation on “Gift Logic and Abundant Life” in which Tim says that an economy is for the purpose of “public joy” -- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEs7GOWRa30
I am very much on board with accepting the reality of our bodies, and I don’t want to stop having periods - the hormonal fluctuations related to menstruation/ovulation are an important part of my mental health and well being, and I will take bleeding for five days in exchange for the period (no pun intended) of wild creativity and energy that marks my pre-ovulatory and ovulatory phases of my cycle.
However, I think that we may be accepting certain things as “natural” that may not actually be a necessary part of having a period. There’s still a tremendous amount of catching up to do in terms of understanding menstruation, its impact on the body, and particularly what can be done to influence the symptoms related to menstruation. For some people, it may in fact be better to end the period altogether- but it’s not clear to me that our current birth control options are doing that optimally (by which I mean with the fewest side effects and least impact on overall health). For other people, there may be lifestyle changes that can alleviate stuff like cramping and heavy bleeding, or maybe everyone needs to eat more liver while they’re menstruating, or something (I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes about lifestyle changes that also changed the quality of menstruation, but I’d love some hard data on it all!) While I’d like to have other types of accommodations, like the ones mentioned in this thread, I’d also like to have more choices than “stop the period” or “accept everything about the period as is” - I think that’s a false dichotomy.
If you’re looking for some of that “hard data,” let me recommend Dr. Lara Briden, a naturopath from New Zealand (or maybe it’s Australia now?) who specializes in women’s reproductive hormones. https://www.larabriden.com/
As someone who has pretty much always had heavy/painful periods, as someone who was very relieved not to have them for years bcs there simply wasn’t enough energy to have both a menstrual cycle and an everyday life, and as someone whose cycles were often completely debilitating once I got them back -- I was shocked to hear Dr. Briden make a case that regular, healthy menstrual cycles shouldn’t be anything like that. They shouldn’t bring anything more than the minor inconvenience of having to change a handful of pads (and that even cramps shouldn’t be causing day-disrupting pain). Dr. Briden gives a thorough explanation of all aspect of the cycle, including conventional treatments and as well as naturopathic treatments, and pros/cons for both.
Her take was so different from what my doctors had been telling me (going into shock from period pain and having to visit the ER? you should have loaded up on high-dose painkillers days in advance; heavy bleeding? that’s just part of having a cycle, even when it’s debilitating, just part of being a woman!). But it reminded me of something my grandmother had said after watching me struggle through some of my worst periods -- she was puzzled over this thing called PMS, she said; when she was growing up, nobody had period problems like that, but in our time, period problems were the norm. I was equally puzzled. Surely she had just been oblivious to the pain everyone else hid, right? But she grew up on a farm in the Depresssion era, married and had 6 kids during the 50s and 60s, and was closely connected to the women of her family and community. If everyone had been debilitated by PMS, like is expected today, there would have been no hiding it!
Reading Lara Briden’s book *Period Repair Manual*, I realized that none of my doctors had ever asked for key details about my cycle -- “how heavy is it? how much blood are you losing? let’s find a way to measure.” They simply took it as a given that whatever is, is normal. But when I was able to go into my appointment with a specific amount of blood loss, sure enough, I got a different reaction than when I said “heavy bleeding.”
I’ve learned firsthand what you said about how we accept certain things as normal instead of allowing those things to be the red flags they ought to be.
And perhaps, if my grandmother’s observations are correct about period health in her day, we are missing the big questions we ought to be asking around why they are so much more generally debilitating today than they were over half a century ago!
(And as a side note, I’m one of those people who have been helped by some lifestyle changes -- again per Dr. Briden’s research compilation and recommendations. In particular, eliminating dairy has been helpful. I do miss milk and cheese, but I don’t miss the intense pain every month! Which brings up another topic I personally wonder about but haven’t had time to research fully: the possibility that our milk production methods have brought unwanted side effects to their helpful efficiency/sanitation. This seems to be a common type of story when it comes to development and technology, and should we really believe we are more immune from such troubles than previous generations were?)
I would like to gently push back on the idea that eliminating periods is "making women more like men". There are plenty of biologically female people for whom not having periods is a perfectly normal and natural state: prepubescent girls, post-menopausal women, and women who are pregnant. Additionally, even for those with periods, they still may not necessarily be a part of life that calls for a pause. To use myself as an example: my periods have never been particularly bad, and they have never really stopped me from "going 24/7". From my perspective, my period isn't an interruption of life like an illness or a snow day - it's simply life, doing what it does.
With that said, I do fully agree that our culture needs more room for those interruptions. Snow days are actually a favorite of mine (and I love your piece on them!). I think weather and the natural world offer a lot of opportunities for us to interrupt our lives. In particular, I've often thought that the first beautifully warm day of spring should be one!
Oh my goodness, yes! Spring fever was always a visceral, even pleasantly disruptive feeling during my elementary school years! And I’ve watched it be the same in my students during my teaching years! Love this take on it as a cause for pause 💗 (I’m also remembering reading about multiple one-room-schoolhouse teachers allowing their school routines to be disrupted by spring, not just by snowfalls.)
I understand both sides of the argument, but taking birth control is the best option. I don't have periods, and it does make my life easier. My periods are not debilitating but are heavy and can be very difficult to deal with, replacing pads and making sure nothing bleeds through. I am on the autism spectrum and deal with anxiety and motor issues, and eliminating something that does cause worry and frustration in everyday life is best for me.
I get frustrated with the "masking" or "cloaking" arguments. I hear that term from fellow Catholics and disagree it is the correct way of talking about things. Often, it is not the case. Birth control does help women with medical issues. First, diagnoses like PCOS are very hard to diagnose definitively. I have high testosterone levels, and doctors think it might be PCOS but aren't sure. I have unnatural body hair and hormonal acne. In my case, birth control is a "medication" to help my hormone levels, and it has -- the hair has lightened, and the acne is gone. It does help and better my life. IMO, other options such as diet changes or different medications would not be as effective and have worse side effects / long-term issues (e.g., Spironolactone is not primarily used for hormonal problems and can cause damage to other organs).
I agree with this. Having the option of using birth control to stop period or manage symptoms is valuable.
I don't care if I'd get two days off to pause and handle an intense period; I'd rather skip the period and continue on with normal life. It's not about capitalism or profit or going full-tilt 24/7. I just dislike managing heavy periods and the discomforts and anxieties that come with them.
* but I support accommodations for others with periods. Everyone should get to make their own choice on how to handle it.
Reading this as I am suffering through a particularly vicious period, interestingly enough. I'm currently off my hormonal birth control for a while and missing it dearly. Birth control makes them miserable and disruptive but mostly tolerable. Without it, physically and emotionally, each cycle is worse than the last. People have a whole range of experiences with periods - mine, without hormonal birth control, are definitely not the worst out there, but probably in the bottom decile, and I would gladly give them up if I could.
I'm all for the notion of taking breaks and accommodating our need for them as humans - I have chronic health issues and have had to organize my life to try to make breaks possible, and I hate that our culture makes it such an upstream battle to accomplish that. But my periods, to me, are not breaks - any more than a bad migraine is a "break." It's true I can't do nearly as much work, or housework, but I also can't think straight and feel far too uncomfortable to get anything approximating "rest." I actually find it hardest when my period falls on a weekend or holiday, because that's when it's most disruptive to my ability to rest, recover, and enjoy myself. So comparing a period like the one I'm currently dealing with to a snow day feels wildly off base!
I do understand - somewhat - the argument that using medications to stop periods potentially masks conditions like PCOS and endometriosis (although arguably, not having periods makes those conditions actually less problematic since they don't have an opportunity to cause symptoms). But I find it painfull to see the "suffering is part of being a woman" line of reasoning used in the same passage, given how central that idea is in the underdiagnosis of those conditions.
We're all human, and we all have bodies that are, have been, or will become infirm at some point or others. We can't avoid it. But to me, that's all the more reason to alleviate the suffering that we can. We don't have to worry that we'll outrun suffering so far that we lack contact with it - it's going to find us, and we're going to have to reckon with it one way or another! But condemning folks who have bodies that are more prone to suffering for whatever reason because it's "natural" feels perverse, to me.
I agree with a lot of what you say here. What do you think of the idea of keeping periods but assuming that a totally miserable experience is one that merits quality medical care? Or, keeping periods but anything beyond a minor annoyance is a red flag that something isn't right.
A very common endometriosis story is "my periods were debilitating, I was given birth control, it didn't really help as much as I needed, then after years of not being taken seriously, I finally got excision surgery and now my periods are a mild annoyance if that." In my own experience of dealing with medical issues, it seems like doctors want to throw birth control and anxiety diagnoses at everything instead of actually trying to figure out what's wrong and come up with a real solution. There is a huge lack of research and most ob/gyns are not familiar with the research that does exist, and there is so much that is wrong with that. I agree with your distaste for the "suffering is part of being a woman" line and I think that reasoning is a big part of why this stuff isn't a priority for researchers and health care professionals. I feel like giving out birth control and diagnosing with anxiety all the time are excuses to avoid actually learning about women's bodies and caring about how to relieve suffering. What are your thoughts?
“In my own experience of dealing with medical issues, it seems like doctors want to throw birth control and anxiety diagnoses at everything instead of actually trying to figure out what's wrong and come up with a real solution.”
This has been my experience, too. Especially since I have at least 3 chronic conditions that are poorly-understood and complex. But I have also watched other family members with more well-known and “treatable” conditions being brushed off with “oh, well, that’s just side effects.” And my mother who is going through an at-home chemo treatment for skin cancer: her doctor talked like it was just a quick lotion to apply for one day, no mention of what to really expect, so she was shocked when she got the prescription and was reading the instructions! Had to schedule another appointment with the doctor to have the conversation that should have happened at the outset (and the doctor still left the convo saying that my mom would like the results so much she would want to do it again! as though it was a manicure or pedicure, not chemotherapy!). Youtube was a better source of what to expect than her doctor was.
Perhaps the broader conversation here has to do with our desire for simple solutions, our lack of interest/patience for complex ones, and the reasons behind this.
Also, I’m reminded of a hilarious meme contrasting tv doctors (don’t worry, we will keep digging till we find the solution) with actual doctors (I don’t see anything wrong, are you sure it isn’t all in your head?) -- it’s sad in many ways, but it’s also so so human and understandable, too! Expectations vs reality.
Oh, I'm furious reading that! I just also had a doctor's appointment, where I wanted to take notes, and then relay them back to the doctor to make sure I understood everything, and she waved me off, saying "It will all be in the chart on the website."
Fortunately for my mother, her doctor willingly took time in the second appointment to talk through all the concerns she hadn’t thought to go through with my mother before. The doctor was a little flippant/clueless, perhaps, about the treatment’s seriousness. But I have to give her the kudos for giving my mom space to ask questions.
Doctor interactions seem to be getting harder and harder and less satisfactory all around (and for doctors,too). Perhaps this is another topic to tackle sometime!
"Also, I’m reminded of a hilarious meme contrasting tv doctors (don’t worry, we will keep digging till we find the solution) with actual doctors (I don’t see anything wrong, are you sure it isn’t all in your head?) -- it’s sad in many ways, but it’s also so so human and understandable, too!"
YES.
Something like 10% of women have endometriosis and something like 0% of gynecologists are up-to-date on what limited information is out there. After several doctors and spending LOTS of money treating my "anxiety disorder," I went to a physical therapist for something unrelated, and from her own experience she was able to tell me I was a walking textbook for endometriosis. She helped me figure out how to get the right surgery and not any of the other non-treatment options that women are often offered, etc.
A lot of women get hysterectemies for endometriosis at their ob/gyn's advice and I love this image showing why that zero percent makes any sense at all.
Love that visual aid. Will keep it in my back pocket for my own doc convos (very likely have endometriosis, too).
What amazes me and encourages me (in my own story and in hearing yours), is how God’s gracious care is not limited to the limits of the medical professionals who are “supposed to” have the answers -- be it the primary care docs or the specialists who should be up-to-date or should be noticing the needs/concerns. My journey with doctors has often been little but frustration and futility. Yet at key points along the way, help has been offered me from unexpected sources. Good, solid help. Be it a word of suggestion from an EMT, a timely article from a vetted source, or listening ears from my intrepid medically-minded chiropractors (in CA, chiros are allowed to diagnose, but still looked down upon by the medical community at large). The “foolish” things of this world confounding the “wise,” or those we have labeled so.
I feel you on this -- “ I have chronic health issues and have had to organize my life to try to make breaks possible, and I hate that our culture makes it such an upstream battle to accomplish that. But my periods, to me, are not breaks - any more than a bad migraine is a "break." It's true I can't do nearly as much work, or housework, but I also can't think straight and feel far too uncomfortable to get anything approximating "rest." “
I appreciate that for some women, their periods are truly intolerable. Which is why better options for treating the root causes of terrible periods are so necessary; thankfully, there is a lot of good work being done in this space by restorative reproductive medical practitioners. Because having a cycle is about so much more than simply having a period once a month--it's also about ovulating once a month, which we are finding, more and more, is critical for female health and development. Ovulating is especially crucial for laying down proper bone density during the teen and young adult years, and for proper breast and cervical tissue maturation (just to name a few of the essential effects our female cycles have upon our bodies!). Of course, if you are on hormonal contraception, you are not ovulating, and you're missing out on everything that comes along with it. That's why it's a crying shame that more research has not gone into correcting the underlying causes of cycle issues; instead, we just throw the baby out with the bathwater, and do away with cycling altogether via a constant, low dose of synthetic hormones.
I do want to offer a partial fact-check to the idea that you are not ovulating while on hormonal contraception. While the pill is intended to completely prevent ovulation, hormonal IUDs have more of a "suppressive" effect--you may be ovulating less frequently or some aspects of ovulation may be suppressed, but most women with IUDs continue to ovulate regularly.
Yes! Thank you for pointing these things out about ovulation. It’s so helpful to have conversations around how our reproductive hormones play roles in whole-body health.
Thank you for writing about this. I have a family member who has participated in the Lakota Sundance ceremony and he has spoken about how the Lakota view women to be connected to the earth in a particularly powerful way during their periods. (This article speaks to this: https://www.ravishly.com/Having-A-Period-Is-Powerful). My understanding is that the Sundance gives men the chance to participate in a ceremony that brings them closer to the rhythm of the earth, which the Lakota (and some other indigenous cultures) believe women are more of the time due to our periods.
I cannot use hormonal birth control as it makes me depressed. As inconvenient as this is, I'm grateful to be forced to listen to the requirements of my body, of nature, in a way that our culture is trying to medicate away. The idea that it is liberatory to separate ourselves from nature seems deeply misguided to me, and I think the evidence of the harm that causes is all around us (e.g. climate change). In fact, one could argue that the reason women have so many more periods now than they used to is because of that exact separation. We are exposed to hormone mimicking substances (in our artificially-scented beauty products, and our plastic containers and highly processed foods) that have caused girls to get their periods much earlier than is "natural." Is the solution to that really to pump our bodies with more man-made hormones or would it be preferable to get at the root of the problem?
That people don't recognize the capitalist undertones of the movement to eliminate periods is also distressing to me. The history of women laborers organizing (and trying to be prevented from organizing) in the bathrooms at factories speaks to this. Two books have particularly informed my thinking on these issues. One is Emily Martin's The Woman in the Body. The other I have misplaced and can't remember the name of, but it was required reading in my Gender, Labor and Sexuality class in college and it provided a striking history of the working conditions of women during the early labor movement in this country.
This isn't applicable to all jobs, of course - but my husband works a job in which occasionally, he has to work a holiday. He has the option to either receive additional holiday pay, OR receive additional time off. The ability to decide what we need and/or would like - a bit of extra cash, or extra time to save up for added flexibility at some later point - it's a simple policy that really helps family life.
Hey Leah! I'm so grateful to you for writing about these topics- discussions around periods, the reality of embodiment, and culture change are beyond welcome. I see this week's conversation so clearly in my experience as an athlete, prompted perhaps by Sophia Yen's reference to cramps during "the SAT or swim meets." I ran Div. 1 cross country and track in college, and I spent well over 8 years of my life wishing ~not~ to have a period (and being jealous of the "simpler," faster bodies of my male teammates). Our training, racing, and academic schedules were already so demanding, and starting your cycle on the eve of a major workout or competition (or exam) felt more like a liability than a signal of strong, healthy womanhood. I remember celebrating when I skipped my cycle for a year, thinking that it said something about my fitness (which couldn't have been farther from the truth). Looking back--especially now that I'm a few years out-- consistent cycles and a few "slower days" would have likely been beneficial for all of us. Maybe we would have had fewer injuries, fewer broken bones, fewer heartaches.
Female athletes (and thinking particularly about female distance runners) are often placed on an accelerated, shortened timeline: the idea that they will peak athletically in college, at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old (unsurprisingly, this is a timeline built around men- Lauren Fleshman's letter "Dear Younger Me" states this so beautifully). If you lose your period in the quest for (short-term) greatness, so what? This culture needs shifting- and there have been a lot of hopeful developments here, especially over the last five or so years. The victories of Kiera D'Amato (who recently set the American record in the marathon at 36), Sarah Hall, Shalane Flanagan, Sara Vaughn, and so many others have proven the value of cultivating a long-term approach to women's health and athleticism. Women's bodies are amazing- especially when we allow them to be women's bodies.
Of course, there is another discussion here about the importance of valuing ourselves and our bodies for what they are, not because of what they can do (or can't do). Rooting our identity in a sport or a record or the ability to "go 24/7" is a dangerous and dehumanizing (and very tempting) thing. Maybe the vulnerabilities of our bodies are a shadow of a beautifully inefficient God, one whose time and measure of value/worth is not our own. But that's a conversation for another day. So many thanks!
That last thought is beautiful!
Not period-related, but around the time COVID-19 vaccines became available, I was working on a production team on a film shoot with an incredibly busy schedule (6-day weeks, 12- or 14-hr days). My team's leaders gave us days or half-days off for vaccine appointments and recovery from side effects if necessary. No paperwork, no formal requests - I just let them know which days I'd booked my doses, and they arranged our team's schedule so that we could easily cover for one another getting vaccinated. This kind of improvised accommodation made me feel supported by my team leaders and coworkers, far beyond the matter of vaccines. When other health issues came up on our team (migraines, allergic reactions, doctor's appointments), we were ready to step up for one another because our team leaders set a precedent for support.
This forms part of a broader push that doesn't 'just' try to make women into better men, but which also tries to make all humans into better robots. This is medical but it is also philosophical, as our decisions and our behaviours are measured against the ideal 'rational' response.
In terms of 'What are the best accommodations or cultures you’ve experienced that leave slack for the interruptions of ordinary life?' my answer would be those cultures that integrate life and work. For me personally, that's been farming. *However* farming is also an example of why abolishing some of the barriers between work and life, which enable those accommodations, is dangerous. Without an amelioration of the worst commercial pressures, abolishing those barriers is an invitation for work as a totalising, life-destroying force, as is seen often in farming.
one of the most fascinating things i've ever read on the subject is this malcolm gladwell piece from 2000 on the development of the pill, the period timeline it gives you, etc.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/03/13/john-rocks-error
something that really stuck with me is his point that prior to industrialization, women would begin menstruating several years later, cycle less often due to less reliable nutrition, and spend much more of their life pregnant, which means the average woman in preindustrial society would menstruate (and ovulate, and etc) on average 100 times in a lifetime and the average woman in industrial society 400- which is one possible reason why things like ovarian cancer, PCOS etc, are on the rise- but what that tells me is that the thing our bodies do under the stimulus of industrial society, reliable nutrition etc, is *already* an evolutionary aberration- which doesn't necessarily mean we should run out and throw MORE chemicals at the problem, just that normal isn't necessarily the recourse we might think it is?
The accommodation/cultural shift I would love to see is children at work, especially breastfeeding babies. There is just no reason that, at the very least, an under-three-month-old who is breastfeeding couldn't go to work in a sling. It would be so good for mothers who work outside the home to be able to bring a baby during that fourth trimester, and good for society to have closer bonds between mothers and babies. I am assuming, of course, that in this situation there would be no safety concerns with having the baby present.
I simultaneously like this idea and worry that it would provide even more cover to companies who want to avoid providing a decent maternity leave.
Hi Leah, long time reader, first time commenting. Thank you for excellent topics that always surprise me and help me think. I've always been a person who was bad at slowing down my life. I'm wired to get a lot of satisfaction from being productive. So for me, breastfeeding my baby/toddler to sleep is one of the big things that gives me slow time in the seasons of my motherhood. Just having that twice or three times a day of laying down with my child really takes the steam out of my nonstop drive to accomplish things. Now that I have had four kids, I really appreciate the necessary slowness. Once the baby is weaned, the demands of a big household fill in the time like it never even existed. :-P Nursing babies to sleep truly brings a humbling "sabbath" moment into my daily, hourly life like nothing else, unmatched by anything I did before I had kids, too (such as regular menstruation).
It seems like everything about women's bodies is under-researched. I accepted the "thalidomide, and it's unethical to experiment on pregnant women" line for a while, and then the covid vaccine came out. Somehow we managed to become confident that the covid vaccine was safe during pregnancy in a very short amount of time. It was a priority, and the official recommendation went pretty quickly from "talk to your doctor" to "yes definitely get the vaccine if you're pregnant." I don't know all the details of how that happened, but I do know that it happened because it was a priority, and I believe that if morning sickness, endometriosis, and other things suffered exclusively by women were made a priority, we could make some progress toward relieving that suffering.
Also, I think first-trimester leave should be a thing. But you'd have to reorganize society in a big way to make this feasible and respectable. We'd have to quit trivializing the huge and burdensome task of bringing new life into the world, and begin to honor and respect it. And we'd have to actually believe that pulling over on your commute or stepping out of work to vomit is unacceptable (i.e. an unacceptable expectation), even if it's only women who do it.
I agree that first trimester accommodations are needed for mothers who work outside the home and those who stay home with their kids. I've been a working mom and a stay at home mom during the first trimester and both scenarios are intensely difficult. I'm in the middle of my fifth first trimester now. My husband asked me what I needed. I said I need someone to show up and be me for about three months.
Maybe there would be better therapies and solutions for it if it was better researched. What's amazing to me is that so many women suffer in total silence because they don't want to announce their pregnancy until the 12-week mark. I need so much help in those first months that waiting until 6 weeks is a stretch.
Yes to all this. If we started announcing pregnancies earlier, or at least telling people, it would probably wear away at the stigma and feeling of being alone that is associated with miscarriage. We'd all find out that it's actually fairly common, you're not the only one, and it's not your fault. Societies that value the next generation and the women who endure pregnancy to bring it about - those societies are less individualized and more accepting of the idea that we can't do everything, and more comfortable with people coming to your home to help.
I always announced right away, for exactly that reason. I figured that the people I wanted to know I was expecting would be the same people I would hope for support from if I miscarried.
Me too. Plus, I wanted them to know about our children as living people, not only as dead ones.
First trimester leave!! That is a wonderful suggestion. I worked through my first, was at home with my second and now third. I still had kids to take care of during those successive pregnancies' first trimesters...... but the 8-5 nature of work during that first experience was another level of torture. And I don't even have it bad compared to other's women's nausea!
Yeah! But it would require a huge shift in society. Who would hire a woman at risk of pregnancy if you knew she was going to take 2-3 months off at the beginning of pregnancy and then some time off for postpartum? I'm sure it's illegal but there are ways to just not hire a person you're concerned about. And there would definitely be a stigma.
Re SAHMing, I have been relying on my husband and babysitters to feed my toddler because my food aversions are so intense! I have also literally fallen asleep on the couch while "watching" my toddler, and I am VERY grateful for baby gates. Motherhood is harder because it's 24/7, but professional work is harder because you can't fall asleep on the job. I think being okay with having help is important, and it's something our society isn't especially good at. I benefited greatly from my own experience babysitting after I graduated from college, and I'm glad we're able to offer that opportunity to other young women right now.
(I'm just out of the first trimester so I, too, have dosed in and out while watching the toddlers....)
Yes, I agree - such good thoughts!
I think there's a lot to unpack on the topic of periods, accommodations for them, and proposals to limit them altogether. When I had a period, my symptoms were all well within the range of normal and probably on the milder side, but I am still very happy not to have a period now that I have an IUD. It's bad to use birth control to cover up the symptoms of a disorder like PCOS or endometriosis instead of treating it, but it's also important to acknowledge that a typical menstrual cycle entails some amount of suffering which may not be entirely necessary. Framing the alleviation of this suffering as "catching up" to men is rooted in toxicity, but for women like me who have tolerated hormonal birth control very well, it is an alleviation of unnecessary suffering.
I also think it's worth entertaining the idea that it is not actually healthiest for women to experience as many periods over our lifetimes as we do now! The number of periods the average women has now is about 450, which is triple or even quadruple the numbers from a few hundred years ago. As always, it's probably too under-researched to say, but it's not a crazy idea to me.
I am going to respond to your very specific and useful point in a very broad way. Apologies--it's how my mind works--hopefully it comes round to an insight eventually. I've just been doing a review session with my students on Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology." For Heidegger, when we view things through the lens of modern technology, we view them not as things in themselves but as resources for exploitation for some further purpose. So forests become "natural resources," and humans, "human resources." To the question of what cultural shift I would bring about if I could, it would be to expunge the idea of humans as "human resources" from our minds. It seems to me that seeing humans first and foremost as ends in and of themselves, and not as things to be used to achieve some further end (like, say, economic activity), would be a really productive first step in correcting our notions about what needs to be 'fixed' in people. Maybe people and their bodies and their frailties aren't the problem. Maybe the problem isn't the square peg, but the round hole. Perhaps this is uselessly vague. I think what I'm trying to say is that I agree with you, Leah, that women, periods included, should be taken as themselves and not as defective men, but that the point can be made even more broadly--men too can fail to be efficient economic actors, or to be happy as efficient economic actors--men too can be poorly served by being viewed as cogs. A more humane economics would be one that acknowledged that the objective isn't to fit people into the system but to build the system around people.
Oh! Have you read Strong Towns? I'm reading it now and the author addresses some of these issues as they relate to how we build cities.
I'm obsessed with Strong Towns and all the information there is to learn about city design! So fascinating.
Agree wholeheartedly about releasing the phrase "human resources." Ugh!
Love this last thought so so much!
Reminds me, too, of this conversation on “Gift Logic and Abundant Life” in which Tim says that an economy is for the purpose of “public joy” -- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEs7GOWRa30
I am very much on board with accepting the reality of our bodies, and I don’t want to stop having periods - the hormonal fluctuations related to menstruation/ovulation are an important part of my mental health and well being, and I will take bleeding for five days in exchange for the period (no pun intended) of wild creativity and energy that marks my pre-ovulatory and ovulatory phases of my cycle.
However, I think that we may be accepting certain things as “natural” that may not actually be a necessary part of having a period. There’s still a tremendous amount of catching up to do in terms of understanding menstruation, its impact on the body, and particularly what can be done to influence the symptoms related to menstruation. For some people, it may in fact be better to end the period altogether- but it’s not clear to me that our current birth control options are doing that optimally (by which I mean with the fewest side effects and least impact on overall health). For other people, there may be lifestyle changes that can alleviate stuff like cramping and heavy bleeding, or maybe everyone needs to eat more liver while they’re menstruating, or something (I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes about lifestyle changes that also changed the quality of menstruation, but I’d love some hard data on it all!) While I’d like to have other types of accommodations, like the ones mentioned in this thread, I’d also like to have more choices than “stop the period” or “accept everything about the period as is” - I think that’s a false dichotomy.
False dichotomy -- hear hear!!
If you’re looking for some of that “hard data,” let me recommend Dr. Lara Briden, a naturopath from New Zealand (or maybe it’s Australia now?) who specializes in women’s reproductive hormones. https://www.larabriden.com/
As someone who has pretty much always had heavy/painful periods, as someone who was very relieved not to have them for years bcs there simply wasn’t enough energy to have both a menstrual cycle and an everyday life, and as someone whose cycles were often completely debilitating once I got them back -- I was shocked to hear Dr. Briden make a case that regular, healthy menstrual cycles shouldn’t be anything like that. They shouldn’t bring anything more than the minor inconvenience of having to change a handful of pads (and that even cramps shouldn’t be causing day-disrupting pain). Dr. Briden gives a thorough explanation of all aspect of the cycle, including conventional treatments and as well as naturopathic treatments, and pros/cons for both.
Her take was so different from what my doctors had been telling me (going into shock from period pain and having to visit the ER? you should have loaded up on high-dose painkillers days in advance; heavy bleeding? that’s just part of having a cycle, even when it’s debilitating, just part of being a woman!). But it reminded me of something my grandmother had said after watching me struggle through some of my worst periods -- she was puzzled over this thing called PMS, she said; when she was growing up, nobody had period problems like that, but in our time, period problems were the norm. I was equally puzzled. Surely she had just been oblivious to the pain everyone else hid, right? But she grew up on a farm in the Depresssion era, married and had 6 kids during the 50s and 60s, and was closely connected to the women of her family and community. If everyone had been debilitated by PMS, like is expected today, there would have been no hiding it!
Reading Lara Briden’s book *Period Repair Manual*, I realized that none of my doctors had ever asked for key details about my cycle -- “how heavy is it? how much blood are you losing? let’s find a way to measure.” They simply took it as a given that whatever is, is normal. But when I was able to go into my appointment with a specific amount of blood loss, sure enough, I got a different reaction than when I said “heavy bleeding.”
I’ve learned firsthand what you said about how we accept certain things as normal instead of allowing those things to be the red flags they ought to be.
And perhaps, if my grandmother’s observations are correct about period health in her day, we are missing the big questions we ought to be asking around why they are so much more generally debilitating today than they were over half a century ago!
(And as a side note, I’m one of those people who have been helped by some lifestyle changes -- again per Dr. Briden’s research compilation and recommendations. In particular, eliminating dairy has been helpful. I do miss milk and cheese, but I don’t miss the intense pain every month! Which brings up another topic I personally wonder about but haven’t had time to research fully: the possibility that our milk production methods have brought unwanted side effects to their helpful efficiency/sanitation. This seems to be a common type of story when it comes to development and technology, and should we really believe we are more immune from such troubles than previous generations were?)
I would like to gently push back on the idea that eliminating periods is "making women more like men". There are plenty of biologically female people for whom not having periods is a perfectly normal and natural state: prepubescent girls, post-menopausal women, and women who are pregnant. Additionally, even for those with periods, they still may not necessarily be a part of life that calls for a pause. To use myself as an example: my periods have never been particularly bad, and they have never really stopped me from "going 24/7". From my perspective, my period isn't an interruption of life like an illness or a snow day - it's simply life, doing what it does.
With that said, I do fully agree that our culture needs more room for those interruptions. Snow days are actually a favorite of mine (and I love your piece on them!). I think weather and the natural world offer a lot of opportunities for us to interrupt our lives. In particular, I've often thought that the first beautifully warm day of spring should be one!
Oh my goodness, yes! Spring fever was always a visceral, even pleasantly disruptive feeling during my elementary school years! And I’ve watched it be the same in my students during my teaching years! Love this take on it as a cause for pause 💗 (I’m also remembering reading about multiple one-room-schoolhouse teachers allowing their school routines to be disrupted by spring, not just by snowfalls.)
I understand both sides of the argument, but taking birth control is the best option. I don't have periods, and it does make my life easier. My periods are not debilitating but are heavy and can be very difficult to deal with, replacing pads and making sure nothing bleeds through. I am on the autism spectrum and deal with anxiety and motor issues, and eliminating something that does cause worry and frustration in everyday life is best for me.
I get frustrated with the "masking" or "cloaking" arguments. I hear that term from fellow Catholics and disagree it is the correct way of talking about things. Often, it is not the case. Birth control does help women with medical issues. First, diagnoses like PCOS are very hard to diagnose definitively. I have high testosterone levels, and doctors think it might be PCOS but aren't sure. I have unnatural body hair and hormonal acne. In my case, birth control is a "medication" to help my hormone levels, and it has -- the hair has lightened, and the acne is gone. It does help and better my life. IMO, other options such as diet changes or different medications would not be as effective and have worse side effects / long-term issues (e.g., Spironolactone is not primarily used for hormonal problems and can cause damage to other organs).
I agree with this. Having the option of using birth control to stop period or manage symptoms is valuable.
I don't care if I'd get two days off to pause and handle an intense period; I'd rather skip the period and continue on with normal life. It's not about capitalism or profit or going full-tilt 24/7. I just dislike managing heavy periods and the discomforts and anxieties that come with them.
* but I support accommodations for others with periods. Everyone should get to make their own choice on how to handle it.
Reading this as I am suffering through a particularly vicious period, interestingly enough. I'm currently off my hormonal birth control for a while and missing it dearly. Birth control makes them miserable and disruptive but mostly tolerable. Without it, physically and emotionally, each cycle is worse than the last. People have a whole range of experiences with periods - mine, without hormonal birth control, are definitely not the worst out there, but probably in the bottom decile, and I would gladly give them up if I could.
I'm all for the notion of taking breaks and accommodating our need for them as humans - I have chronic health issues and have had to organize my life to try to make breaks possible, and I hate that our culture makes it such an upstream battle to accomplish that. But my periods, to me, are not breaks - any more than a bad migraine is a "break." It's true I can't do nearly as much work, or housework, but I also can't think straight and feel far too uncomfortable to get anything approximating "rest." I actually find it hardest when my period falls on a weekend or holiday, because that's when it's most disruptive to my ability to rest, recover, and enjoy myself. So comparing a period like the one I'm currently dealing with to a snow day feels wildly off base!
I do understand - somewhat - the argument that using medications to stop periods potentially masks conditions like PCOS and endometriosis (although arguably, not having periods makes those conditions actually less problematic since they don't have an opportunity to cause symptoms). But I find it painfull to see the "suffering is part of being a woman" line of reasoning used in the same passage, given how central that idea is in the underdiagnosis of those conditions.
We're all human, and we all have bodies that are, have been, or will become infirm at some point or others. We can't avoid it. But to me, that's all the more reason to alleviate the suffering that we can. We don't have to worry that we'll outrun suffering so far that we lack contact with it - it's going to find us, and we're going to have to reckon with it one way or another! But condemning folks who have bodies that are more prone to suffering for whatever reason because it's "natural" feels perverse, to me.
I agree with a lot of what you say here. What do you think of the idea of keeping periods but assuming that a totally miserable experience is one that merits quality medical care? Or, keeping periods but anything beyond a minor annoyance is a red flag that something isn't right.
A very common endometriosis story is "my periods were debilitating, I was given birth control, it didn't really help as much as I needed, then after years of not being taken seriously, I finally got excision surgery and now my periods are a mild annoyance if that." In my own experience of dealing with medical issues, it seems like doctors want to throw birth control and anxiety diagnoses at everything instead of actually trying to figure out what's wrong and come up with a real solution. There is a huge lack of research and most ob/gyns are not familiar with the research that does exist, and there is so much that is wrong with that. I agree with your distaste for the "suffering is part of being a woman" line and I think that reasoning is a big part of why this stuff isn't a priority for researchers and health care professionals. I feel like giving out birth control and diagnosing with anxiety all the time are excuses to avoid actually learning about women's bodies and caring about how to relieve suffering. What are your thoughts?
“In my own experience of dealing with medical issues, it seems like doctors want to throw birth control and anxiety diagnoses at everything instead of actually trying to figure out what's wrong and come up with a real solution.”
This has been my experience, too. Especially since I have at least 3 chronic conditions that are poorly-understood and complex. But I have also watched other family members with more well-known and “treatable” conditions being brushed off with “oh, well, that’s just side effects.” And my mother who is going through an at-home chemo treatment for skin cancer: her doctor talked like it was just a quick lotion to apply for one day, no mention of what to really expect, so she was shocked when she got the prescription and was reading the instructions! Had to schedule another appointment with the doctor to have the conversation that should have happened at the outset (and the doctor still left the convo saying that my mom would like the results so much she would want to do it again! as though it was a manicure or pedicure, not chemotherapy!). Youtube was a better source of what to expect than her doctor was.
Perhaps the broader conversation here has to do with our desire for simple solutions, our lack of interest/patience for complex ones, and the reasons behind this.
Also, I’m reminded of a hilarious meme contrasting tv doctors (don’t worry, we will keep digging till we find the solution) with actual doctors (I don’t see anything wrong, are you sure it isn’t all in your head?) -- it’s sad in many ways, but it’s also so so human and understandable, too! Expectations vs reality.
Oh, I'm furious reading that! I just also had a doctor's appointment, where I wanted to take notes, and then relay them back to the doctor to make sure I understood everything, and she waved me off, saying "It will all be in the chart on the website."
Aack!! My turn to be furious for you!
Fortunately for my mother, her doctor willingly took time in the second appointment to talk through all the concerns she hadn’t thought to go through with my mother before. The doctor was a little flippant/clueless, perhaps, about the treatment’s seriousness. But I have to give her the kudos for giving my mom space to ask questions.
Doctor interactions seem to be getting harder and harder and less satisfactory all around (and for doctors,too). Perhaps this is another topic to tackle sometime!
"Also, I’m reminded of a hilarious meme contrasting tv doctors (don’t worry, we will keep digging till we find the solution) with actual doctors (I don’t see anything wrong, are you sure it isn’t all in your head?) -- it’s sad in many ways, but it’s also so so human and understandable, too!"
YES.
Something like 10% of women have endometriosis and something like 0% of gynecologists are up-to-date on what limited information is out there. After several doctors and spending LOTS of money treating my "anxiety disorder," I went to a physical therapist for something unrelated, and from her own experience she was able to tell me I was a walking textbook for endometriosis. She helped me figure out how to get the right surgery and not any of the other non-treatment options that women are often offered, etc.
A lot of women get hysterectemies for endometriosis at their ob/gyn's advice and I love this image showing why that zero percent makes any sense at all.
ok I can't paste an image looks like but here's a link https://www.endo-resolved.com/images/xhysterectomy-endo-locations.jpg.pagespeed.ic.zYaslTZIFg.jpg
Love that visual aid. Will keep it in my back pocket for my own doc convos (very likely have endometriosis, too).
What amazes me and encourages me (in my own story and in hearing yours), is how God’s gracious care is not limited to the limits of the medical professionals who are “supposed to” have the answers -- be it the primary care docs or the specialists who should be up-to-date or should be noticing the needs/concerns. My journey with doctors has often been little but frustration and futility. Yet at key points along the way, help has been offered me from unexpected sources. Good, solid help. Be it a word of suggestion from an EMT, a timely article from a vetted source, or listening ears from my intrepid medically-minded chiropractors (in CA, chiros are allowed to diagnose, but still looked down upon by the medical community at large). The “foolish” things of this world confounding the “wise,” or those we have labeled so.
This is grace.
If you suspect endo I recommend checking out Nancy's nook on Facebook!
I feel you on this -- “ I have chronic health issues and have had to organize my life to try to make breaks possible, and I hate that our culture makes it such an upstream battle to accomplish that. But my periods, to me, are not breaks - any more than a bad migraine is a "break." It's true I can't do nearly as much work, or housework, but I also can't think straight and feel far too uncomfortable to get anything approximating "rest." “
I appreciate that for some women, their periods are truly intolerable. Which is why better options for treating the root causes of terrible periods are so necessary; thankfully, there is a lot of good work being done in this space by restorative reproductive medical practitioners. Because having a cycle is about so much more than simply having a period once a month--it's also about ovulating once a month, which we are finding, more and more, is critical for female health and development. Ovulating is especially crucial for laying down proper bone density during the teen and young adult years, and for proper breast and cervical tissue maturation (just to name a few of the essential effects our female cycles have upon our bodies!). Of course, if you are on hormonal contraception, you are not ovulating, and you're missing out on everything that comes along with it. That's why it's a crying shame that more research has not gone into correcting the underlying causes of cycle issues; instead, we just throw the baby out with the bathwater, and do away with cycling altogether via a constant, low dose of synthetic hormones.
I do want to offer a partial fact-check to the idea that you are not ovulating while on hormonal contraception. While the pill is intended to completely prevent ovulation, hormonal IUDs have more of a "suppressive" effect--you may be ovulating less frequently or some aspects of ovulation may be suppressed, but most women with IUDs continue to ovulate regularly.
Yes! Thank you for pointing these things out about ovulation. It’s so helpful to have conversations around how our reproductive hormones play roles in whole-body health.
Thank you for writing about this. I have a family member who has participated in the Lakota Sundance ceremony and he has spoken about how the Lakota view women to be connected to the earth in a particularly powerful way during their periods. (This article speaks to this: https://www.ravishly.com/Having-A-Period-Is-Powerful). My understanding is that the Sundance gives men the chance to participate in a ceremony that brings them closer to the rhythm of the earth, which the Lakota (and some other indigenous cultures) believe women are more of the time due to our periods.
I cannot use hormonal birth control as it makes me depressed. As inconvenient as this is, I'm grateful to be forced to listen to the requirements of my body, of nature, in a way that our culture is trying to medicate away. The idea that it is liberatory to separate ourselves from nature seems deeply misguided to me, and I think the evidence of the harm that causes is all around us (e.g. climate change). In fact, one could argue that the reason women have so many more periods now than they used to is because of that exact separation. We are exposed to hormone mimicking substances (in our artificially-scented beauty products, and our plastic containers and highly processed foods) that have caused girls to get their periods much earlier than is "natural." Is the solution to that really to pump our bodies with more man-made hormones or would it be preferable to get at the root of the problem?
That people don't recognize the capitalist undertones of the movement to eliminate periods is also distressing to me. The history of women laborers organizing (and trying to be prevented from organizing) in the bathrooms at factories speaks to this. Two books have particularly informed my thinking on these issues. One is Emily Martin's The Woman in the Body. The other I have misplaced and can't remember the name of, but it was required reading in my Gender, Labor and Sexuality class in college and it provided a striking history of the working conditions of women during the early labor movement in this country.
This isn't applicable to all jobs, of course - but my husband works a job in which occasionally, he has to work a holiday. He has the option to either receive additional holiday pay, OR receive additional time off. The ability to decide what we need and/or would like - a bit of extra cash, or extra time to save up for added flexibility at some later point - it's a simple policy that really helps family life.