That time

Men love vaginas. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they spend a good portion of their lives obsessing about them; talking about the ghosts of vaginas past, present, and future. The ones they've been in previously, the ones they're in currently, and the ones they will be in subsequently.

On a separate note, men love gore. Hockey, Schwarzenegger, boxing...any type of extreme sports video where someone gets hurt. You name it: if it's bleeding, it's awesome. Awesome, of course, unless it's a vagina.

Now clearly the majority of men don't hate vaginas, and judging by box office sales, they're not disturbed by blood either. So then why is it that we can take two things the general male population claims to like (vaginas and blood shed), and when we put them together they become a sort of kryptonite?

The concept of menstruation should not be that disturbing, yet for some reason, just by mentioning the word "tampon", most men cringe. I don't get it. These are the same men that have stacks of Maxims behind their toilets, and posters of the "tastes great, less filling" girls up on their walls. They undoubtedly like females, but when confronted with the process that makes these girls truly women, they're disgusted.

When I've asked why this is, I am often told that "it's just not natural to bleed for five days and not die". It's as though the whole period thing is just some glitch in the master plan; like after creating the world, God got lazy and neglected to deal with the "problem" of menstruation.

And the "problem" runs deeper than the fact that "periods are just plain gross". Our society looks at menstruating women like they belong in a mental facility. We have successfully substituted the word PMS for "bitch", and we all know that if a woman's in a bad mood, no doubt it's because she's on her period.

In a way, it's almost empowering that people fear menstruation so much. But let me assure all you non-menstruaters, it's really not the all-powerful demon you make it out to be. The majority of women function completely normally when bleeding. And amazingly enough, women get angry sometimes, and it has nothing to do with their hormones. It's not fair to dismiss women's feelings of anger by attributing them to PMS.

But because we make periods out to be such horrible events, women become both ashamed and embarrassed by their fertility. I remember every girl in my 8th grade class had her own discrete way of carrying a tampon. We didn't want the boys to know we were on our periods, because then they would regress five years and start talking about cooties again.

Periods are easily the number one source of embarrassment for teenaged girls. Open up any teen magazine to the "Why Me" embarrassing story page, and at least a third of the stories involve a girl's period and a cute boy. It would be a girl's worst nightmare if a boy she liked was a witness to the fact that she was now of child-bearing age.

If society were more positive about women's fertility then maybe women would be excited by their periods, as opposed to disgusted by them. Maybe if men told us "wow, that's neat, my genitals can't do that" then we would look at our periods as more of a blessing than a curse.

I don't think you necessarily have to love everything about the other sex's anatomy, but I do think you can accept it. I'm sure if most girls had their druthers they'd make it so that testicles didn't exist. I mean, in all honesty, what have they done for us lately? But you don't see women telling men it's so disgusting that they have balls, and shrieking every time they see a bottle of Gold Bond Powder.

Menstruation is the sign that we have the ability to carry another life inside of us for nine months. And that's not something we need to feel embarrassed by. It's not "a curse", it doesn't make us crazy, and it is not disgusting. It's just a little bit of blood, period.