What my period doesn't mean to me

I used to hate that public schoolboys rag, Private Eye, for their column 'Loony Feminist Nonsense' when I was at college, but I came across an article the other day that put me terribly in mind of it.

It's called 'What my period means to me', and a greater lot of twaddle I haven't read recently. All about the mystic connection to your body and your cycles, and the delights of using a Mooncup. 

My friend R used a mooncup for some years, but two important factors, as she was happy to admit, were that a: she worked from home and b: her bathroom sink was directly next to the loo. Using such a device in my bathroom, where the sink is about 10ft away from the bog, could result in less mooncup and more Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Using one at work hardly bears thinking about. 

Besides, for most of my life, a mooncup would have lasted about 20 minutes, so evil have my periods generally been. Waddling around in two sets of mega-size Doctor White's is more like it, and plastic knickers under my (thankfully navy blue) school uniform. I gave up on Tampax the day I'd filled a new one before even getting out of the room.

Nor do I, unlike the author of this piece, look forward to my next period so that I can get all dreamy and connected with myself. Young women clearly have no remembrance of the days before Ibuprofen became generally available (God bless you, whoever discovered this wonder drug). Pain, cramping, diahorrhea, nausea and fatigue are something I'm quite happy to do without, generally speaking.

My attitude to my periods is, indeed, something like the commentator who said: What I LOATHE is the chemical nightmare that goes on each month that makes me:

paranoid
weepy
irritable ..
DOWNRIGHT ANGRY in bursts
sad
irrational
stupid
ugly
spotty
fat
with bad hair
and The Dread
oh yes ... and forgetful

My husband finds it an absolute treat! Poor man.

Whoever she is, she and I could be twins. I am such an utter bitch before my period (the week that I KNOW I have cancer and everything else...) that I signed the DH up to a red flag alert so he can get in the chocolate on time. 

Still, at least these days, I don't have to wait long for the next period anyway since, as another snippy reader pointed out to the author, once you hit your 40s, there'll be another one along in just a minute, love... 

Och, it's all too much like the 1970s for me. Can't modern so-called feminists give up this hippy shit and get a bug up their chimney about something really important - like luxury VAT on sanitary products or women getting arrested for breast-feeding, or equal pay?