Soul Kadee

A pill to stop your periods, scream the headlines announcing the fact that scientists are working on a pill that could eliminate the need for women to have monthly menstruation.

Yes, it might be beneficial for sensitive women like me, who suffer from painful periods and PMS for a few days every month. But, despite my discomfort, I’d rather bear the pain (I can’t take painkillers), leave my daughter with my parents, and catch up on my rest on those days, than pop a pill to get rid of a perfectly normal biological function.

My period and my monthly changes define my womanhood, and no one has the right to play around with that. Besides, who decides these things anyway? And who benefits by defining a woman’s period as something that should be done away with? Only the kind of men who have no respect for women and believe that a woman’s period is a mere inconvenience.

Men like Dr. Elsimar Coutinho, a Brazilian gynecologist and co-author of the book “Is Menstruation Obsolete?” (I wonder what gave him THAT idea!), who writes,

From a medical point of view, menstruation has no beneficial effects for anyone. For many women, it is actually harmful to their health.

I have never read a bigger load of CRAP!!! (And I never use three exclamation marks, so you can imagine how MAD I am).

Would Mother Nature design something so vital to our fertility, and then go make it “harmful”? I think not! Besides what gives a clueless male like Dr. Coutinho, the right to tell a woman that she should deny her femininity?

I love being a woman and I support every woman’s right to control her own body, even if she chooses to do so by having fewer periods. But it should be HER choice - not the result of brainwashing by males, who understand nothing of what a woman goes through during her monthly cycle.

I mean how would men feel if we decided that it was inconvenient and unattractive for them to have body and facial hair, and that they needed a pill or injection to “eliminate” these unnecessary vestiges of manhood?

And while we’re on that route, why not just declare testosterone a threat to World Peace, since it’s the cause of most of the violence we see in the world today? Lets have a pill to do away with testosterone.

Voluntary Emasculation In The Name Of Non-Violence!!! I wonder how that would sound to men like Dr. Coutinho.

I’m no feminist, just a woman who loves being a woman (and everything that goes with it). But, when I see such blatant and arrogant attempts by male doctors to control a woman’s body, I really wish I were!

Like women of ancient times, I see my cycle as a time for rest and renewal. A time to nurture myself and enjoy my womanhood. “Our monthly bleeding is the source of life. Why then are we so ashamed of it?”, writes Felicity Artemis Flowers in her article titled The P.M.S. Conspiracy, where she describes how patriarchy has made women feel ashamed of this vital, beautiful, and life-renewing bodily function.

In this uplifting piece, she writes

Ancient people called menstrual blood ‘Wise Blood’. The ancients recognized the awesome wisdom and power of the menstrual cycle and it was honored as a source of spiritual enlightenment. The forgetting of this essential wisdom, and the distress that this has caused the psyche of womankind is a consequence of the total betrayal of women by the patriarchy.

In ancient times a woman’s bleeding was her time to retreat to a special place where she would be attended, bathed and nurtured by other women. It was honored as her time to tune in to the transformation happening within her, to turn inward, to get closer to her Self, to listen to and hear her Self.

On her menstrual retreat a woman secluded herself to give herself to her bleeding. With each lunation she could immerse herself in the realm of the unconscious and focus her energy into her expanded psychic connection to All Life. She would then return with offerings of insight and visions for the community. She was a priestess, a shamanness. Her bleeding was thus honored as her Gift.

In her article, she also gives women some great tips to honor themselves and embrace menstrual reality.

On the role of patriarchy in creating a disconnect between women and womanhood, Felicity writes,

The ultimate message of the male-supremecist culture to all daughters, well before their first bleeding, is that proof of your worth as a woman lies in how successfully you pretend that nothing significant is happening while you are bleeding: how well you can contain it, act emotionally neutral, not retain water, be a good robot in the workplace; how well you deny your true nature in pretending you don’t want to lie down and rest, take a warm bath, or walk through a flower garden. You must be efficient and “take it like a man”, take pills so you won’t feel it, take diuretics so its ’show’. Don’t let anyone know. Pretend you’re not bleeding.

As we presently exist within patriarchally defined reality, our body’s cyclic imitation of the moon’s waxing to fullness is called “bloat”, a symptom, a malady. This misnaming of Life’s expression of itself is a total reversal from the perception of the female body as sacred.

Words are powerful in conveying and perpetuating attitudes, and patriarchal words such as “bloat”, “discharge”, ‘unclean’ and ‘P.M.S.’ are effective in Propagating Menstrual Shame. They describe the deliberate destruction of female consciousness by keeping her from perceiving her divinity.

In India, this time of rest simply required that a woman was allowed to take a break from her household chores. Over the ages it was perversely twisted and given an “unclean” tag to prohibit a woman from entering the kitchen or a place of worship, a practice that is still followed today, in conservative communities.

We all go through a point in our lives when we have a “love-hate” relationship with our period, especially the women who experience a lot of pain and discomfort. I went through that in my teens, when I was uncomfortable with my feminine self (my mother) and identified more with the masculine (my father).

As I learned to love, appreciate and enjoy my femininity, I came to accept my cycle as perfectly normal, and to view it as a period of cleansing and renewal. I enjoy retreating for a couple of days to catch up on some much-needed rest, take a break from work, catch up on my reading, listen to music, even watch some TV.

Whether women choose to use pills to have fewer periods is a personal choice, made for personal reasons. But, to allow anyone to convince me that my periods are unnecessary, is to deny being a woman. And that’s completely unacceptable to me.

Recommended Reading:

Thanks to Mind-Mart, I came across this book by Dr. Susan Rako that dispels the notions being promoted by corporate medicine in America.

No More Periods?: The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge Issues About Hormones and Women’s Health

Observing the radical shift in the medical community toward menstrual suppression as a viable option in women’s health, Dr. Rako sees not only a vast information gap for women, but a serious health crisis on the horizon. Drug companies and many health professionals are promoting the idea that it is okay, even preferable, for women to forgo their periods if they are not trying to get pregnant, and many women, when faced with the choice, are seriously considering that option. But what isn’t being discussed enough are the hazards of such suppression, risks that include osteoporosis, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

In No More Periods? Dr. Rako delves into the whys, hows, and musts of women’s gynecological health and takes a reasoned stand for believing that nature and our bodies have an intelligence about this critical issue. This book is a call to sanity from a woman who has become known as a devout defender of women’s health rights.

“Tampering with the hormonal climate of healthy menstruating women, including teenage girls whose lives stretch ahead for decades, for the purpose of doing away with their periods is, in a word, reckless. Manipulating women’s hormonal chemistry for the purpose of menstrual suppression threatens to be the largest uncontrolled experiment in the history of medical science. Hands down.

What the media has not conveyed, what the public has not heard, what too few health professionals know, and what every woman and her doctor must know about the hazards of menstrual suppression deserves a voice. I am determined that it will have one.”€Susan Rako, M.D.

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