I never understood the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that half of all people have.
The stigma is almost certainly connected to misogyny. By stigmatising the bodily functions of most women, you stigmatise them.
How period trackers have changed girl culture
11–20 of 109 posts
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#12I never understood the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that half of all people have.
I agree completely. Personally, I don't recall ever witnessing this stigma, apart from the general disinterest in this topic. Having said that, I don't understand the current movement of glorifying and promoting menstruation (e.g. [1], [2]). Sure, it's natural, but it's also rather yucky - just like shitting and pissing. But I'd still appreciate if I don't see photos of shit, menstruation, or sperm on my Facebook. [1…
I am from Brazil, I had never heard of a taboo in the open, but after I started to have long term girlfriends, all of them tried to not use the word "menses" in Portuguese, from methods that I think are stupid (writing only "m" instead) to the outright infuriating (using ambiguous and hard to understand euphemisms), it annoyed me a lot, and I argued with all of them about it, never worked, they never explained that behavior and continued it.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#13A bit click-baity title since the product's USP is not even mentioned: When to have unprotected intercourse with a 'lower' probability of getting pregnant EDIT: Thanks for the downvote, please elaborate
That is explicitly mentioned in the article.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#14A bit click-baity title since the product's USP is not even mentioned: When to have unprotected intercourse with a 'lower' probability of getting pregnant EDIT: Thanks for the downvote, please elaborate
Apparently you didn't read the article (It was not me who downvoted you, though). It's mentioned there that most apps come with a fat warning that it's absolutely not reliable.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#15I never understood the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that half of all people have.
It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that almost all of people have, which is defecation. Operationally speaking, the two are very similar. So, why is there a stigma behind defecation?
Why is there a stronger stigma behind menstruation, though?
In many societies, people who had recently menstruated were seen as "unclean", yet defecation did not have the same stigma.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#16To someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s like me, this seems like a strange regression in some ways. The overwhelming majority of girls were on the pill pretty much when they became sexually active, and when I look at my age group right now, that's still the case to this day. The pill was considered normal, safe, and liberating. Many said their menstrual problems were greatly reduced, and of course there was a completely reliable schedule that came with it.
Just two decades ago, period trackers would not have been all that useful to most people. That's a big culture shift.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#17I never understood the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that half of all people have.
I understand what you're trying to say about patriarchy, and it's a problem, but that said...
I and 100% of people have a few completely natural and necessary processes that we go through on a pretty much daily basis that are so stigmatized they have a special room in our houses dedicated to making sure we can do them in private. I'm talking about defecating and urinating.
Can you imagine if--once a month, like clockwork--you got really bad IBS and couldn't help but visibly leak diarrhea into your pants? Would you celebrate "I have monthly track marks", or would you develop coping mechanisms to try to hide it?
And before anyone complains about "you can't compare pooping and having a period", uh, poo is brown because it's mostly dead red blood cells. It is a process for expelling material my body can no longer use. About as comparable as apples and oranges, which is to say, fairly comparable, because they're both sweet, round fruits that grow on trees and contain their own seeds.
We generally don't share the details of what we do with our bodily fluids with other people. I mean, we call public toilets "restrooms" because we can't bring ourselves to admit to what is going on in there.
Should our culture be so prudish about bodily functions? I don't know, but that is certainly the case as of right now. And it's applied pretty evenly, regardless of sex. So I would say it's easily "understandable".
[0] I usually leave sweating and fatigued, so I don't know how much "rest" I'm receiving in there. Suppose I need to lay off the Chipotle. Which brings up another point, severe abdominal cramping isn't unique to menstruation, either.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#18To someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s like me, this seems like a strange regression in some ways. The overwhelming majority of girls were on the pill pretty much when they became sexually active, and when I look at my age group right now, that's still the case to this day. The pill was considered normal, safe, and liberating. Many said their menstrual problems were greatly reduced, and of course there was a compl…
You think it's a good think that the majority of women were resorting to a drug to cope with a normal healthy body function?
I think it's good if more women are able to cope without the drugs.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that almost all of people have, which is defecation. Operationally speaking, the two are very similar. So, why is there a stigma behind defecation?
Why is there a stronger stigma behind menstruation, though? In many societies, people who had recently menstruated were seen as "unclean", yet defecation did not have the same stigma.
I think that's not entirely correct. In those same societies, the left hand is considered "unclean" because of its association with wiping.
Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture
#20I never understood the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that half of all people have.
It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary process that almost all of people have, which is defecation. Operationally speaking, the two are very similar. So, why is there a stigma behind defecation?
I don’t know about operational speaking, but epedemiologically speaking, the two are very different.
One of them is associated with e. coli, a lethal bacterium that even in modern times and developed nations kills people on a regular basis, e.g. Walkerton, Ontario, where seven people were killed by improperly treated drinking water in 2000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak
It’s easy to see why humans have developed behaviours and social stigma around defecation.
Menstruation is very different. Our social behaviours around it may have more to do with our social behaviours around genders, sexual availability, and other stuff. I’m not an anthropologist, so I’ll just stop here before I dig a hole for myself.
I’ll just note that the two are very unlike in very important ways.