Are your shoes oppressing you? Your hair? How can a bodily function oppress us? They can't. People oppress us. Saying my period oppresses me is like saying being a woman oppresses me. Menstral cycles, if they symbolize anything, symbolizes fertility and feminitiy.
I heard about women hating thier periods today in the Stuff Mom Never told you podcast from the Howstuffworks podcast suite. This podcast specifically talks about gender relations and women's issues. They had a whole podcast about "how periods are the last taboo". They spoke about birth control that limits periods to 4 times per year. They then went on to talk about how women elect to do this, not because they want to avoid the pain and hassle of a period (like I thought), but because they hate thier periods and what they mean. Apparently periods are nasty thing filled with social implications. Now, this is odd to me. This means that the menstral cycle is no longer an affliction, it is a status that women want to avoid. Those women that I heard about today are misguided. The status they want to avoid is womanhood.
I blame it on the media. Consumer culture makes its money by telling women that they can and should change everything about themselves. We use products and technology to change into our true selves. What exactly do we want to to change into? This new school of thought about abandonment of the menstral cycle gives us the answer. We want to be men.
I heard about women hating thier periods today in the Stuff Mom Never told you podcast from the Howstuffworks podcast suite. This podcast specifically talks about gender relations and women's issues. They had a whole podcast about "how periods are the last taboo". They spoke about birth control that limits periods to 4 times per year. They then went on to talk about how women elect to do this, not because they want to avoid the pain and hassle of a period (like I thought), but because they hate thier periods and what they mean. Apparently periods are nasty thing filled with social implications. Now, this is odd to me. This means that the menstral cycle is no longer an affliction, it is a status that women want to avoid. Those women that I heard about today are misguided. The status they want to avoid is womanhood.
I blame it on the media. Consumer culture makes its money by telling women that they can and should change everything about themselves. We use products and technology to change into our true selves. What exactly do we want to to change into? This new school of thought about abandonment of the menstral cycle gives us the answer. We want to be men.