My friend Ben told me how, in a house of three boys, his mum would stealthily hide her box of tampons to avoid questioning from her sons. Other male friends remember being separated from the girls in their class to be taught sex education, or being left in complete bewilderment when the “time of the month” or “PMS” was mentioned in teenage conversation. A male friend at university told me: “The thing is with periods, you don’t even know what you don’t know.” The world of menstruation is often a mystery to those who haven’t experienced it. A big, red secret that half the world’s population endure while the other half remain in blissful ignorance. That cultural taboo needs to change.
At school, I was taught to slip a tampon up my sleeve when going to the toilet, and conditioned to speak in hushed tones when asking friends if they had a spare pad. We have been socialised into thinking that periods are, exclusively, a “female” issue; this perpetuates the idea that they don’t, and won’t, ever affect men – which is particularly stigmatising for trans men, who menstruate, and serves to exclude all men from menstrual conversation.
Starting in primary school, boys should be taught about periods. Currently limited to the biological intricacies of the menstrual cycle, the school curriculum must extend to acknowledge the everyday implications of periods. Boys need to be taught about the pain, stress, mood swings and hormones. The sudden bloating, chocolate binges and inexplicable tears. Indirectly, periods will affect them too, and, for too long they’ve been left out of the conversation.
Encouraging the next generation to view periods as a natural physical process, rather than a source of shame and embarrassment, is vital to build a more equal society. If men don’t know about periods, how can they take period poverty or the tampon tax seriously, or even sympathise with someone in pain once a month? It should be no surprise that one in five young women aged between 14 and 21 have been bullied about their periods. The taboo around periods is a form of misogyny, emblematic of the broader subordination of women. Not talking to boys and men about our periods means a quiet subservience, allowing separate, gendered spheres to exist, which validates the idea that anything outside the cis-male experience is abnormal.
Things are changing. We’ve certainly come a long way since 2015, when MP Bill Cash struggled to utter the word “tampon” in parliament. The #FreePeriods protest in December 2017 had groups of teenage boys, wearing red T-shirts, waving banners and singing, “You’ll never bleed alone”. Bloody Good Period’s fantastic new podcast, Stay in the Room, features Gabby Edlin talking to men about their perception of the period. TV shows such as Fleabag and Chewing Gum have mined menstruation for comic gold. March’s spring statement included a pledge that the government would provide funding for free menstrual products in secondary schools and colleges in England.
Periods are now being discussed, unashamedly, in our political and cultural institutions. But we need to make sure that is also happening in our everyday conversations. The next generation of boys need to be taught that periods are not taboo. We don’t need euphemisms: menstruation must be a normal topic of conversation for everyone, regardless of their gender.