Did You Hear About The Girl Who . . . ?: Contemporary Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality

Chapter 4: Lesbians Don't Have Periods and Other Menstrual Folklore

4 LESBIANS DON’T HAVE PERIODS AND OTHER MENSTRUAL FOLKLORE ❏ Many young women have their first formal education about menstruation in elementary or middle school as part of puberty education. This may range from a short one-time session, perhaps featuring a video produced by a manufacturer of “feminine hygiene” products (the term itself indicates that menstruation is seen as unclean), to much more comprehensive programs integrated into the curriculum throughout the year. The classes are sometimes for girls only, to reduce the risk of giggling and to increase the likelihood that the students will feel comfortable asking questions. Sometimes the classes are co-educational, where changes during puberty for both males and females are discussed openly. There are wide variations in how explicit these classes are; for example, girls leave some classes still wondering where the tampon actually goes, not having quite worked out the separation of the urethral opening from the vaginal opening. Sometimes the class is taught by a school nurse; even though the nurse may be an excellent teacher, the message is that the topic is one that requires an expert—your own regular teacher can’t deal with it either because it is too technical or too 43 sensitive. The decisions about who teaches, including the gender of the teacher, whether the class is co-ed or not, and how the topic is approached all have effects on how the material is perceived by the students . One recommendation is that a man and woman team teach and, in order to model the comfort the students should have in dealing with these issues, she should field questions about nocturnal emissions and erections while he responds to questions about tampons and menstrual flow. (It should be noted that there is usually a double standard in puberty education: Boys learn about issues related to sexuality—wet dreams and erections—while girls learn about issues related to reproduction , that is, focusing on the menstrual cycle.) Unfortunately, many girls may have begun to menstruate before they get to take a class, which means that they have to face their first period (menarche) with only informal knowledge, from peers, older sisters, mothers. The film Carrie contains one of the most dramatic fictional representations of a girl beginning menstruation without information. When Carrie begins her period in the shower after gym class, she panics because she thinks she is bleeding to death. In response, her sadistic classmates pelt her with sanitary napkins. While most girls don’t have such traumatic experiences (and don’t proceed to destroy their school and kill classmates in response), many have had negative and embarrassing experiences because of lack of timely information. Just as it is problematic in terms of health education to assume that the “average” menstrual cycle is 28 days, it is also inappropriate to focus only on the average age of first menses, given that there is a wide range of normal starting ages. Girls who started menstruating in fifth grade complain that elementary schools don’t have pad and tampon vending machines in the girls’ bathrooms. It also should be noted that technically menarche , the first menstrual period, signals the completion of puberty, which means that puberty education about changes in the body is likely to occur well after many changes have been noticed. Boys are even less likely to receive puberty education that helps them understand menstruation , and they may be even more embarrassed to ask their quesLESBIANS DON’T HAVE PERIODS 44 tions. While a parent may sit down with a boy and explain the changes he will experience during puberty, changes that girls experience, especially menstruation, are unlikely to be part of that discussion. Knowledge boys share with their peers about menstruation is generally conveyed in the form of jokes, which can serve as tests of who is clued in enough to “get it” and also who can be the “grossest” (see the jokes later in this chapter), but also leave the less informed the difficult task of sifting through to find the information they need. If a measure of men’s comfort with menstruation is their willingness to buy menstrual products and/or their understanding of the differences among these products, then most young men would fail these tests. Whether or not they have formal education, young women often depend on beliefs about menstruation for advice and warnings. For example , these are some beliefs women and adolescent...