Periods aren't taboo anymore. Can we please stop talking about them?
For a moment, I thought I might have picked up an old Telegraph by mistake. In a house awash with ancient, yellowing newspapers, it has been known to happen, and there's no way the headline I'm reading can be current. 'Not everyone who menstruates is a woman, says toiletry firm.'
Bunzl – Britain's biggest toiletry supplier – might as well have puffed out its chest and announced: 'the world is flat'. That's how embarrassingly outdated its heroic little outburst is. Because – oh dear, how to put this? – there was a Supreme Court ruling, back in April, that made headlines around the world? No, not ringing any bells? It involved the legal definition of a woman and prompted companies across the UK – big companies, you know, like Barclays – either to implement immediate changes (such as barring transgender women from female bathrooms) or urgently review their wording, approach and practices.
Oblivious, apparently, to any of this, Bunzl has blundered on. As part of a campaign designed to stop the stigma of talking about menstruation, the supplier would like to stress, again, that periods are 'not inherently feminine' (and I want to root out every staff member involved in that phrasing, sit them down, and get them to explain what they think the word 'inherently' means). Bunzl would like to urge us to 'be respectful of everyone's different experiences of their period. We can all empathise with the struggles that come with bleeding, even if they are different for each of us.'
If you think that's a head-scratcher, have a read of the company's new, inclusive language guide, released to promote eco-friendly sanitary products by provider Grace and Green. A few of the common terms to be banished are 'sanitary', 'hygiene' and 'feminine products'. These should be replaced with the blanket term 'period products' – all together now – to avoid offence.
I have an idea: why don't we stop talking about periods in any way, shape or form? Crazy notion, but I'm throwing it out there. Why don't we give the whole country a desperately needed break from menstruation? And while we're there, why not treat ourselves to a little reprieve from the menopause (otherwise known as the stopping of periods)? Because while I realise that dictionary definitions may not be Bunzl's forte, you cannot use the word 'stigma' about something that nobody ever stops talking about.
You cannot pretend that a topic exhaustively covered across the media, a subject people now write bestselling books and Oscar-winning documentaries about, is taboo, outlawed, unmentionable. Periods are now whimsically mentioned by actresses in interviews. Global female music stars like Katy Perry will share what it was like to perform on the first day of her period in award acceptance speeches. Radio talk show hosts will offer up details about their cramps, and, (pet peeve) at any given opportunity, female characters in TV dramas will be shown having their period. How bold! How liberating! How crucial in normalising this long-shamed bodily function!
To campaign for people to talk more about periods is a bit like saying: 'Can we please have a conversation about Meghan Markle?'
While we're discussing the meaning of words, the opposite of 'talking about' something is not 'shaming', 'censoring' or 'silencing'. There are plenty of bodily functions – belonging to each and every gender, no squabbling please – that we choose not to talk about in daily life, largely because it would make for a searingly banal conversation. Do you see anyone trying to start a campaign to get people talking about trapped wind? No. But I'm sure it won't be long.
The American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein came out with some brilliant quotes, but my favourite is this one: 'Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken.' In that single sentence, he captures so much: the narcissism of youth; the hilariously pompous conviction that everyone who came before us was ignorant and misguided – and that we are the only true trailblazers.
One or two generations today seem to think that they invented periods, which no woman I know wants to talk about, no man either, and to suggest that trans people don't have better topics of discussion is, I think, pretty damn patronising. So shall we just go back to talking about sex? At least that was fun.
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