Keep your knees together

“You have your first period and now you’re a woman.” Have you ever heard that?

Even today a lot of girls hear that phrase. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately?

This is usually the first time menstruation is stereotyped. And the message itself is not only incomprehensible to the girl, it can also be harmful.

Why?

Because a menstruating 12-year-old is not a woman, she’s a child who’s on her period! This is even more true in the case of a prematurely menstruating nine-year-old. Parents tend to treat menstruating children as more mature than they are. In their eyes, bleeding turns a teenager into a woman overnight. So they introduce restrictions: “Now you need to be looked after or you’ll end up pregnant,” at the same time making demands that – as they understand them – are connected with femininity. “Don’t curse, don’t show that you’re angry. When you sit down, keep your knees together”, even though until yesterday you were a sweet little rogue climbing trees with the boys. Now, you’re a little woman.

A 12-year-old also hears: if she is a woman, she is no longer a child.

And she understands that she should behave like an adult from now on, even though she has no social or emotional competence to do so. In some homes, it is also the moment at which parents pass on all their beliefs about femininity to the girl: “Now you will see what it means to be a woman: bleeding every month, then giving birth, pain. Until you’re 50 anyway.” We are treating a biological fact, which is only a sign of proper development, like a boundary beyond which “the great female ordeal” begins.

Do we react differently when our son grows his first moustache?

Sometimes boys also hear: “You’re a man, so you must be self-reliant, you’re on your own”. And yet a 14-year-old is not self-reliant and such a message takes away his sense of security. There is also a more brutal option: “You’ll see what it means to be a man, everything will be your responsibility, you will have to support your family and make all the difficult life choices yourself”. That’s not easy either. But we tend to knock the stuffing out of girls more often, because the moment a parent feels that the time has come to say it is very pronounced in itself.

A parent? Isn’t it most often the mother?

There are three types of sexual education in Polish homes. One is more common than the other two. Sexual education that is very open and supportive or sexual education that is very restrictive, in which sexuality is not mentioned at all, have been insubstantial for years. The one that dominates in scientific literature is described as being “based on openness and interaction within one gender”. This means that sex education takes place between people of the same gender. Girls talk to their mums, boys talk to their dads. A mother-son combination is acceptable, but it rarely occurs the other way around.

This approach has one big flaw: what the parents pass on to their children is not knowledge, but their experiences. If a mother suffers from a lot of menstrual ailments, she tells her daughter that menstruation means pain in the spine, head and breasts, that it makes a person feel drained, and the girl anticipates her first menstruation as if it were divine punishment. But all this may not apply to her.

But it is often said that in informal education the exchange of experiences is more valuable than encyclopaedic knowledge.

Sure, but it doesn’t apply to sexuality! In this matter, when we talk about our feelings, we convey our attitudes and preferences. And menstruation is a biological fact. It should be treated that way. It’s not like it’s unbearable for everyone. Some of us barely notice we’re on our periods.

But I don’t know anyone who likes their periods.

What’s there to like? It’s a vicious circle: we can’t even say the phrase “I like menstruation” because we live in a world where it’s still a taboo subject and since we don’t like it and we don’t talk about it openly, we’re only contributing to keeping it inside the taboo zone. And it is this taboo that causes inequality, both in school, at home and, later, in professional life.

Who does this taboo apply to?

Both to youngsters and to adults. Teenage girls secretly pull sanitary pads out of their backpacks. I myself haven’t yet marched down the university hall with a tampon in my hand. The size of this taboo is illustrated by the reactions to advertisements of hygienic products for women. Do you remember petitions not to broadcast them at lunch time? And yet, for half of Polish society, menstruation is something they experience every month.

This taboo was created in the old days, when menstruation was associated with a woman’s impurity, which was sustained and strengthened by numerous religious systems. In orthodox Judaism, a woman must ritually purify herself after a period to this day.

I guess this has simmered down a bit in Catholicism.

I wouldn’t be so optimistic. It’s still a religion of men.

In general, menstruation is taboo because we live in an androcentric culture, in which values associated with masculinity are privileged. That’s why these elements of magical thinking, circling around the impurity of menstruating women, are still doing so well.

According to Kulczyk Foundation’s report, menstruation is a big problem for teenage girls at school.

It’s the 21st century and sometimes schools don’t even provide toilet paper in the toilets, let alone sanitary pads and tampons. In Scandinavia it’s a standard. After all, it’s normal that you can forget to take sanitary pads with you and an irregular period can surprise you.

In a school in which periods are never discussed or are discussed only with girls, open-access to sanitary pads would cause quite the stir.

They would probably be flying all over the corridors for the first month, but with time students would get used to them and start treating them like every-day objects. You have to start somewhere and a stir may be just the way to go. But it could probably be avoided if Sex Ed classes were reliable. Unfortunately, if menstruation is discussed in class at all, then it is only with girls and only in general terms. And yet boys live in societies so they will have contact with menstruating women. Moreover, most of them are heterosexual so they will have contact with their menstruating partners. We introduce taboos already at the educational level. Their knowledge about menstruation is information about the experiences of the women close to them. If their partner “bleeds out every month”, they think that all women suffer. If the partner has no discomfort, they claim that those who complain are being hysterical. Many of them learn from the Internet, which is filled with myths and stereotypes.

Which myths and stereotypes are the most common?

Among teenage girls, the most popular myth is that you can’t get pregnant during your period. But in all generations, the belief that menstruation is something we have to hide is very strong. And that if the sanitary pad shifts and there’s a red stain on my trousers, it’ll be the embarrassment of the year. In the United States, blood-absorbing underwear that can be worn without sanitary pads are a hit. Polish reactions? “No way! I’d be scared that they would leak, that I would have a stain, that someone would notice that I’m menstruating”, women write on forums. For similar reasons, we are reluctant to use menstrual cups. Because of the taboo that we must hide any signs of menstruation, women in Poland do not reach for modern hygiene devices. And all that it takes is to neutralise this fear: if your clothes get stained, you wash them. End of story.

However, what concerns me the most are the stereotypes associated with PMS.

What stereotypes?

The fundamental ones! There are a lot of menstrual ailments that involve our physiology, but none involving our emotional or mental health. This was demonstrated as early as the end of the 1980s through thorough research using reliable methodology. Mood changes are only a simple reaction to pain or physical strain. And yet we like to explain mood variation with premenstrual tension and thus allow ourselves less control. It’s nice and quite convenient to believe in PMS, but it’s a two-edged sword willingly used by men: “She’s being hysterical because she’s about to have her period”. All these myths and stereotypes cause unequal treatment, which often starts as early as adolescence.

How?

I know households in which a brother is favoured because he’s not burdened with his physiology. But people might also overdo it the other way. There are families in which the duties of a girl are taken over by her brother during her period. I doubt that giving extra privileges is the right way to go. I’m not talking about situations in which a teenage girl is racked with pain. But if menstruation isn’t a physical problem for her, then I see no reason to treat her differently. We turn menstruation into a mystical event when we treat it as a moment in which life withers. And the girl will soon find out that she can have her period during a test, a school-leaving exam, a big date. And she won’t quit her job because of that either.

That’s why I’m not a big fan of quitting gym just because a girl has her period. A good reason would be painful cramps, not menstruation itself. We’re not doing ourselves any favours by opting out of activities while expecting menstruation to be treated as something perfectly normal.

But some women would even like to have “menstrual leave”.

Some companies are introducing them. And it’s not always a whim. Where women do physical, hard work in difficult conditions, it makes sense. But mostly, it doesn’t. A reason for a woman to take days off or sick leave is having painful cramps or a massive headache, not just menstruating. Besides, some women are not only ashamed, but even afraid to talk about symptoms so as not to be treated as second-class employees. They think: “We are lesser employees anyway because we get pregnant. And it’s not like you can’t hide that”. In our pursuit of equality, we have learned to carefully hide symptoms of femininity. And I encourage you not to act like a princess for a few days a month, but to live by the principle: “Different, but equal”. And to allow yourself to be less effective during periods if you’re in pain.

For many of us it is hard to even imagine telling our boss: “I’m not feeling well today, I’m on my period, be understanding”.

It depends on our openness to talk about physiology. If I don’t have a problem saying, “I’m sorry, boss, I’m less effective today because I have a stomach ache”, there’s no reason not to say: “I’ve just started my period, my 100% today is lower than it was yesterday”.

Aleksandra Lewińska interviews Magdalena Grabowska

• Magdalena Grabowska – psychologist, sex therapist and lecturer at the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz.

An interview was published in "Magazyn Świąteczny” of "Gazeta Wyborcza” from 23-24 May 2020