(no subject)
Im new here :) I had my very first university class ever today. Women studies 100! Yea Im a women studies major :) how exciting. anyway:
is anyone else embarassed about there bleeding?
The other day I had menstrual packaging on the floor. Later my boyfriend and I returned to my room. I was going to show him my new diva cup but the packaging was nowhere to be found. It was buried underneath trash in my garbage. I stormed downstairs to ask my mother: ‘why are you going through my stuff?’ To which she replied, ‘You have a boy in your room! That’s gross Ally; you shouldn’t have that stuff lying around. You should be embarrassed’. I was shocked. Did she really just say that? Id really like to believe that she’s old fashioned but I see this way of thinking more and more.
Girls are taught that our periods are something dirty, something to never mention to a boy, there a secret, we should be ashamed, etc. I remember the day I got my period. I was so embarrassed I had to write my mother a note about it and she wrote me a note back. Now that I am older I disagree with this shame. It is a completely natural occurrence. It shows that we are healthy and able to make babies. Germaine Greer simplified the horrific things we do to our vaginas. In her book the whole woman she said, ‘the sanitized, the deodorized, sterilized, always accessible vagina and womb are more, not less, passive then they ever were.’
We have given in too so many different demands. Feminism has not come as far as we would like to believe. We have a long way to go.
She also said, ‘ if men flee the female, we will survive, but if women themselves treat femaleness as a disease we are lost indeed.’
And I truly think that by sanitizing, deodorizing and sterilizing we are treating our femininity as a disease. We don’t just stop there in our culture. We also hate fat woman, woman with ugly hair, woman with body odor, woman with too many blemishes, woman with crooked teeth, not white enough teeth, too short, too tall, and too skinny. And then the woman who is too fat hates the woman who is too skinny, too blonde, or too perfect.
What happens to all the women who don’t fit within the small definition of what female is? It’s too hard to live within such a small definition.
We need to praise our woman relationships, women abilities and biological abilities too. If we perceive them positively we will be on the right track.
is anyone else embarassed about there bleeding?
The other day I had menstrual packaging on the floor. Later my boyfriend and I returned to my room. I was going to show him my new diva cup but the packaging was nowhere to be found. It was buried underneath trash in my garbage. I stormed downstairs to ask my mother: ‘why are you going through my stuff?’ To which she replied, ‘You have a boy in your room! That’s gross Ally; you shouldn’t have that stuff lying around. You should be embarrassed’. I was shocked. Did she really just say that? Id really like to believe that she’s old fashioned but I see this way of thinking more and more.
Girls are taught that our periods are something dirty, something to never mention to a boy, there a secret, we should be ashamed, etc. I remember the day I got my period. I was so embarrassed I had to write my mother a note about it and she wrote me a note back. Now that I am older I disagree with this shame. It is a completely natural occurrence. It shows that we are healthy and able to make babies. Germaine Greer simplified the horrific things we do to our vaginas. In her book the whole woman she said, ‘the sanitized, the deodorized, sterilized, always accessible vagina and womb are more, not less, passive then they ever were.’
We have given in too so many different demands. Feminism has not come as far as we would like to believe. We have a long way to go.
She also said, ‘ if men flee the female, we will survive, but if women themselves treat femaleness as a disease we are lost indeed.’
And I truly think that by sanitizing, deodorizing and sterilizing we are treating our femininity as a disease. We don’t just stop there in our culture. We also hate fat woman, woman with ugly hair, woman with body odor, woman with too many blemishes, woman with crooked teeth, not white enough teeth, too short, too tall, and too skinny. And then the woman who is too fat hates the woman who is too skinny, too blonde, or too perfect.
What happens to all the women who don’t fit within the small definition of what female is? It’s too hard to live within such a small definition.
We need to praise our woman relationships, women abilities and biological abilities too. If we perceive them positively we will be on the right track.