I bet this is an iPhone app by now

[khalinche]

Google Calendar should really have a widget that adds an automatically generated, but customisable, menstrual cycle day-tracker. It could have a 28-day overlay counter for those of us who take hormonal contraception or who always have dead-on clockwork 28-day cycles, and a one-click application for everyone else where we could select Day 1 and it

Comments

[simont]

I would not have necessarily made this a public post without having read that.

This post looks friends-locked to me, or am I confused?

[khalinche]

I'm about to edit it, I was just distracted by discussing the idea with a houseguest who immediately said, 'YES! I want one of them!'.

Is this something you could write?

[simont]

Probably not me, I'm afraid; I know nothing about Google Calendar, or iPhone, or any environment that might be a plausible replacement for either one.

(I know precious little about menstruation too, come to think of it :-) though your description makes it sound as if the relevant facts about that can be specified pretty concisely.)

[khalinche]

I think there's both a lot and a little to know about menstruation. The basic facts can be summed up as: most women between the ages of 11ish and 45 ish bleed from their cunt for a few days of every month. The end. As to how it affects different people, cycle length and variability thereof, how it affects you physically and psychologically, what the best way to get blood out of clothes is, there's really no upper limit to the diversity of people's experience and new things to learn. But if you don't actually menstruate, you can probably get through life OK with the former summary.

[simont]

The basic facts can be summed up as:

Well, yes, of course I didn't mean to imply that I didn't even know that :-) I was thinking specifically of points that would be relevant to this application, so the important bits would be about the distribution and variability of cycle lengths, with particular reference to how feasible it would be to predict future cycles for a specific woman given historical data from the same woman.

[khalinche]

I think most people's cycles are between 20 and 30 days long, although some people have very erratic ones and some people have clockwork-regular ones. It would be useful to be able to customise cycle length, to allow for that. The awkward part is the way that you don't actually know how long your cycle is until it finishes.

There *must* be data available in medical journals about variability of cycle length among given populations. I think it would be more practical to let people set their own expected/default length, though. I had something very simple in mind, just an application that, when I designated a day 'Day 1' would automatically number every day that followed it up to 28 and then revert to a manually-chosen Day 1 again.

[lovingboth]

There is data. The other people who will have loads of it will be the lot behind Persona.

[robert_jones]

Hmm. I don't want to stick my oar in where it may not be wanted, but I think you're repeating a 'this is all men need know about menstruation' meme from embarassed biology teachers. If men only know that, they get a bit confused when they meet women who (i) don't menstruate, (ii) menstruate for more than a few days or (iii) menstruate irregularly. All of which come up quite often.

[ultraruby]

Aye, very true. And the basic 'this is the biology that happens' stuff doesn't allow for any of the emotional/cultural stuff around menstruation either, which as I've grown older I've realised I wish I'd known more about earlier on. It also doesn't draw the (in my view quite important) link between menstruation and sexuality - by which I mean, the hormones that have to do with periods also affect whether a woman feels like having sex or not. Rather than a simple process happening once a month menstruation is a whole system of interelating symptoms, feelings, concerns etc that goes on an on, sometimes cyclically, sometimes less so, over time. I think both men and women deserve to know about it, whether or not they have periods and whether or not they want to have (or not have) children, simply because it's an interesting and important element of how the human species works.

[khalinche]

Mm, these are good points.

I think I was trying to jump on the demystifying-menstruation bus by dismissing the biological stuff as basic in order to open up a discussion about the cultural stuff, and I got it wrong and ended up saying, 'That's all you need to know, just leave us womens to get on with it', which was not what I meant to do.

[robert_jones]

I agree completely with everything you've said.

[khalinche]

I do think it's an important thing to talk about widely, and I expressed myself badly in saying, 'you can probably get through life OK with the (bare facts) if you don't actually menstruate'. That doesn't mean that I don't think lengthier and wider discussons of menstruation and its role in human life aren't worth having, more that the basic facts are very basic and the possible discussion from there is almost unlimited.

[khalinche]

Well, yes, I am being a bit 'this is all you need to know, son! *hearty backslap, puffs on pipe*', aren't I? The point I'm trying to make is that there is a great deal to know about the many causes, effects and guises of menstruation: that sometimes it's irregular in terms of timing or flow, that some women menstruate more or less according to loads of different factors, oh, all the thousands of things that come up because, curiously for something which is identified as a universal and common-ground-building experience, menstruation is something which is experienced wildly variably. I suppose I'm trying to say, 'look, there is an awful lot you *could* learn about this, but for the meantime, the only commonality is xyz'. And you'll notice that I said 'most women', not all, and that we bleed for a few days a month - I didn't say consecutively. I think if you are not the menstruator, then it's as well to build up your understanding on a case-by-case basis because you are only dealing with it indirectly and don't need the same amount of