The bogus presumptions about menstruating women are tragically not confined to the history books — namely that we are weak, dirty, unhinged, less than and just different. At the heart of this lingering stigma is the idea that we are unequal to our male counterparts. Women then ingest these views and appropriate them as our own, inflicting wounds on ourselves and other women — and girls — around us. And by keeping periods unmentionable, women become unwitting accomplices in perpetuating these myths.

Men have periods, too... they just don´t bleed.

I instigated the conversation around period shame and period stigma with men and boys asserting further that, period shaming starts with the man and the boy, because they have been brought up to believe that if a woman happens to have a stain, it’s an appropriate response to laugh at, or castigate her – and then the woman has been taught that they need to go into hiding. That’s the unlearning that we need to do.

Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient — negatively — or more independent — positively — than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career. They are less agreeable (agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression,172 at least after both sexes hit puberty.173 Boys’ interests tilt towards things; girls’ interests tilt towards people.174 Strikingly, these differences, strongly influenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinavian societies where gender-equality has been pushed hardest: this is the opposite of what would be expected by those who insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn’t. This isn’t a debate. The data are in.

My experience of periods is extreme because of my endometriosis. But while most women don't have a specific condition, they still often feel grim at that time of the month, require painkillers, need to access the loo more often and may suffer headaches, backache, sweatier brows and the squits.

…gender is cultural: we have menarche to deal with, virginity, menopause, pregnancy, childbirth; these things are unavoidable. And in some places they've been wise enough to have ritual and ceremony about significant events. It is unfortunate in our culture-meaning north American mainstream culture—that all this has been minimized to the point where little girls are even afraid to say that they are starting to menstruate when they should be very happy. Grown women are afraid to say that they are approaching the menopause, when that means that they have lived a whole successful life. They've lived so long that they can have this…

Even though Women and men are equal we are different from the moment of birth to the onset of menstruation the rite of passage the challenges of pregnancy and childbirth mother hood menopause these are issues that affect us very differently from the other gender the list is actually endless.

I have never understood why menstruation is spoken of like a secret. She recalled being excited as a teenager to finally have her first period after being the last among her peers to get the mark of womanhood.

Menstruation is a wild process that should captivate and delight. It offers up so many lessons in terms of how we understand bodily autonomy, sexual selection, even tissue engineering. It is strange, then, that instead of being something so fundamental to science education as Mendel's peas or dinosaur bones or the planets of our solar system, it gets at best a brief mention in health class.

I was ten. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue, so...I ignored it for a few hours.

A third belief about males has both descriptive and normative forms. It is the belief that males are, or at least should be, tough. They are thought to be able to endure pain and other hardships better than women. Whether or not they do take pain and other hardships “like a man,” it is certainly thought that they should. When it is said that they should take pain and hardships “like a man,” the word “man” clearly means more than “adult male human,” but rather one who stoically, unflinchingly bears whatever pain or suffering he experiences, including that which is inflicted on him precisely because he is a “man.” This is true even when he is not a man, but rather a boy. Boys are taught early that they must act like men. Crying, they are told, is what girls do. They are discouraged from expressing hurt, sadness, fear, disappointment, insecurity, embarrassment and other such emotions. It is because males are thought to be and are expected to be tough that they may be treated more harshly. Thus, corporal punishment and various other forms of harshness may be inflicted on them but often not on females, who are purportedly more sensitive.

The intermediate one was the first time I studied with men and of course the men who were discouraging us. All the time they would say that you are a girl and you can’t make it. They would just be surprised to see that you’ve made it

Between ages thirteen and sixteen, boys show a temporary decline in empathy on a biological level—a decline not suffered by girls.

A girl who is absent from school due to menstruation for four days every month loses at least 40 learning days, the equivalent of six weeks of learning, per year. It’s like not going to school for half of a school term. Equity in education can therefore not be achieved under such a scenario.” She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods. She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods...
It will also address issues to do with period shaming, as girls are often laughed at when they spoil their school uniform or the school chair, or when walking awkwardly due to use of improper and inconvenient menstrual absorbents such as rags, cow dung, you name it... From our estimates, we might be actually looking at a number of 550,000 schoolgirls at most, both in urban and rural schools, that need sanitary wear, which translates to a sanitary wear per capita of ZWL $363 (US$22.6). This means that the allocated money is adequate to cater for all schoolgirls who menstruate, in both urban and rural areas.