To think people who say "It's just a period, man up"...

[OvariesBeforeBrovaries]

... are twats?

I see this all the time on social media, on forums, hear it in real life and it's driving me crazy! People thinking they're so tough and hard and saying "Ugh why are some women such wimps, it's just a period, no-one needs time off for a period, just man up". Please tell me this isn't a widespread belief and I'm just unlucky to be surrounded by twats who feel this way? They seem utterly incapable of realising that not everyone has a three-day period that they can manage with a medium-flow Lil-Lets and a paracetamol at the most.

Why is it almost always women that say this? And why do they take such pride and triumph in saying this, like "Yes, I've won the Period Olympics, I am Queen of the Periods, look at me!" and treat anyone struggling with period pain/heavy periods/endometriosis/PCOS/severe PMT like they're just wimps?

This seems to come up all the time on feminist groups of all places. Why is this something people get competitive over?!

I think comparison with labour pains is odd also. I had one labour where it was agony for 18 hours and another where it didn't hurt until transition right at the end.

People are twats though, they do it because they think it makes them look good for some reason.

Women on feminist forums are always telling other women to 'man up'?

I'm another who in 30 adult years of various groups, workplaces etc. have never encountered this. Most women tend to be understanding of period issues.

Some people (men and women) are prone to the odd moan, others don't bother. That's generally been my experience.

If we all "manned up" on our periods, we would all lie in bed, wanly asking for cups of tea "oh, and maybe a slice of toast. And a little peanut butter?", while bravely congratulating ourselves for not dying if DH with manflu is anything to go by.

Sorry DH

First I've been trying to find the most recent example but I think it got taken down because it turned into a total bunfight (it was a feminist page on Facebook, dozens of self-proclaimed feminists echoing Nutella's views)

You don't see men competing for who can get up the fastest after a kick in the bollocks

YANBU at all.

I do think, though, that people who have never had period pain and who get really light periods have no idea what it's like and probably find it quite hard to sympathise when all they get is sore boobs once a month.

I've had cramps ever since I got my periods at 13. I was at the nurses' office every month needing painkillers, which I then threw up and got sent home or made to stay in the sick bay all day. In the end, I got sent there with work to do so I could have a hot water bottle etc. and be sick if necessary, but also get on with work. It sucked but I couldn't skip out on school every month. Its improved now I'm an adult but I still get some severe pain and I've been sent home from work before because I've looked so pale and shaky as a result.

But I have every sympathy with bad periods. Some months, my pain is so bad I can't get up because I'm sick or I pass out. I went through a phase of throwing up every month - I couldn't keep painkillers down so there was nothing to do but ride it out.

to everyone who deals with this on a monthly basis.

I can't speak to feminist fora, but (like many of the others on here) I've had all kinds of negative comments from women. Here are some of the most popular flavours:

The Competitive: I had X too, and I managed'
The Oneupwoman: 'Wait until you give birth like I did - I was in labour for three weeks and I lost my bodyweight in blood three times
The Suppressive: 'You're gross! Don't talk about it, ewwwww, I don't want to know'
The Hippyshit:'But periods are NATURAL and NORMAL - they are what makes you a woman'.

I honestly think this stops women 'seeing' each other, listening and recognising one another's problems and experience. In more institutional terms, it contributes to a culture where:

• the average time from symptoms to diagnosis in endometriosis cases is 7 YEARS! (unacceptable!)
• GPs routinely dismiss menorrhagia cases, instead of referring to a specialist for investigation (it took me five years of solid fighting and it wasn't until I was an institutional problem in another sense - because I had to give up my job - that something was done)
• late presentation with more serious symptoms (for fear of 'causing a fuss') and therefore late diagnosis of gynae cancer and
• there is a very poor understanding of the lifestyle implications of heavy bleeding in primary care.
• lack of control by the women most affected of their options and their bodies (which is psychologically, emotionally, sexually and physically harmful).

*YABU... I have PCOS. Very heavy and long periods. Do I stay in bed? No! I get on with it. There are people with disabilities and cancer and all sorts in the world that have to just get on with it everyday. When I hear anyone complain about their period I think they are pathetic and feeble.

Of course I would never say this to the person or write about it on Facebook. But since you have asked that is what I, and I imagine a lot of women, think.*

I assume nutella was just trying to be provocative. I bet there are some women on here who'd rather have cancer, have the treatment and get on with their life, than have 30 years plus of horrible periods. I am not minimising cancer or the nastiness of the treatment, but many cancer sufferers are treated successfully and once it's over it's over. Not so for someone who starts their periods at 13 and finishes them at 53. That's a long time to wait for a normal life to resume.

And it's trite to say it but if men had periods...

But it's true.

They are the kind of idiot that think just because something was easy for them it should be easy for everyone.

Fuck them.
If they were right they'd drive like The Stig.

It's bollocks my period lasts ten day-2 weeks I've tried everything from the marina (which was hell on earth) to the pill. Only thing I can use is the copper coil, but the down side is very heavy , painful bleeding some days I can't move for the back pain, so I understand op!

YADNBU. Drives me fucking ape shit. My periods are utterly horrific, the pain is as bad as labour, I have contractions rather than mild cramps, and my bowels are fucked the week before and week of my period. Oh, and don't forget ovulation pain. And cysts rupturing.

People who have an easy time gyne wise and say things like this are the same as idiots who tell people with depression just to think happy thoughts.

God, the misery I suffered at (an all-girls) school in the 60s being told that it was all in my mind. Not allowed home, disapproving slapped-arse faces. It really felt like one of the circles of hell. Once another girl had a bad time of it and was screaming in sick bay - all I got told (by fellow pupils this time) was that X really did have a problem (unlike me I suppose who must have just been making it up).

Eventually one day my friends went to the head as a sort of deputation and I was allowed home - at which point my mother FINALLY wrote a note to school stating that I should be sent home as soon as I began to menstruate in future.

At age 18 I went on the pill and then had children and after that it seemed to improve, but, like a PP, I now know that what I was going through was just like early to mid-labour pains.

I am incredulous at the difference in my periods since having children. Day 1, I'm a little achey and take ibuprofen, but day 2 and I can contemplate running again. All gone after 4-5 days, after being pretty much normal.

Prior to that, my natural periods could have me curling up in balls on the floor too agonised to seek help. Classroom and filthy stock room floors are not nice places to be. My periods were erratic so I couldn't anticipate when to take my pain relief before the pain escalated rapidly. In an effort to stay in work, I would teach while clutching fluffy hot water bottles.

If it's a choice of repeating the period of Christmas 2006, or my back to back labours, I'll go for the badly aligned baby with a knobbly head. At least that was only 10 hours, and I got gas and air .

If it had been the other way around, I'd have had a hell of a disappointment. Women who have only experienced light, normal periods can find it hard to understand just how invasive painful and heavy periods can be.

(I've been on the recieving end of the pregnancy line as well. 4 months of starving with nausea blending into 5 months of SPD that had me housebound, combined with carpal tunnel that made my hands fairly useless was quite a convincing impression of being ill)

I've no diagnosis, but I can sympathise. I regularly fainted before I had DD. I agree that Labour was easier. I did the first 24 hours of an induced back to back Labour with just a tens machine because it hurt less than any period ever had.

There is hope for you, though: like thecatsmeow the difference since I had her is a shocker. It's still a five day bleed but I manage with just a mooncup and a couple of ibuprofen on day one! I've cousins and friends who say the same, too, so there's something to it!

I have 3 day periods, very regular and have nothing but sympathy for women with long/heavy periods.

I object to the phrase 'man-up' because I think it's true what money say - if men had periods there would be some kind of period leave.

YANBU. I'm lucky that I don't have pain that a couple of paracetamol won't sort out. I have awful flooding though (still leak through a super plus tampon and massive pad). Tranexamic acid helps but I still try and avoid going out or sitting down on anything not wipe clean on my heaviest days.

My periods have been hideously heavy for twenty years. I began at 14 and from day one would vomit every time I started a period, and would end up having time off school through the pain.

Now I'm 34 I've just had my first laparoscopy and am under a great private gynaecologist. I went to the GP so many times it became a joke; I had two Mirenas (both came out by themselves; 10lb babies did some damage it appears), tried almost all the pills the GP could think of, and spent a few months taking Mefenamic acid to see if it eased it. The only reason my GP referred me was because I said we had private insurance; the second he heard that he merrily sat and typed up his little letter.

My haemoglobin levels were incredibly low at my first set of bloods with the gynae, and she's adamant that something needs to be done before I end up much more ill. I've had no time off for my periods from work thinking that it's pretty poor form to try and phone in sick because of it, but I've reached the end of my rope. How anyone can be expected to play and educate and support a class of 26 children whilst flooding clothes 4/5 times a day (even with a moon cup and thickest sanitary towels) is beyond me.

If men went through this, they'd have found a cure by now.

YANBU

As someone who used to regularly have 10-day periods with flooding, hideous pain, vomiting and diarrhoea, and who is still facing fairly serious gynae issues, I simply cannot understand this attitude.

It's a total lack of imagination on the part of other people who someone can't envisage what it is like to be in serious pain and discomfort.

And those sanpro advertisements on the television showing blue blood and women roller skating in tiny shorts help to perpetuate these misunderstandings.

There should be much more provision for, and understanding of, menstruating women in the workplace and generally in the media, but very few people talk about it despite this being the 21st century. It's still a "distasteful" or "shameful" subject somehow.

Outrageous really. Makes my blood boil.

YANBU. I have moderate periods, but I understand that some women have much more serious ones because I listen to other people's experiences and I'm not a twat.

However, can I please nominate the opposite crime for condemnation as well. This is the men who read one woman's grim and unusual experience of pain/flooding and take it upon themselves to mansplain that This Is What Periods Are Like! Unbelievably annoying and actually harmful because as a wise poster said above, in order to get everyone the medical care they need we need to share experiences - and that means talking loudly about the norm as well as the pathological. Teenaged girls need to know that (just giving my experience here) one day of light pre-spotting on a towel, one day of getting through a super tampon every two hours, one day of getting through a super tampon every six hours and one day of light flow on a towel with no more pain than can be shrugged off by an ibuprofen is a point somewhere in the normal range. We need to give women, and HCP the knowledge to know exactly what is "unusually easy", normal, heavy end of normal, very heavy, and definitely requires medical intervention, and to do that we need to say loudly that a) the horror stories are real b) they are not normal and not something you should just have to resign yourself to. Other women are (mostly) not just manning up and getting on with it, they are (mostly) coping fine while you're not because they have it easier than you. Obviously everyone on this thread knows that but I'm not sure everyone out there does.

YANBU
People have different pain thresholds and people have different susceptabilities to different things. We are all different

Some people swing the lead though and that's why there is a lot of scepticism about.

YANBU. I used to have excruciating period pains, it was horrible. On one occasion it was so bad that I called in sick at work, I was told by my male boss to "just take a couple of paracetamol" like I hadn't already done that?? A few times I actually threw up at work because of the pain. It was always a relief if the start of my period fell on a day off as at least I could hide in bed and not have to worry about dragging my carcass in when I could barely function or feeling guilty about calling in sick. I'm sure the added stress of worrying about work and having to function in general every day life made the pain worse.It was fine after day 2, and you wouldn't have thought I'd have been so ill the couple of days previously.

Things improved a lot after having dd1, I still got pain but it was easily managed with ibuprofen or paracetamol. After dd2 I went on the implant so I don't get proper periods (for the time being).

It sucks though, because so many people don't take it seriously. Yes, many women do manage to function perfectly well during their period and that's fantastic for them but some people genuinely suffer with it, that doesn't make them weak, just unlucky.

I have experienced a lifetime of hormonally triggered migraines, throwing up and fainting, flooding and agonising cramping. Only when I moved did I come across a gp who thought this was worth tackling. Since going on nacrez pills and triptan based migraine pills I've gone from 2-3 migraines a month to 3 a year. However I've always worked hard, and given more than I took.

Even so I have at times been frustrated with women playing the period card when it didn't feel like they were genuinely suffering. When someone is flooding or in pain I fully sympathise but when it feels like some women expect special unwarranted treatment just because they have a uterus then I feel cross. It feels like those cry wolves are letting the side down for people who really are suffering.

No different than being cross when people claim they have flu when it's just a cold.

Oh and my period pains pre children were definitely comparable to early/mid labour pains, especially when in labour with dc2. It made me realise how bad my periods used to be and I don't really know how I put up with it. I'm so relieved that I no longer have to experience that sort of pain anymore.

Thing is how can you tell when someone is crying wolf? I was always in excruciating pain for the first couple of days pre children, yet almost nobody picked up on it when at school or work --apart from the time
I nearly vomited in the stock room in a previous job--. I felt rotten, I obviously didn't look it though and if I did tell someone how I was feeling It was minimised and I was made to feel like I was exaggerating.

Not saying some people don't play on it, I'm just not sure how you could know for sure.