The Moon Inside You - has changed my view of feminism...think I had it all wrong!

[FlamingoBingo]

Has anyone else seen this amazing documentary about menstruation, in which a man clearly says that the suppression of women has been possible by doing whatever possible to hide from them the power of menstruation, and their incredible potential for connection with nature.

It follows that celebrating our very womanness, and encouraging all other women to do the same, to reawaken ourselves to the power of being a woman...I'm not expressing myself very well here...I used to think that the pill was an amazing invention, and helped women immensely, but I can see now it's actually done a lot of harm.

They interviewed the inventor of the contraceptive implant - OMG what a misogynist prick! And the ignorance surrounding periods!

And today I went along to a devotional chanting session, aimed at honouring the feminine divine - many spiritual leaders (e.g. the Dalai Lama) are saying things along the lines that we need to focus on reconnecting with the feminine because we've been 'ruled' by the masculine for too long and the imbalance is what's damaging the whole world so badly.

I'd be really interested to hear other feminists' thoughts on all of this...

[WidowWadman]

Flamingo - If something is supported by evidence, it ceases to be woo. So, no, something can't be woo and right at the same time. It's not open-minded to subscribe to an esoteric myth unthinkingly just because it appeals - open-mindedness means examining it critically, and the power of menstruation, I'm afraid, doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If you want to use your menstrual blood as a fertiliser, all the power to you, but you can also use any other blood. It's not the menstruationy bit which makes it powerful.

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to watch my cycles for a few months, as I've given up on them - I found them inconveniencing and debilitating rather than empowering. If you've got the time to reflect and enjoy your "quiet time" every 3 weeks or so, great for you, personally I prefer not to have my life interrupted on such a frequent basis, just because of my gonads.

The idea that you're getting wise and awake, just because your body sheds endometrium on a regular basis is esoteric bullshit from a time where science wasn't able yet to explain what happened to our bodies.

The idea that menstruation is life giving, when the menstruation actually is a sign that fertilisation/implantation hasn't succeeded is ludicrous. You could also say that sperm is lifegiving, but weirdly nobody is trying to claim that every wank is an epiphany, despite living in a patriarchy.

I'd rather celebrate education than menstruation as a way of achieving wisdom.

[WidowWadman]

Btw the celebrating of menstruation as something powerful and wisdom generating is in a way no different from denigrating it as unclean - it's both taking a normal bodily function and trying to make it into something else rather than looking at it as what it is.

[TheLightPassenger]

If this approach towards menstruation makes sense to you and empowers you, then great. But it doesn't really resonate with me, and like Warren, I am a bit irked at the thought of agonising period pain being due to not being quite good enough at being a woman. I am more in the Widow Wadman "bodily function" camp on this issue.

[habbibu]

Well, I don't get particularly painful periods or bad PMS, but I genuinely don't like the way my mind works when I do have PMS. I feel dithery, unfocused, unable to settle to anything, and in fact quite uncreative. PMS and menstruating to me is the end of the cycle. I feel far more "firing on all cylinders" mid-cycle, prob around ovulation, which makes just as much sense to me.

I think it's a bit like people who say labour/childbirth hurts "because you're scared" - while I know that you can use your mind to reduce pain, putting it the first way round is annoying.

[habbibu]

Also, men are mostly made of water. Proportionally, they're probably more aqueous than women. So why are they not subject to lunar cycles?

[Nyac]

I got rid of PMT by paying attention to the feelings and realising that they were grounded in reality not hormones. The hormonal cycle just brought them to the surface.

I like the idea of women being more in touch with our bodies, but I'm not sure about saying that everything about us is dictated by them.

[FlamingoBingo]

Nyac - that's exactly the point - your Hormones bring to the surface feelings tha are really there, which enables us to deal with them.

[WidowWadman]

Nyac - some truth in there. Dismissing a woman's anger at something as purely hormonal is very wrong.

That said, I know from myself that hormones make me sometimes blow things out of proportion, and using artificial hormones, for example, help me control that. They don't make me put up with more crap, though.

In the same way that Anti-Ds and therapy helped me overcoming quite debilitating depression. Not that I try to say that PMT is the same as depression. But, hormones can have an influence on brain chemistry, and if you use that approach to help someone cope with mood swings, than that's a good thing.

Claiming that instead you just need to "be more in touch with your bodies" and it all will be magically fine, to me sounds a bit like saying that depressed people just need to pull themselves together. (This is more a general observation on this thread, not all directed at Nyac - I largely agree with her, just trying to expand on that thought)

Also, this thread reminded me of this regretsy posting on menarche jewellery.

[FlamingoBingo]

Oh, and ps. Woo stuff keeps being proven by science, so daft to dismiss anything just because it's not proven yet. Science isn't infallible.

[FlamingoBingo]

Widow - that's not what I said, so not sure why you're suggesting it is.

[WidowWadman]

If something is proven by science, it's not woo. I have not seen any scientific evidence for chanting and feminine divinity ideas doing any good. Your idea of what science is or does seems fairly hazy.

I find the whole "reconnecting with femininity" lark and reducing women to their reproductive organs utterly misogynistic in itself.

[habbibu]

But it's not just as if hormones are released at that point in the cycle. That's the end of the process. And while pm hormones don't create the feelings, I don't buy the argument that they are necessarily clearer in that period.

[Nyac]

I don't know about anybody else but mine were.

Also Sonia Johnson, the radical feminist, who started off in the Mormon church, said that every month when she had PMT, she could see she was being oppressed by her marriage and her church and was in a rage about it, and it was that that helped her see what her life was really like.

So obviously there's a few women where these things are true. If a woman is suffering from PMT I'd definitely be asking her what was bugging her at the time.

I agree with the film that we are cut off from nature and our selves and it's a good idea to reconnect. Not arguing that that will change everything, but it might improve a few people's lives.

[FlamingoBingo]

To me, it's also about undoing some of the harm that men disconnecting us from ourselves has done. Look how far they've come - first telling us our periods are evil, and that they are a curse for what Eve did, then they told us to stop listening to our bodies in labour and to do what the male doctors day, then they told us to stop listening to our bodies and our feelings with our children and to do who the male doctors say. It's all oppressing and cutting ourselves off from the experience f bei a woman, because if we are connected with ourselves, and we can ta into the innate wisdom we are all born with, we don't need men, and that's fa too threatening to the patriarchy...so hide from us the fact we have that wisdom, and male power iand dominance is settled.

Reconnecting with our inner wisdom is, IMO, a pretty easy way of making inroads into the patriarchy...reclaiming our female wisdom.

[Nyac]

We probably need a Mumsnet screening of the film so we can discuss it properly.

All that makes a lot of sense Flamingo.

[habbibu]

But that's the thing - you feel clearer, I feel fuzzier. That's fine because we're different - what I don't buy if that my fuzziness is somehow a symptom caused by the patriarchy, which is kind of whats implied by the OP. I'm sure if you tracked a month you would find peaks and troughs of clarity/creativity which might well correspond to hormonal shifts - I'm very dubious about the focus on menstruation, however.

Is it because it's an obvious manifestation, and so easier to track? I know when I'm ovulating, but not everyone has it quite so obvious.

[WidowWadman]

So instead of listening to the male doctors who offer you pain relief in labour you listen to the men who tell you it's important to feel pain in labour, and that pain is somehow empowering. Odent, Leboyer, Grantly-Read, all men who tell women how to do it right. They tell a different how to do it right, but still dictating how birth should be done. And women swallow it, just because it's wrapped into some nature myth and godliness?

[Nyac]

I didn't get the clarity about the feelings from PMT, I got clearer feelings if that makes sense. It was other things (feminism) that gave me the clarity about what they were about, that the rage and despair I sometimes felt at that time, were actually real and had their source in an external cause, not just a hormonal storm. So I understood them, did something about their causes and now I don't get PMT any more. Not noticeably anyway.

So if you're feeling fuzzy at that time, maybe look at what might be causing the fuzziness (if you want).

[habbibu]

Yes, odent does piss me off more than yer average male know it all, because of his insistence that he knows so much better than women how women think.

[HillyWallaby]

I used to think that the pill was an amazing invention, and helped women immensely, but I can see now it's actually done a lot of harm.

That's where you lost me OP.

[Nyac]

There are plenty of women working against the medicalisation of childbirth widowwadman. It's a big issue in parts of feminism. They just aren't such big names as people like Odent.

[OTheHugeManatee]

Nyac - yes, very true. The moment where I stopped seeing my PMT feelings as mad and invalid because 'only hormones', and started seeing them as reactions to things that would have annoyed me anyway but that I was just less patient with when premenstrual: that was an important turning point.

[FlamingoBingo]

Habbibu - the focus isn't on menstruation, but on the whole menstrual cycle.

Widow - actually, a lot of labour pain comes from lying on your back...a tradition tha started with male doctors. The tone of your posts make me think you're trying to wind me up, so not going to rise to it.

NYac - MN screening of the film sounds great. Also, reading stuff by alexandra pope might help anyone confused by this, including the 'course' she's devised called the women's quest. I've started it this cycle, so can't vouch for it yet, but I've only heard good about it from other women whi've done it. Very empowering I've heard.

[habbibu]

Nyac, what do you mean, what might be causing the fuzziness? You say you feel clearer pre-menstruation, so you must be fuzzier elsewhere in the month. I feel all clear and sparky around ovulation, less so pre-menstruation. Neither is a massive shift, and often I have no pm symptoms at all.

My feelings of fuzziness are not remotely like rage or despair, tbh, more like an inability to do some basic maths, say, or feeling a bit more tired than usual.

[FlamingoBingo]

Hilly - because it cuts us off from our natural cycles and, therefore, our ability to tap into our subconscious feelings, that we usually suppress so much. Of course the pill was a vital step on women's lib, but is it so necessary now? I don't take it and I manage to not get pregnant when I don't want to, as do millions of other women who don't like taking the pill.