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...

[Trills]

Er no, we're a section of humanity in possession of organs that the other half don't have, so we may have different health needs.

[Dworkin]

Men have incredibly difficult wiring when it comes to their reproductive organs. So much so that billions are spent each year to try and hon the surgery to remove or clear cancer from the prostate. Even young men, and it only happens in young men, who have testicular cancer, have a major set back in that they will never be able to properly ejaculate sperm after removal of a testicle.

So why don't we see hoards of leaflets outlining men's health issues? I want to know them intimately.

Women are not seen as human beings. We are a sub species. To be capitalised on and we freely spend our money because advertising works.

[WidowWadman]

Dworkin - I think it's a huge problem that testicular cancer and prostate cancer don't get the same coverage as the frankly offputtingly pinked up breast cancer.

And, based on sex different things are flogged - when women get targeted with painkillers for menstrual pain, supplements for pregnancy, menopause etc, incontinence pads, men get targeted with viagra and such like.

The supplement and woo medication market seems to have more female customers than male - whether that is because they more suspectible to woo or because they targeted more heavily, I don't know.

However, no matter how hard I try, I don't get "sub human species" from advertising of women-specific health products.

[Himalaya]

Personally I get a bit of a cleaning/tidying/organising thing when i'm premenstrual, as well as a bit emotional.

I hate all this natural=good stuff. It's a great big fallacy.

And as for being in tune with the moon because we are mainly water. Good grief. Most other animals are mainly water too. Some menstuate some don't, they have different cycle lengths. So how does that work then?

I only found out this year, at 39 why we menstruate (and many other primates don't).(I posted it on here) - it is interesting and surprising (and sad that we are not taught about it). I'd rather know about that than abou the female Divine etc...

[JuliaScurr]

Himalaya Agree - the natural-good-female thing is very unhelpful. Once you say 'X is because women menstruate' you also say (covertly) 'Y is because men (fill in blank)' That blank can include rape, aggression, war, competition, inability to care for children etc etc
I don't accept any of this stuff is because of biology. It is socially created and can be socially changed.
Can you repost why we menstruate, Himalaya?

[Trills]

It was to do with the aggressiveness of human embryos and it being evolutionarily advantageous to be able to spontaneously abort an embryo if your body was not in fit condition to carry it to term, or something like that. I'm not sure I'll be able to find it but it was a very interesting theory.

[Trills]

Was this it?

The answer that Emera suggests is entirely evolutionary, and involves maternal-fetal conflict. The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom?s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bear children again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother?s detriment.

[Trills]

There is some evidence for this: women vary in their degree of decidualization, and women with reduced decidualization have been found to become pregnant more often, but also exhibit pregnancy failure more often. So having a prepared uterus not only helps to fend off overly-aggressive fetuses, it allows mom a greater ability to be selective in which fetuses she carries to term.

It's all very interesting.

I would ignore the PS at the end though, it seems unnecessarily tacked-on by the writer of the blog post and is not related to the paper that is being discussed.

[hopkin]

FlamingoBingo - "unfortunately, we're so far removed from how humans live naturally that of course we all experience our menstrual cycles differently - we all have different experiences of the menarche, all have different experiences of how menstruation was (or was not) talked about as we were growing up etc."

Soy is there one right, true way to feel about menstruation and experience it? And all others are just false consciousness/brainwashing?

[hopkin]

*So, not soy

[parakeet]

Oh. Dear.
It's woo like this that gives feminism a bad name.

Ridiculous generalisations like "women have a natural time each month to slow down and be still". What about those of us who suffer no PMT or unpleasant symptoms at all? Are we inferior kinds of women then?

[SardineQueen]

But "naturally" wouldn't women hit puberty and start having babies and BF and stop when they died through illness or childbirth or getting to about 50 or something?

People are always saying that the "natural" state for women is not actually to have that many periods due to being pg/BF the whole time....

So how does that fit in?

And sorry I have only skimmed so may be repeating stuff.

[SardineQueen]

My knee-jerk reaction is to agree with trills post poster Trills Sun 18-Mar-12 17:45:23

I am very much the sort of person who looks horrified and runs in the opposite direction at any hint of woo!

However it is odd that menstrual cycle = moon cycle and they coordinate if women live together. That is very odd indeed.

[hopkin]

Article on studies into menstrual synchrony.

[SardineQueen]

That article was interesting, thank you hopkin

Looks like the jury is out!

[sportsfanatic]

This could just be a variation on the birthday paradox.

[Himalaya]

Juliascurr, Trills - yes that was the article i was thinking of (sorry have been off MN a couple of days...).

Juliascurr I disagree with you on the biology vs social creation dichotomy though. I think there are plenty of things that are due to biology, but that are not nice/not helpful AND can be socially changed. Its not an either-or thing.

So you can say some women get period pains, and some women get emotional swings related to menstruation. These may be natural, but if they are a problem then there is no reason not to deal with them.

Equally I think it is true that some men become more aggressive around puberty, or some women become less concerned with external achievement after giving birth, and there is good reason to think that there is a biological basis to this. But again if it is a problem (to themselves or others) then there is no reason not to challenge and change it just because it is natural.

On the other hand I think it is just plain woo to say that women are more in touch with nature because they menstuate etc..

[WorkingClassMum]

Without seeing the movie, or opening the link, I the this isn't feminism as in getting equality, but an observation of patriarchy in removing power from women.

I do believe that we do need to be more in tune with our bodies, the good, the bad and the otherwise bits, and I do believe that the mind can be very powerful

I do believe that woman have been dismissed for years based on our being delicate rather than women being admired for being powerful

That being said, that doesn't mean that modern medicine doesn't have place and that doesn't mean that women who don't menstruate ect are any less women for that fact.

I might try to see the movie, and expect in a Utopian setting this message would be ideal - just that we don't have a Utopian society and we have to work with what we do have. It's a nice ideal and gives us inspiration and dreams.

[JuliaScurr]

himalaya The 'biology is destiny' line is very popular among reactionary views, whereas 'biology is often unpleasant and should be changed' doesn't get as much publicity, that's my prob with it

[Himalaya]

Juliascurr - well indeed, but taking the opposite view on facts to those that you disagree with on principle is not a good way of getting closer to the truth of the matter.

I think that the idea that the world of human behaviour can be divided cleanly into 'natural' and 'socially conditioned', and that natural/closer to natural =good and/or immutable and that socially contitioned = bad and/or influencable is nonsense on stilts.

It leads us into all kinds of dead ends.

Your reasoning that you shouldn't say 'X is because women menstruate' because then someone could say that rape, aggression, war, competition, inability to care for children etc etc has a biological basis in men. ...well so what?

Is rape justified? No. never.
Is aggression justified? Sometimes.
Is war justified? Many would argue sometimes.
Is competition justified?' Yes, but not without limits.
Is unwillingness to care for children justified. Sure, just don't have them.

Do these tendencies have a biological basis in some people? Quite possibly. But it doesn't (I think) make and ounce of difference to the moral judgements we make about these things.

I think making the feminist position the opposite of the reactionary one, is a mistake. It allows the reactionaries to set the terms of the discussion, and seems to concede that if it were shown that there was a biological basis for things that are morally wrong, then we would have to revise our moral judgement.

[BlogOnTheTyne]

There's nothing new in the ideas in that documentary. I remember reading a book 30 yrs ago saying v much the same thing. It didn't change the fact that I got period pains and mood swings and 30 yrs later, it doesn't change the fact that I'm fed up with perimenopausal 'rage' and other symptoms.

I don't think that it's a 'good' thing that my moods now surge like a tsunami, rather than a wave and if they reveal any underlying dissatisfaction with my life, I'd far rather feel more in control of my emotions and be able to channel my rage into reasonable requests and assertiveness.

The more I read/ talk to others about menopause/ menstruation, the more horrified I am that there hasn't been more research on countering the effects on women. I've never been on the pill or considered HRT because of the health risks involved but I really wish there was more research going on to find healthy, risk free ways of allowing women to control their biology.

I am continually shocked by how the medical profession underplays the effects of a monthly cycle, across a woman's life span or just sticks you on the pill as a 'cure all' or the mirena coil, about which I keep hearing horror stories.

If you injected into a man the same cocktail of chemical/ hormones that are present each month in a woman and then told them that the effects were 'natural and benign', I wonder what the response would be?

[MMMarmite]

Some of what you're saying makes sense, particularly the need to see the positives in women's biology rather than assuming it's all negative. But the idea that

"We are mostly made up of water, and the moon has huge effects on water."

is just nonsense. The effect of the moon on water is because of gravity, and gravity effects all the other types of molecules just as much. The effect on a person from the moon's gravity is miniscule, and would be bigger for men on average anyway, as they tend to weigh more.