Menstruation - common misconceptions

[lilliesnremains.livejournal.com]

Hey all, if this isn't allowed, go ahead and delete it, but I read the rules it it didn't say no, so here goes.

I'm taking a human sexuality class this semester in college, and while i was originally going to do my term paper and oral presentation on "Female sexual abuse and later sexual dysfunction" i have since changed my mind and decided to do "Menstruation-How society views coming of age".

Here's where you guys come in. I have a basic outline of thing I want to talk about in the oral presentation portion, one of which are common myths associated with getting your period, or images displayed by the media. I'm looking for stories of your first time, and how you felt. i'm also looking for how you felt the first time you used a menstrual cup for those of you who use them.
Also, any links you have floating around that you think would be helpful to either suggest to the class or for me to use information from for my presentation.

What i'm hoping is that not only will many people benefit here from this, but that i will be able to change some peoples' minds about it in my class (i'll be talking about things like menstrual cups, cloth pads, and having sex while a girl is menstruating).

(on a somewhat related note, how do you pronounced menstruation? 3 syllables or 2?)

Comments

[klemptor.livejournal.com]

I'm Kate. I'm 24 and from New Jersey, but I live in Philly now.

I was twelve. My three closest friends had gotten theirs before me. We had this thing where we knew that if a friend was wearing a fanny pack, she had her period that day. (Hey, gimme a break. It was the early '90s.)

When I was about eleven, out of curiousity, I went into the bathroom cabinet and took out a pad, and taught myself how to stick it to my underwear because I figured it would be good information to have.

I remember that, before I had my first period, every time I sat on the toilet to pee I would hopefully peer down at my underwear thinking, "maybe this time!" And then, whaddya know, one day it was there. I was home that day because there was an inservice or something at school, which was lucky. And so I went into the bathroom, contemplated the box of tampons that my mother had under there from the 1980s (I kid you not - she hated tampons and never used them, but for some reason she could never throw them away - she still has them under the bathroom cabinet in her new house), shuddered, and reached for a pad. I still maintain that those tampons are instant TSS if you even look at them too long.

Anyway, I called my mom at work and told her, and there was silence on the other end of the line, and then it was all, "Oh. Wow. OK. Are you OK?"

And then she told her co-workers. Seriously. It was all, "Well, I just told Barrett and Roberta, you know, because they're women too, and they have daughters. It doesn't matter." I was mortified!

There was none of this "oh, you're a woman now" crap like I saw on Blossom (wherein there was the most false father-daughter interaction ever, with him braiding her hair while they talked about how quickly she was growing up). I never had any misconceptions like Rudy Huxtable, when she thought she had to eat five beets for every day that she was on her period (to "keep the blues away"). My grandmother said she didn't believe cramps really happened, and that my mother had made it up when she was a kid, and that I was probably milking that now too. And my mom told me that I could only have two Advil per day (because they'd damage my liver - which they will, in like super huge amounts - and because "it's not good to rely on those things") and that tampons were not an option. And that was that.

(My mom = dysfunction 95% of the time.)