Menstrual Quotes & Sayings

And so whether you were six with the chicken pox, nine with the flu, twelve with a broken arm, or fifteen with menstrual cramps, you could count on sixty solid minutes with the company of that old seventies set, lots of one-dollar bets, and advice to neuter your pet, all crunched into the best sick-day game show yet! — Neil Pasricha

I was ten years old. 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.
When we got home I pulled my mom aside to ask if it was weird I was bleeding in my underpants. She was very sympathetic but also a little baffled. Her eyes said "Dummy didn't you read 'How Shall I Tell My Daughter ". I HAD read it but nowhere in the pamphlet did anyone say that your period was NOT a blue liquid.
At that moment two things became clear to me I was now technically a woman and I would never be a doctor. — Tina Fey

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying. — Sarah Dessen

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Because loving is reciprocal physiologic influence, it entails a deeper and more literal connection than most realize. Limbic regulation affords lovers the ability to modulate each other's emotions, neurophysiology, hormonal status, immune function, sleep rhythms, and stability. If one leaves on a trip, the other may suffer insomnia, a delayed menstrual cycle, a cold that would have been fought off in the fortified state of togetherness. (208) — Thomas Lewis

Problems associated with the menstrual cycle are now commonplace. The majority of teenagers whom I have seen suffer problems such as PMS, severe cramping, and irregular or heavy cycles. Severe hypothyroidism may cause the menses to stop. Dr. Barnes noted his patients with menstrual problems usually suffered many other telltale symptoms of hypothyroidism. Mine do as well. A large majority of menstrual problems resolve after treatment with dessicated thyroid. — Mark Starr

Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison. — Pliny The Elder

At school, he enacted a major piece of treachery against his parents. His right hand was Evil Dad, and his left was Righteous Mom. Evil Dad blustered and theorized and dished out pompous bullshit. Righteous Mom complained and accused. In Righteous Mom's cosmology, Evil Dad was the sole source of hemmoroids, kleptomania, global conflict, bad breath, tectonic-plate fault lines, and clogged drains, as well as every migraine headache and menstrual cramp Righteous Mom had ever suffered. — Margaret Atwood

I opened my purse, shifted through panty shields, bills, and birth control pills - I call them poppa-stoppas - and took out my menstrual calendar. — Eric Jerome Dickey

Menstrual blood is the only source of blood that is not traumatically induced. Yet in modern society, this is the most hidden blood, the one so rarely spoken of and almost never seen, except privately by women ... — Judy Grahn

For their menstrual cycle, women subconsciously want to punish men. — Daya Kudari

Since the birth control pill affects the menstrual cycle, it's not surprising that it may affect a woman's patterns of attraction as well. Scottish researcher Tony Little found women's assessment of men as potential husband material shifted if they were on the pill. Little thinks the social consequences of his finding may be immense: "Where a woman chooses her partner while she is on the Pill, and then comes off it to have a child, her hormone-driven preferences have changed and she may find she is married to the wrong kind of man. — Christopher Ryan

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers that be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year I see him still, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. — Carol Ann Duffy

The recurrent drama of menstrual bleeding must have been unnerving to primitive peoples. In man, the shedding of blood is always associated with injury, disease, or death. Only the female half of humanity was seen to have the magical ability to bleed profusely and still rise phoenix-like each month from the gore. — Estelle Ramey

In 1986, Gloria Steinem wrote that if men got periods, they 'would brag about how long and how much': that boys would talk about their menstruation as the beginning of their manhood, that there would be 'gifts, religious ceremonies' and sanitary supplies would be 'federally funded and free'. I could live without the menstrual bragging - though mine is particularly impressive - and ceremonial parties, but seriously: Why aren't tampons free? — Jessica Valenti

It's something fundamental to me, human rights that people are equal under law simply because they are human beings. And I can no more imagine falling in love with someone who believed, for instance, as Orthodox Jews do, that women are unclean during their menstrual periods. — Susan Jacoby

Fibromyalgia (henceforth, "Fibro"). If you are not familiar with this disease, you may not know that it plagues six million people in the United States today. You may not know that people who have Fibro have a myriad of different symptoms including, but not limited to: muscle pain and fatigue, trouble sleeping, morning stiffness, headaches, painful menstrual periods, tingling or numbness in hands and feet, and problems with thinking/memory (sometimes called "fibro fog").* — Michael Holien

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I hated puberty. It had been that horrible stage from child hood, to pre teen, and my stage from ugly, to ugly with menstrual cramps. — Melissa Grijalva

How lovely she could be! her face was gay and round, pink, the blue of her eyes was clear. Very different from the terrifying menstrual ice of her rages, the look of the murderess. — Saul Bellow

One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Being with Holden and Gavin was driving Stella mad. Mad with desire when she was with them; mad with impatience when they were apart. In their arms, she felt beautiful and desirable - two things she hadn't experienced nearly enough in her lifetime. They reminded her that there was more to being a woman than complicated beauty regimens and menstrual cycles. — Amanda Young

We flew out of the city and we landed on the page where Moses split the sea and the Jews marched between those suspended mountains of water, hovering, humming on both sides, and the poor expelled merchants wondered if Moses knew what the fuck he was doing. What if his hand got tired and he accidentally dropped his magic cane, or got distracted by a wet desert ass, or lost his sandals, or what if that lush single malt of a God changed his mind again and the fucking Red Sea closed in on them with its menstrual red liquid? — Rawi Hage

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.) — Gloria Steinem

I launched into a discourse on the gradual contraction of medieval oaths invoking the Virgin Mother Mary's menstrual blood and the seepage of Christ's wounds, astounded to find any use for my college study of medieval literature. — Hope Jahren

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? — Gloria Steinem

Every story, each poem that a person shares, each voice that speaks against menstrual taboo, inspires me. — Additi Gupta

Christian worship of Jesus is an idolatry much worse than the Israelites' worship of the golden calf, for the Christians err in saying something holy entered into a woman in that stinking place ... full of faeces and urine, which emits discharge and menstrual blood and serves as a receptacle for men's semen. — Geraldine Brooks

Government agents sardonically known as the Menstrual Police regularly rounded up women in their workplaces to administer pregnancy tests. If a woman repeatedly failed to conceive, she was forced to pay a steep "celibacy tax. — Steven D. Levitt

And I lived in a dorm full of girls, all on the same damn menstrual schedule, so the fact that you're worse than all of them combined speaks volumes about your character. — Jessica Prince

The hormonal interplay inside a woman's head creates her reality. Her hormones tell her day to day what's important. They mold her desires and values. — Abhijit Naskar

Our great symbol for the Goddess is the moon, whose three aspects reflect the three stages in women's lives and whose cycles of waxing and waning coincide with women's menstrual cycles. — Carol P. Christ

Then this further message came to me from the LORD: 17 Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by the evil way they lived. To me their conduct was as unclean as a woman's menstrual cloth. 18 They polluted the land with murder and the worship of idols,[*] so I poured out my fury on them. 19 — Anonymous

Red", I write "is the color of life. It's blood, passion, rage. It's menstrual flow and after birth. Beginnings and violent end. Red is the color of love. Beating hearts and hungry lips. Roses, Valentines, cherries. Red is the color of shame. Crimson cheeks and spilled blood. Broken hearts, opened veins. A burning desire to return to white. — Mary Hogan

A subtle urge to synchronize is pervasive in nature. Indeed, it drives the firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in the heart and brings into synchrony the menstrual cycles of women who live together for long periods of time. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Do you know how much women loathe it when guys think every show of negative emotion is tied to our menstrual cycle, like we're sheep or something? — Laurie Halse Anderson

girls were subjected to both clito-ridectomy - the excision of the clitoris - and infibulation - the cutting away of the labia and the sealing of the wound to leave only a tiny opening for urination and menstruation. If the malnourished little girls didn't bleed to death from the procedure itself, they often died from resulting infections or debilitating anemia. In others, scar tissue trapped urine or menstrual fluid, causing pelvic infections. Women with scar-constricted birth canals suffered dangerous and agonizing childbirth. Sometimes — Geraldine Brooks

If only one person in the world held down a terrified, struggling, screaming little girl, cut off her genitals with a septic blade, and sewed her back up, leaving only a tiny hole for urine and menstrual flow, the only question would be how severely that person should be punished, and whether the death penalty would be a sufficiently severe sanction. But when millions of people do this, instead of the enormity being magnified millions-fold, suddenly it becomes "culture," and thereby magically becomes less, rather than more, horrible, and is even defended by some Western "moral thinkers," including feminists. — Steven Pinker

Finally, I want to come to the question of sex. If anything proves that religion is not just man-made but masculine-made, it is the incessant repetition of rules and taboos governing the sexual life. The disease is pervasive, from the weird obsession with virginity and the one-way birth canal through which prophets are "delivered," through the horror of menstrual blood, all the way to the fascinated disgust with homosexuality and the pretended concern with children (who suffer worse at the hands of the faithful than any other group). Male and female genital mutilation; the terrifying of infants with hideous fictions about guilt and hell; the wild prohibition of masturbation: religion will never be able to live down the shame with which it has stained itself for generations in this regard, anymore than it can purge its own guilt for the ruining of formative periods of precious life. — Christopher Hitchens

Superfecundation is the term used when twins are conceived from sperm from different men if a woman has had more than one partner during a menstrual cycle. It is not known how often this happens, but if suspected, then paternity can be checked by DNA testing (Terasaki et al 1978). — Diane M. Fraser

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. — Tina Fey

In order to reclaim our full selves, to integrate each of these aspects through which we pass over the course of our lives, we must first learn to embrace them though our cycles. — Lucy H. Pearce

One of the hardest questions I have been asked is 'How will you manage the army if you are having menstrual cramps?' I have also been asked if I will have the courage to face criminals. My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender. — Josefina Vazquez Mota

So I was forced to go to school wearing a menstrual pad belt that had been in our first aid drawer since approximately 1961. If you've never seen one of these things, because you haven't been to the antiquities museum, it is a literal belt that goes around your waist, with two straps that dangle down in your front and back cracks, ice cold metal clips holding a small throw pillow in place over your shame canyon. — Lindy West

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

In study at the Mayo Clinic covering fifty consecutive young women with hypothyroidism, twenty-eight has menstrual disturbances. Abnormally profuse menses was a common disturbance; frequent bleeding between periods was another; in some cases, both problems were present. Thyroid therapy relived the disturbances. — Broda Otto Barnes

The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation of menstrual periods, which in turn leads to loss of bone density and frequent stress fractures. — Don Kardong

If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood - if it makes you sick, you've got a long way to go, baby. — Germaine Greer

Women have a better sense of smell than men do, and it's even sharper in the middle of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels peak and women are more likely to be deciding whether a man's attractive. — Helen Fisher

Attitudes towards menstrual blood in contemporary Western culture still circle around the subject with a mixture of denial and horror, advertisements for sanitary products typically use blue liquid in an attempt to sanitize the reality of blood, weary old jokes circulate about not trusting anything that bleeds for seven days and does not die. Menstrual blood is constructed either as something that requires a hygienic makeover or as something unnatural and obscene, a further indication of the horrors of sexual difference and the threatening 'secrets' of the female body. — Ruth McPhee

The theme of submission as an essential attitude toward promotion of the successful initiation rite can be clearly seen in the case of girls or women. Their rite of passage initially emphasizes their essential passivity, and this is reinforced by the physiological limitation on their autonomy imposed by the menstrual cycle. It has been suggested that the menstrual cycle may actually be the major part of initiation from a woman's point of view, since it has the power to awaken the deepest sense of obedience to life's creative power over her. Thus she willingly gives herself to her womanly function, much as a man gives himself to his assigned role in the community life of his group. — C. G. Jung

Why were we raised to speak in low tones about periods? To be filled with shame if our menstrual blood happened to stain our skirt? Periods are nothing to be ashamed of. Periods are normal and natural, and the human species would not be here if periods did not exist. I remember a man who said a period was like shit. Well, sacred shit, I told him, because you wouldn't be here if periods didn't happen. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A woman must wait for her ovaries to die before she can get her rightful personality back. Post-menstrual is the same as pre-menstrual; I am once again what I was before the age of twelve: a female human being who knows that a month has thirty day, not twenty-five, and who can spend every one of them free of the shackles of that defect of body and mind known as femininity. — Florence King

Chamomile- Potent Medicine Pretty Flowers! This flower has many uses including digestive aid, ulcer healing/prevention, boosts immune system, tranquilizer, soothes menstrual cramps and to promote the onset of menstruation. Use an infusion for its many healing benefits. Take 2 to 3 teaspoons of flowers per cup of boiling water. Steep 10 to 20 minutes and drink up to 3 cups a day. Ask your doctor before using medicinal amounts of chamomile. — Stephanie Stuart

He asked me about headaches, nausea, vision problems, and when I had my last period. This is apparently the single most vital piece of information concerning a woman's body. You are asked this question repeatedly and by every person at every doctor's visit from the time you're twelve until you're given your last rites. "I'm sorry," says the priest, "but before I can absolve you of all sin and allow you to go to heaven, you must first tell me the date of your last menstrual period. — Kathleen Cosgrove

The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes and coincides with the menstrual flow is the pain-body in its collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time, although it can be triggered at other times too. — Eckhart Tolle

Nothing in our society-with the exception of violence and fear-has been more effective in keeping women in their place than the degradation of the menstrual cycle. — Christiane Northrup

The Moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the Moon that pulls the tides, and the Moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the Moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist ... When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness. — D.H. Lawrence

Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out - a long schedule like a federal document, only it's your pain schedule. Endless categories. First, physical causes - like arthritis, gallstones, menstrual cramps. New category, injured vanity, betrayal, swindle, injustice. But the hardest items of all have to do with love. The question then is: So why does everybody persist? If love cuts them up so much ... — Saul Bellow

Masturbation is not physically necessary. There is already a way by which the male system relieves excessive spermatic fluid quite regularly through the nocturnal emission or wet dream. Monthly menstrual flow expels the female's egg and cleanses the womb. For both sexes, physical or emotional tensions can be released by vigorous activity. Thus, in a biological sense, masturbation for either gender is not necessary. In a gospel sense, it is a sin: Masturbation, a rather common indiscretion, is not approved of the Lord ... regardless of what may have been said by others whose 'norms' are lower. — Spencer W. Kimball

From what has been said, it would appear that the possibility of thyroid deficiency should be considered, and if found, should be treated in any woman with a menstrual abnormality or a reproductive problem. It was generally agree that correction of thyroid deficiency solved many such abnormalities and problems - until about 1940. — Broda Otto Barnes

Avoid Menstruating If, you are using hormonal contraception, such as a low-dose birth control pill, you can avoid the whole change in pH caused by menstrual blood by avoiding menstruation. That's right! Take your pill straight through the placebo days and skip having your period. And yes, this is safe. As discussed in chapter 9, skipping menstruation is a common treatment for endometriosis. — Lauren Streicher

Forty years ago, after many years of successful use of thyroid therapy, leading gynecologists in this country and elsewhere were reporting thyroid had cured more menstrual disorders than all other medications combined. Unfortunately, that lesson seems to have been largely lost. — Broda Otto Barnes

But the problem remains two fold: the need for recognition that low thyroid function very often can provoke menstrual problems, and the need for recognition, too, that hypothyroidism may be present despite laboratory tests suggesting it is not. — Broda Otto Barnes

There's a stereotype of what we are all meant to find attractive and erotic, but I don't neatly fall into those categories. Satin lingerie, a heart-shaped tub, flowers and champagne don't turn me on. You shouldn't be scrubbed clean before you have sex. I hate boys who are frightened of pee and shit and menstrual blood. I say no to boys who want to wake up next to a fully made-up woman. I say no to boys who prefer stockings and garters to perfect nudity. Who wants a boy who won't kiss you when you've just been sick? I want a man who will let me pee in his belly button. I want a man to accept the beast in me. I don't want a man who thinks the woman of his dreams doesn't go to the toilet. One does, you know. — Shirley Manson

No, thank you, it's nothing serious. A headache that was not serious was the usual euphemism for a menstrual period, and everyone accepted this without further comment. — Ken Follett

Ancient peoples who lived close to the earth and in harmony with nature recognized the powerful energy that emanated from the moon and governed life on earth. The ever-changing phases of light and darkness created a balance in nature, and people lived in accordance with the moon's cycles and seasons. They observed the correlation between lunar cycles and the monthly menstrual cycles of women, and therefore gave the moon a female identity. — Janet Lucy