Bloody Cheek

Today

There has been much publicity recently about whether the government will or won't remove the VAT on women's sanitary products.

Ever since the introduction of VAT they have been classed as "luxury" items which beggars belief and reinforces the feeling that we are still ruled by a misogynistic elite.

"Many men", I told Paul this morning "are disgusted by this simple reproductive fact".

In My Day

It is true that we are more open about these matters these days. But when I was young the subject was still rather taboo and our family was unusual in the way in which this fact of life was explained.

Daddy simply broached the subject one evening after Mamma had been displaying some (to us) inexplicably irrational behaviour. He not only gave us the reason why but explained the biological process. He didn't make a song and dance about it; in fact, I think we had just finished supper and were all round the table.

Later, as I approached puberty, Mamma took me to one side and explained how to manage it when it occurred. This meant that when I had my first period, I had only a moment's surprise before remembering Mamma's advice so that I was able to speak to her quite normally.

Even in our plain-speaking family there still had to be a euphemism "The Circus" my mother called it, presumably because of the regularity with which it came round, and my mother-in-law called it "The Curse".

I had a colleague who had been educated by nuns and was completely ignorant about the whole thing. When she awoke to a pool of blood one morning she thought she was dying. She spoke to the nuns about it and they said "It's a cross we women have to bear", and left it at that. It was years before she was able to accept this part of her life as normal.

While I think that that menstruating is a personal matter and that it's crass to make jokes a la Jo Brand about the function, maybe it's a necessary part of the process of bringing it out of the shadows of disgust and into the realm of normality.