For the past two and a half years I have been on Depo Provera, which means I haven’t had my period in a looooong time. I came off the shot because I was suffering various side-effects, and my boyfriend (<3) eventually bullied me into changing to the Pill because he was so worried about me. The immediate effect was astounding. I realised that my slow meltdown over the past few weeks (and months) was due to Depo – I haven’t had a panic attack or experienced anxiety since I stopped. I am also feeling much better about life, and I can’t believe I put up with the way I felt for so long.
However, there are downsides to going back on the Pill. As I am sitting here, typing this, I am getting twists of pain in my lower abdomen. Damn you, period pain! I am not keen on popping pills to mask symptoms instead of curing the cause, so unless I am in excruciating, can’t-function pain, I don’t take painkillers. So, I am doggedly drinking raspberry leaf tea and gritting my teeth against the cramps. I don’t have it so bad, really. I get pretty light periods, a craving for chocolate at the start (weird, because I hardly eat chocolate otherwise) and I have to take iron tablets to prevent me from falling asleep all over the place. So maybe it is hypocritical for me to talk about this, considering my period doesn’t have too much of an adverse effect on me, but I really, really hate the PMS excuse.
What is the PMS excuse? It is the belief in Western culture that women become crazy, irrational, grumpy bitches in the week before their period. However, due to the inflation of The Menses into something scary and unknowable, the PMS excuse is also used for the way women apparently behave during their period, and after their period, and hell why don’t we just accept the fact that all women, all the time, are at the mercy of their hormones and cannot control their emotions and reactions?
This is why I call it the PMS excuse, not the PMS myth. Men use it as an excuse to ignore legitimate complaints from women. They use it so they don’t have to deal with our anger and frustration, so they can belittle our feelings and dismiss our points of view. If a woman is aggressive and forceful, well ladies just don’t do that, so she must be PMSing! We’ll have to humour her and pat her on the butt head and tell her to run along and play nice, and only come back when she is not being a bitch. Because women are not supposed to be angry, and when they are it means they are irrational, and everyone knows an irrational woman should not be given any responsibility or she will destroy entire cities like Godzilla.
The PMS excuse is used to bring women down in the workplace, to prevent them from sharing their ideas and from challenging the menfolk. It is used to prevent women fighting for their beliefs. It is used by asshole boyfriends and husbands to weasel their way out of discussing their partner’s grievances. It is also used by women, so they can weasel their way out of taking responsibility for their actions.
Oh yes, I said it. As long as women use the PMS excuse to justify being horrible, men can use the PMS excuse to hold power over us. If we are saying “Oh this is the week before my period/of my period/after my period, so I am going to turn into a crazy monster and you’re going to have to deal with it,” we are really saying “I have no control over the way I take my emotions out on other people, so I have license to be a total bitch for no reason, because its not my fault.” I have heard women say this. I have heard women abandon all regard for the consequences of their actions, blaming their assholeness on the fact that once every month (if they are regular) they bleed from their vagina.
Very few women truly experience a change in their mood due to their period. Often irritability is due to side-effects – bloating, pain, acne and so forth, which can make a women feel depressed or angry. But being grumpy doesn’t mean you have an excuse to be nasty. It doesn’t give you an excuse to be selfish and mean, and everyone around you just has to buck up and accept it. Period pain sucks, I know, but that doesn’t mean you can scream at your partner and then blame it on on the period and not apologise. I am not saying you have to be an angel, but you don’t have to be a harridan either. Grow up and be accountable for your actions. If you lash out at someone, apologise. There is a difference between “I’m sorry, I’ve got cramps and my boobs hurt, it’s not your fault that I’m cranky (even though every little thing you do at the moment is putting my teeth on edge)” and “I’m bleeding so I am MAD MAD MAD so STOP ANNOYING ME.”
I have moments in my relationship where my boyfriend really, really annoys me, and I am sure he has those moments with me too. But I have to realise when it is because what he is doing is irritating, and when it is because I am feeling particularly irritable. If it is the latter (and it usually is) it is childish and selfish of me to blame him for what is essentially my problem. Usually when this occurs, I tell him I am feeling out of sorts and to leave me alone for a little bit until I have calmed down. Of course, I don’t always manage to figure out why I am angry, so sometimes I take my anger out on my boyfriend. When I do, I apologise to him for yelling at him when it is not his fault, and we move on. Obviously, I am not always the rampaging meany in our relationship. Sometimes my boyfriend is tired or has a headache and so he snaps at me – again, he apologises and I leave him alone until he is feeling better. It is give and take, it is recognising when the way you are feeling is caused by you, and ensuring you take responsibility for the way you treat other people.
Society tells us that periods are used by conniving women to scare their male bosses into letting them have the day off so they can go shopping. I remember working with a woman who had serious, crippling period pain one day. She didn’t want to tell our male manager because, she said, “It’s such a lame, ‘get out of work’ excuse.” No, it is only a lame excuse because society has told us it is a lame excuse. We have all had a cycle that is worse than usual, where we simply cannot function. There are also very few women - very few – who do suffer serious side-effects regularly. I am not denying that there are women who are debilitated by their period every month. But these are physical manifestations, not emotional. People are in pain all the time, but unless you have terminal cancer is it really a valid excuse to treat others badly? When men are in pain, they can be mean too. The only difference is, women are in pain regularly. Knowing that, and knowing that for a week or so I am going to have period pain, I can think extra carefully about the way I act. I know that I am going to be grumpy, so before I lash out at someone who annoys me, I know I should take a deep breath and think before I speak. This is not always going to work, so I know that I should apologise if it is not the person’s fault. I am not going to yell at someone and then say “Oh, I’ve got my period, so you should just get over that.” It is blaming everyone but myself for what I have done.
Over the centuries, there have been thousands of crazy myths surrounding menstruation. The PMS excuse is a modern-day version, along with others such as “You shouldn’t have sex or exercise during your period.” So why on earth do we keep buying into the excuse? When something is said often enough, and authoritatively enough, people begin to believe it, and act on it. Women are told that we become weepy, uncontrollable messes because of our periods – so we start to. The longer we women believe this and act as society erroneously tells us we should, the longer men will be able to use the excuse to wave in our face and assert their ’superiority’ over us. Believing in PMS serves to separate women from men, and to put men in a position of power. Men are always rational, controlled beings, whereas women are subject to insane whims and fancies around their period! Believing in PMS means products can be marketed specifically for women to use during PMS (and have a price increase purely because of this.) Believing means men can make fun of us, in movies and t.v. and books. It means women do not have to accept responsibility for their actions, which makes it easier for men to deny us authority.
Every day, I question what I do and how I think and wonder if it is really me, or if it is what the patriarchy tells me to do, or if I am just being perverse to spite the patriarchy. The whole hullaballoo surrounding periods is something that I have to now address, since it is affecting me again. Am I really weepy and drawn to Sandra Bullock movies before my period? Or am I only like that before my period because I am told I am? Do I really want chocolate, or do the twinges in my uterus set off a subliminal message drilled into me for years by confectionary companies? I am still questioning these things, but I simply cannot believe that all women are at the mercy of their emotions because of their periods. It is a dangerous belief, and the sooner it is kicked to the curb, the better.
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great post!
sorry my comment isn’t more interesting… but you’ve already said everything that i could have said about this topic :)
Well, you can scratch at least one of your questions off: you like Sandra Bullock movies all the time (irrespective of whether they’re even good movies!)
Can’t blame your uterus for that.
Totally agree. I often get especially grumpy when I have my period, and I know it’s because I’m bloated, sore, and bleeding. I get grumpy when I’m tired too, or when suppliers are being stupid. So it’s definitely not PMS.
I read about the PMS myth earlier in the year http://therottenlittlegirls.com/2009/02/23/debunking-the-pms-myth/ and it just confirmed what I always thought. That PMS is only truly experienced by a small percentage of women.
Women really need to stop using it as an excuse and men need to learn that we can have emotions without having to have the excuse of the menstrual cycle!
This is true of most of your posts, that you leave little to say except “Excellent post.”
:Every day, I question what I do and how I think and wonder if it is really me, or if it is what the patriarchy tells me to do, or if I am just being perverse to spite the patriarchy.:
This is so well-formulated. I know just what you mean.
Excellent post, thankyou!
I wish to pass on some age old wisdom to help with the cramps – hot water bottle. I sniffed at the idea when my mum told me how good they are. I am now eating my hat. I don’t get period cramps however I have an extremely temperamental stomach and it does wonders. I even knitted a cover for it!
Good to hear you figured out the Dep Provera was causing issues.
This is a great post. PMS is really used as an excuse for our mood. The meanest thing anoyone [woman or man] can say is “Oh, ignore her, it’s PMS.” – come on! Like we really can’t control the way we act.
It’s definitely used as another one of those “oh, those crazy women and their hormones! They’re so irrational!” items (see also: pregnancy). However, I do think that there’s a legit reason for being cranky for some people – before I was on the pill, I would have terrible debilitating cramps. Puking because of them was a semi-common occurrence. I think it’s okay to be a little cranky in that situation, but I don’t really use PMS as an excuse. I’m more like “Hey, I’m in pain here, so I’m cranky, sorry!”. I also hate it when people act like it’s not a ‘real’ excuse to not do something. I once had a friend tell me that I shouldn’t call in to work on days like the above, because it was just something I needed to “man-up” and deal with.
But all of this pretty much goes with what you said, because it’s not the craaazy hormones making me cranky, it’s the severe abdominal cramps (which are better after years of trying different birth controls, I’m now on a pill that helps some. I also skip probably every other one, if not more.).
My period makes me feel like crap… and that does make me grumpy. My husband on the other hand is twice as grumpy every time he gets sleepy or is in need of a sandwich!
@Andre – You just don’t like movies that don’t have explosions.
@cuileann – Thank you – sometimes I feel like it’s easier to be oblivious.
@Adele – I like wheatie bags, that you heat up in the microwave, they mould nicely to your belly. I’ve had a thing about hot water bottles ever since one split in my bed and I woke up soaked and shivering and horribly embarrassed thinking I had wet the bed…
@Michelle – I’m glad you’ve found something that helps! Figuring out what birth control works best is a tiresome process and I can’t wait for a men’s one so my boyfriend can deal with all the side-effects instead.
@Kitty – Hahaha my boyfriend too :D