Period 32: Hostile sexism and beliefs about menstruating people
Babies are on my mind right now – over the last few months I’ve interviewed a number of people who have had miscarriages or stillbirths. There are elements of these stories that stay with me, that I just suddenly remember when making dinner, or smelling my little one’s hair. Sometimes when I’m working on parts of my next book, as I’m incorporating these stories, tears will be streaming down my face. I’m crying for the loss of the lives of the babies, even though so many were likely not preventable. But I’m crying more for the grief-stricken faces of the people who bore them. Sometimes these losses were recent, sometimes almost a decade ago. But as these people so kindly shared with me, the details made them fresh again.
Having all of that so centered in my heart right now makes the continued brutal violence against Palestinian children feel even more raw. Watching parents and grandparents grieve, looking at premature babies six to a bed as healthcare workers desperately try to keep them warm, seeing little hands the size of my children’s hands sticking out of rubble. Seeing evidence that IDF soldiers shot women, children, and babies in a school where they were sheltering. I grieve for the loss of life for anyone and everyone, but children have always been especially precious to me. I cannot wrap my mind around how much death we find acceptable now, from gun violence, to covid, to pedestrian deaths from massive SUVs, to multiple violent conflicts happening all over the globe. In every case children are among our most vulnerable.
I am continuing to sign things and write letters and call politicians to call for a ceasefire and the return of all hostages back to both Israel and Palestine. If you have a few dollars to spare, Doctors Without Borders or Palestinian Children's Relief Fund are great places to donate. And if you haven’t spoken up yet – why not?
Book news
Periods, as well as my book PERIOD, has continued to take up quite a bit of my life (definitely not complaining). We’re six months since the book was published and I’m excited to say I’m still hearing from folks who are reading it and enjoying it. A minister in Chicago wrote an incredible review in Christian Century – never did I expect to feel so seen under those conditions. I was interviewed for a short piece in National Geographic about what people used to use to manage their periods back in the day. And… I got a book award!
The Howells Prize is the only book award specifically for my discipline, so it was really exciting to even be considered, let alone to win the year PERIOD came out. Many thanks to the AAA and the Biological Anthropology Section!
I just got back from Italy to be part of a book festival in Rome. I got to hold my Italian edition in my hands, got a bunch of pictures taken (should I have smiled? Not smiled? I didn’t know so tried a mix of both which probably just made me look confused), was part of a great Q&A, and did some media interviews. It was nice to already get positive feedback from readers and to meet the translator of the Italian edition (she was so cool!).
Then this week two pieces have come out where I was interviewed – one on a weird TikTok trend about how the luteal phase is now the “ugly phase” of the cycle, and another on the history of how we measure absorbency of menstrual products.
A few links
Selma Blair was interviewed on Meet the Press and discussed how her multiple sclerosis symptoms were ignored for years as women’s problems. “[E]verything does not need to be blamed on menstruation or something,” she said.
The New Yorker published the funniest mock cycle syncing story I’ve ever read.
With such a level of unchecked infection and the massive amount of genetic diversity it inspires, we may be done with covid but it may never be done with us. Without enough people committing to reducing transmission through masking and air filtration, and reducing severity through vaccination (and maybe transmission with this latest booster? People seem very optimistic!) it will continue to mutate and get better at antibody evasion. If we don’t commit to slowing it down it’s not going to do it for us. Anyway, here’s the latest on covid from Carl Zimmer making many of these same points.
Israel’s targeting civilians in Gaza very intentionally. Read more in this well-researched piece. You know, in addition to all the children Israel is murdering, they have also killed scholars, poets, journalists, and doctors. Refaat Alareer wrote this op-ed in 2021, and this poem on November 1st 2023 (this is a version performed by Brian Cox). He’s dead now. Like tens of thousands of others.
A period fact
In a surprise to exactly no one, people who hold hostile sexist beliefs are also more likely to hold negative beliefs about menstruating people.
If you’ve read my book then you know that there are a lot of negative stereotypes about menstruating people, and that compared to women, men tend to hold more negative beliefs about menstruation. Men tend to think most menstrual symptomology is mental, not physical, and that it is largely during the menstrual phase; women are more likely to see menstrual symptomology as physical and recognize premenstrual and menstrual symptoms.
Researchers at Millikin University surveyed undergraduates to determine their hostile sexist and benevolent sexist beliefs, then also asked them questions about “menstruating women.” As in “compared to the average woman, menstruating women…”
It’s not my favorite methodology because I’m unsure what the heck an average woman is, and so I find the distinction between average woman and menstruating women VERY weird. At the same time the findings are interesting: men and women had some similar negative beliefs about menstruating people, that they’d be less energized and sexy, more irritable and angry. Women were more likely to offer some positive beliefs about menstruating people: that they are also maternal and strong. And those who scored high on the hostile sexism scale also were more likely to report more of the negative beliefs about menstruating people.
I think there’s a lot more to do here – and I think there’s more work to be done on these sexism scales because the way they are worded reinforces the gender binary in a way I don’t find constructive. But this paper came out in 2003, so some of the methodologies are understandable for them. Interesting, and I hope researchers continue to ask questions about these same factors but maybe in a more modern way.
Forbes, G. B., Adams-Curtis, L. E., White, K. B. & Holmgren, K. M. The Role of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism in Women’s and Men’s Perceptions of the Menstruating Woman. Psychology of Women Quarterly 27, 58–63 (2003).