Free-bleeding marathon running, Jeremy Vine and 6-day ejaculations
When I wrote about having recently run a 10 Kilometre race while on my period, I was unaware of a yet-to-emerge news story that was about to go BIG.
Kiran Gandhi did what I'd never have dared to do. Not only did she run the London marathon – an awesome enough thing for anyone to do in the first place – but she also did it while on her period and without wearing any form of sanitary product. Photographs show her completing the race with a patch of dark red between her legs.
For something that on the surface sounds so small it's created quite a lot of reaction. There are many wide-ranging views on this, some of them quite extreme. Many are positive, supportive and enthusiastic, particularly with regard to the issues that Kiran Gandhi was raising (that women in certain parts of the world do not have access to hygienic sanitary protection). Yet it goes without saying that there has also been a lot of negativity.
This is revealed when you read the comments below any article that's been written about it. In addition to accusing her of attention-seeking, some commenters have also called her actions disgusting and unhygienic, offensive and an affront to common decency.
It's sweet that some are able to find it in their hearts to express concern for Kiran Gandhi's bodily hygiene. To take such over-blown offence on behalf of others, too, is quite amusing, as is accusing someone of attention-seeking when you're using quite a lot of hyperbole yourself. Offensive? Misogyny, litter, environmental pollution, child abuse, animal cruelty, human rights abuses, ISIS, corporate tax evasion... They're offensive.
A woman choosing to run a marathon on her period without a sanitary product seems pretty inoffensive to me. It should be a non-event – would that it were so – but lots of people have been talking about it, so given that context it's something I'd prefer to celebrate as an example of female autonomy, not denigrate.
But haters will always hate, and for obvious reasons – while every woman has periods, we all experience them differently – menstruation is bound up in all sorts of myths, inaccuracies, falsehood and misinformation. It's easier to express self-satisfied knee-jerk prejudice than seek a rounded view.
Language, too, is part of the problem. In search of an angle, for example, Fleet Street Fox insists on accuracy with reference to what is shed – not blood but womb lining – but then goes on to roll her eyes at Gandhi "flinging her period about like pizza dough". Which is a poor simile: nothing was 'flung' (it would have been hysterical if it was) and a period is not like 'dough'.
But as bad metaphors go that's nothing compared with those that liken menstrual 'blood' – for want of a better word – to other bodily excretions, such as defecating and ejaculating. Remarks about men, for example, shitting or wanking their way through a marathon. What if they were to do that?
Do I really have to respond to this? I mean, if your ejaculation lasts as long as a period then knock yourself out. I'd pay to see it – and to meet these gods, each one of whom could populate the world with his sperm alone.
And if only a period lasted as long as an actual ejaculation (3 seconds?) – or even a good shit (I myself have been known to shut myself away for – ooh! – half an hour?) – then I'd agree. But my period lasts 6 days. 6 days, people! Some men might be up for a 6-day ejaculation – who knows? – but even if science were to make it possible, it would probably kill them. Which for some might even be a price worth paying.
An orgasm as a prelude to death pretty much sums up life in a thimble. And as Fleet Street Fox likes to remind us, there's about a thimble-full of actual blood in the fluid that's shed during a period. There's also around the same amount of semen in an ejaculation – that much they do have in common.
But even at its most benign, a period is nowhere near as enjoyable as an orgasm (a bloody good shit, on the other hand...).
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that periods should remain secret and invisible. No one wants to see a woman menstruating visibly in public. And while I have sympathy with this view it's not as simple as this. Shame and ignorance have to be eradicated.
Because clearly, they still exist, despite the shame deniers. The real offence here is not periods, but the way women are conditioned to feel about them. Part of this is to do with the linguistic void where people are unable to talk about periods openly and accurately, and without fear of reprisal.
And write about them, too. I've been blogging about periods since 2002, and I wrote about for them for many years before that. When I started my own digital blog, though, fear of being discovered and losing my job meant I felt I had to go underground and write under a pseudonym.
All along my writing has been an 'outlet' (pun intended) that I otherwise didn't have, and I have spent so long hiding it, keeping my head below the parapet, that writing here often feels like I'm talking to myself. It's so quiet and peaceful round here usually that this blog rarely exceeds 100 hits a day. What can I say? I'm a hopeless self-publicist and I'm fine with that.
I'll keep blogging, though (who knows, someday soon I might even start to use my real name). It's vital to keep writing and talking about periods in order to fill the void – 'cause wherever a void exists it gets filled by someone else, often with ignorance and shame. And we cannot allow fear, ignorance and shame to contaminate the narrative – Donald Trump's recent comments about a female journalist, for example, "bleeding from her eyes, her nose, her 'wherever'" (if he'd have said 'cunt' I might have respected that).
So it was in the context of all this – my whole life, this blog – that I listened with interest to Kiran Gandhi being interviewed by Jeremy Vine on his show yesterday (she'd been on other things too but I'm particularly interested when a man talks about periods). I don't know why I decided to send in an email; I'd already planned to blog about her. I guess I wanted to show some solidarity.
Being used to flinging things out into the void with no reaction, I never dreamed it would be read out. In my email I expressed how grateful I am to Kiran for what she had done, and how after running my first 10km she'd inspired me to think about setting up a badass freebleeding running group. Why not? Running is such a pure thing to do, and when you're doing it you don't want to have to worry about anything other than your performance.
And I can just picture it: a group of free-bleeding women running across the land – or even the beach – a beautiful image.
Vine's response, however, seemed to prove all the points that Kiran had made, and everything I've been banging on about all these years. His voice dripped with disgust. In retrospect I wish I'd used the same argument he had used during his previous discussion about parents taking their children on holiday during school term times. What if everybody did it? Then where would we be?
In reality, hardly anyone would notice. And even if they did, and even if people were to express disgust, you know what? Bring it on. It shows we're on to something. The more that that disgust persists, the more I want to rebel against it.
We should 'bleed' how we want – freely sometimes maybe, and perhaps not others. It depends how we feel and what we want to do. Perhaps pills, or a towel, tampon, or menstrual cup. All are options.
Or. Or. You could just let the blood run free.
Now, that's a new one. And kind of revolutionary.
Kiran Gandhi did what I'd never have dared to do. Not only did she run the London marathon – an awesome enough thing for anyone to do in the first place – but she also did it while on her period and without wearing any form of sanitary product. Photographs show her completing the race with a patch of dark red between her legs.
For something that on the surface sounds so small it's created quite a lot of reaction. There are many wide-ranging views on this, some of them quite extreme. Many are positive, supportive and enthusiastic, particularly with regard to the issues that Kiran Gandhi was raising (that women in certain parts of the world do not have access to hygienic sanitary protection). Yet it goes without saying that there has also been a lot of negativity.
 |
| 'Cause this is how I look when I run, you know. |
It's sweet that some are able to find it in their hearts to express concern for Kiran Gandhi's bodily hygiene. To take such over-blown offence on behalf of others, too, is quite amusing, as is accusing someone of attention-seeking when you're using quite a lot of hyperbole yourself. Offensive? Misogyny, litter, environmental pollution, child abuse, animal cruelty, human rights abuses, ISIS, corporate tax evasion... They're offensive.
A woman choosing to run a marathon on her period without a sanitary product seems pretty inoffensive to me. It should be a non-event – would that it were so – but lots of people have been talking about it, so given that context it's something I'd prefer to celebrate as an example of female autonomy, not denigrate.
But haters will always hate, and for obvious reasons – while every woman has periods, we all experience them differently – menstruation is bound up in all sorts of myths, inaccuracies, falsehood and misinformation. It's easier to express self-satisfied knee-jerk prejudice than seek a rounded view.
Language, too, is part of the problem. In search of an angle, for example, Fleet Street Fox insists on accuracy with reference to what is shed – not blood but womb lining – but then goes on to roll her eyes at Gandhi "flinging her period about like pizza dough". Which is a poor simile: nothing was 'flung' (it would have been hysterical if it was) and a period is not like 'dough'.
But as bad metaphors go that's nothing compared with those that liken menstrual 'blood' – for want of a better word – to other bodily excretions, such as defecating and ejaculating. Remarks about men, for example, shitting or wanking their way through a marathon. What if they were to do that?
Do I really have to respond to this? I mean, if your ejaculation lasts as long as a period then knock yourself out. I'd pay to see it – and to meet these gods, each one of whom could populate the world with his sperm alone.
And if only a period lasted as long as an actual ejaculation (3 seconds?) – or even a good shit (I myself have been known to shut myself away for – ooh! – half an hour?) – then I'd agree. But my period lasts 6 days. 6 days, people! Some men might be up for a 6-day ejaculation – who knows? – but even if science were to make it possible, it would probably kill them. Which for some might even be a price worth paying.
An orgasm as a prelude to death pretty much sums up life in a thimble. And as Fleet Street Fox likes to remind us, there's about a thimble-full of actual blood in the fluid that's shed during a period. There's also around the same amount of semen in an ejaculation – that much they do have in common.
But even at its most benign, a period is nowhere near as enjoyable as an orgasm (a bloody good shit, on the other hand...).
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that periods should remain secret and invisible. No one wants to see a woman menstruating visibly in public. And while I have sympathy with this view it's not as simple as this. Shame and ignorance have to be eradicated.
Because clearly, they still exist, despite the shame deniers. The real offence here is not periods, but the way women are conditioned to feel about them. Part of this is to do with the linguistic void where people are unable to talk about periods openly and accurately, and without fear of reprisal.
All along my writing has been an 'outlet' (pun intended) that I otherwise didn't have, and I have spent so long hiding it, keeping my head below the parapet, that writing here often feels like I'm talking to myself. It's so quiet and peaceful round here usually that this blog rarely exceeds 100 hits a day. What can I say? I'm a hopeless self-publicist and I'm fine with that.
I'll keep blogging, though (who knows, someday soon I might even start to use my real name). It's vital to keep writing and talking about periods in order to fill the void – 'cause wherever a void exists it gets filled by someone else, often with ignorance and shame. And we cannot allow fear, ignorance and shame to contaminate the narrative – Donald Trump's recent comments about a female journalist, for example, "bleeding from her eyes, her nose, her 'wherever'" (if he'd have said 'cunt' I might have respected that).
So it was in the context of all this – my whole life, this blog – that I listened with interest to Kiran Gandhi being interviewed by Jeremy Vine on his show yesterday (she'd been on other things too but I'm particularly interested when a man talks about periods). I don't know why I decided to send in an email; I'd already planned to blog about her. I guess I wanted to show some solidarity.
Being used to flinging things out into the void with no reaction, I never dreamed it would be read out. In my email I expressed how grateful I am to Kiran for what she had done, and how after running my first 10km she'd inspired me to think about setting up a badass freebleeding running group. Why not? Running is such a pure thing to do, and when you're doing it you don't want to have to worry about anything other than your performance.
And I can just picture it: a group of free-bleeding women running across the land – or even the beach – a beautiful image.
 |
| Jeremy Vine: distinctly unimpressed with my free-bleeding running group idea. |
In reality, hardly anyone would notice. And even if they did, and even if people were to express disgust, you know what? Bring it on. It shows we're on to something. The more that that disgust persists, the more I want to rebel against it.
We should 'bleed' how we want – freely sometimes maybe, and perhaps not others. It depends how we feel and what we want to do. Perhaps pills, or a towel, tampon, or menstrual cup. All are options.
Or. Or. You could just let the blood run free.
Now, that's a new one. And kind of revolutionary.
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