Raging against the unclean: is PMS a social construct?

Who cares? Now, fuck off!

No, seriously. The working title for this when I began writing was 'Does giving in to PMT make you a bad feminist?' which was the issue I originally intended to address. However, I happened to read this article (to which I owe a great debt) while researching, and so I ended up writing this instead.

NB: I use the terms PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) and PMT (pre-menstrual tension) interchangeably.

Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon: oh my, what a great song.

Not least because, whatever it is that it's really about, it's also a song that's a Great Period Track. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me like the perfect period song.

The title, of course – The Killing Moon – is a dead give-away. Menstrual cycles are linked to the phases of the moon, and my period is always a killer, a slow death and painful rebirth each month. This is all developed in the song's lyrics: "On starlit nights I saw you" sings Ian McCulloch. Well, I too see stars, hallucinatory traces of glitter floating before me like a mouse pointer across a computer screen. And "through the thick and thin" alludes to my bloated body and puffy face, swelling and contracting as my period flows and ebbs. Talk about "fate up against your will": my will is shattered. There's nothing I can do to stop my period coming, and the negative effects that follow. My period is an experience that is definitely "unwillingly mine".

Not only that, but The Killing Moon is sung by a man and it is always cool when you get a Period Track that is sung by a man. There are a few live versions but I like this one best, not only because of how the song is performed by the musicians, but also, having come to personify my period as a man, I see my period as a bit like Ian McCulloch here: dark, louche and shifty-looking, wearing shades even though he's indoors, and smoking a fag (this performance evidently filmed before the smoking ban).

However politically incorrect this interpretation may be – and it is: comparing one's period to a man that one gives in to must be one of the most un-feminist things a woman can do – at least it saves the song from cliché (running through graveyards and glimpsing the cloud-shrouded moon through wrought iron curlicues, yawn...).

And at least it's a means of viewing the menstrual experience in a different way. I mention this because I've always been aware of the shame and embarrassment I've felt not only of having periods myself, but of blogging about it (I still write this blog under a pseudonym).

But I did it because I needed an outlet for that aspect of my life, and still do. Ever since I started my periods as a young girl, PMS has always prompted a surge of psychological and physical symptoms a few days before my period arrives.

These symptoms do exist, undeniably, as they do for many women. And they are extreme and debilitating: exhaustion, irritability, depression, anxiety, tearfulness, flu-like aches and pains all over, but especially headache and back ache, bloating, food cravings... And these are just the symptoms I get.

Looking back, I'm not sure why exactly I was ever ashamed and embarrassed about making it all public, but I was. I think I was worried about being perceived as unstable, a loose cannon, and not good at my job. Which was unfair on myself because even during the most difficult times I never let it affect my work. It never occurred to me to take time off, or make a feature of what I was going through to others. If anything, my personal policy at work was to keep it all under wraps, never mention it and pretend it wasn't even happening.

Sloppy and hormonal aren't things that women enjoy being, or want to be perceived as being. That's not all there is to being a woman, after all.

And yet, that is the way 'society' often portrays us. PMS is tied up in all sorts of presumptions and perceptions that use a sort of code or shorthand, a shared vocabulary agreed upon, or 'constructed' by society. You know the stereotype: 'hormonal', 'emotional', 'irrational', 'erratic'. These are words that are never applied to men, even though men have hormones too and experience fluctuations that affect their behaviour on a regular basis.

That's partly to do with the fact that when it comes to PMS, lots of issues get confused in the mix. For a start, science is non-committal: there is no consensus on its exact cause. And since science cannot identify or agree on a cause, so PMS cannot be classified as a disease or illness.

Not that anyone would want it to be. But it's because no one really knows what PMS is beyond a set of symptoms – and even those aren't agreed upon unanimously as they vary from woman to woman and manifest themselves in different ways –that the whole cultural context of PMS is so hazy and non-specific. Even the terms PMS and PMT themselves are vague, bland and unsatisfactory, defining the symptoms as a 'syndrome' or 'tension' that occurs at some unspecified point before bleeding.

As names go, 'PMT' and 'PMS' are clumsy and inaccurate (like women themselves are perceived to be). If PMS had its own actual name – the same as the scientist who defined it, for example – it might be taken a bit more seriously, as it would have its own 'personality' or 'brand'.

But it doesn't. The PR for PMS sucks. And so we flounder about for ways of defining the experience – hence the labels that are deemed by society as an acceptable and convenient way of referring to it.

And hence the sale of "useless oils and tablets" – supplements, extracts, vitamin and mineral complexes. These 'remedies' are supposed to address the symptoms, but how can they when, not only can no one agree exactly what the causes and symptoms are, but the pills address not the symptoms but the construct?

This results in a lose-lose situation for the very people they are supposed to help: not only do they rarely work (once again, science is pretty dismissive of their supposed efficacy), but if women don't take them they are perceived as not taking control of their situation and doing something about it. Take a pill, wave a magic wand and make it go away.

And speaking personally, the fact that they don't work makes me doubt myself. Is there something I'm missing? Something I'm doing wrong? Am I taking the right pills, or the right combination? Is there something wrong with my diet? Am I eating or drinking too much of the wrong things, and not enough of the right things (whatever they are), or doing enough exercise?

Who knows? No one, really. But we may do well to ask who is profiting from the perpetuation of the myths and confusion surrounding PMT, because it certainly isn't the women who experience it. That which should be in each woman's interest is actually in someone else's.

Money is being made out of PMS: 'medicines' are still being bought even though there is probably little relation between the medicine and the symptoms.

And let's not forget, this is because of the construct. And the reason there's a construct is because the symptoms are real and devastating, and society can't handle them. So what does society do? Fob women off with a bunch of quack remedies and make them doubt themselves. Because society does not like angry women who behave in unpredictable ways. Dull the rage with doubt – a paralysing force, a political tool of control – and take away their creative force. Keep them 'in their place': subservient to men, both at home and in the workplace.

It's ingenious, really: make women doubt themselves and capitalise on their desperation.
To my shame (yeah – shame again!) I've bought in to all of this and used the construct to describe myself many times. I still do, even though it does not serve me, and reinforces the negative stereotypes. I'm especially fond of the euphemistic and horrible 'time of the month' phrase, presumed nastiness and all. But it's always been in conflict with my feminist instincts because it's giving in to a construct that does not serve me.

I don't want to do that, and so the temptation is to keep quiet. Much better, however, to articulate my experience on my own terms, using a different vocabulary to break free from the white noise that does little to ingratiate men or women to the cause. Which is what I try and do here on this site.

Women are conditioned to think that whatever they do is wrong, and far be it from me to say what women can and cannot talk about, or how. But my period is a thug, and defining it as such is a coping strategy, a way of telling the story, reclaiming the experience, finding humour and taking control.

While writing about PMS and menstruation could be seen as a self-indulgent pathologization of a natural part of life into a special condition, I prefer to see it as armour in defence of the weapons used against PMS symptoms to undermine them.

It is hard though, because to suggest that PMS may be a social construct runs the risk of implying that PMS is not real. PMS does exist; it is real, it is not imaginary, psychosomatic, or exaggerated. The symptoms are real and devastating – mine throw my natural rhythm into chaos for days.

The social construct is there precisely because the symptoms do exist, resulting from a desire to control women, and to treat women as victims. It unconsciously influences attitudes, putting women at risk of being marginalised and treated negatively when it comes to jobs and payment.

This construct delegitimizes the menstrual experience with negative associations, reducing women to unreliable, messy and incompetent hysterics, slaves to our biology, persons to be avoided or requiring special indulgences.

This construct imprisons women in a cage of guilt and shame and is used as a mask for emotions society does not want them to have. It's a socially acceptable (i.e. male-approved) outlet.

This construct is society's way of putting symptoms into a neat little parcel. Well, fuck that.

Wherever there's a social construct there's usually an alternative – and better – way of doing things. I've realised I can opt out.

Hormonal? Flaky? Sweary? I choose powerful, assertive, creative.

I choose to own my experience.