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A Period Piece

Fri, 01/27/2012 - 14:27
Submitted by Liandra Dahl

Menses has been on my mind more than usual for the last six months. My daughter got her first period just as I left for NYC to be part of the BodySex Documentary. I wrote to Betty some months later asking for advice to help my daughter with inserting her first tampon.

My daughter had asked me for help and I had sat down and got her looking at her vulva and vaginal opening with a mirror explaining all about it. However it was way too tense an experience for her to get the tampon in. Meeting her reflected vulva was like meeting a stranger for the first time who had been living under her bed her whole life and that was all she could handle that day.

I gave her Betty's advice to spend time alone before going to sleep at night between this period and the next, when she was most relaxed, inserting a finger into her vagina. She did so and the next time menses rolled around she was a dab hand with the tampon, no help requested or needed. Problem solved!

The next period issue I had was my own though. I used a menstral cup back in 2006 but I lost it and never replaced it. However the only brand of tampons I use in Australia were an organic female owned and operated company that have vanished whilst I was living in Amserdam. So this month I decided to switch back from tampons to a JuJu which is the Australian version of a menstrual cup. I bought it not only because I intend to use it for it's 10 year life span and not have to buy tampons again, but also because I want to do some blood play for a fetish shoot on my website.

Interestingly I had a friend of mine, a male friend, react quite strongly to me talking about period openly and publicly showing a photo of my new JuJu. What was so interesting about this is this guy spends hours playing the most violent video games depicting "real as possible" images of blood and gore as he murders people. I struggle to understand why men who adore blood and gore are terrified of menstrual blood. No one I have asked has ever been able to give me a decent answer. So after asking him this I asked him if he could cope with the image better if I had overlayed a gun sight/target sybmol over the top for him. Would he then be okay with the idea of a woman's blood? 

Public talking about menses makes people squeamish, so I love doing it. Public images of bleeding just DON'T happen right? Except they do. Once I was bleeding and carrying two suitcases and a small child and my tampon leaked and ran down my legs whilst I was on a public bus. The driver and my fellow passengers looked truly agonised both for themselves and for me. So I flashed them a smile and a shrug and said... "what can you do? it happens". I remember right up until it was pouring down my legs I was mortified and begging divine forces of the female persuasion to stop it from happening... afterwards I just thought..."fuck it". Why was I so scared of it anyway? men urinate in public spaces without batting an eyelid. The trickles of blood down my legs also seemed strangely beautiful and cathartic. Acceptance is peaceful and eventually people stopped staring at me and went back to their business. 

Personally I love a woman's blood. I love fucking a woman when she is bleeding, not all women are horny at this time, or comfortable with their own blood, but when they are...phew...it's intense. I love having the blood on my hands and on my sheets and I get off on the murder scene-esque visual of the sex. I have always wondered why men find it so very very abhorent. Is it a biblical legacy from judaism claiming that women are unclean and unholy whilst they bleed? Is it misogyny? Gynophobia? Can the fellas out there tell me what about it especially bothers you? It's life giving just like sperm and we know the boys love cum shots... so what is it about this excretion that makes you say ew?

Sex Documentarian
http://liandradahl.com/blog/

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Confused

Amalgam's picture
Fri, 01/27/2012 - 19:32
Amalgam

I'm just as confused by this issue. The thought of menstrual blood doesn't bother me at all and I don't understand what some others of the male population find so disgusting. It would be very interesting to hear the thoughts of men who have this attitude towards menstruation; the D&R population is generally very open minded but it would be nice if there's one or two men here who could shed some light on this.

Blood

Fri, 01/27/2012 - 21:34
Lady Grinning Soul

I love this post, Liandra. I also like my blood - I love sex when I'm bleeding, I love masturbating when I'm bleeding (my sex drive seems to go even higher than it usually is during my period). And maybe it sounds silly, but red is my favourite colour and I find menstrual blood to be such a beautifully deep and intense hue. Also I 'free flow' during the nights and I love to see the carnage between my thighs in the morning (I'm sure there are articles about free flowing on this site should anyone want to look into it). Like Liandra, I enjoy the visual of it.

I tend to automatically lick my fingers after I've been masturbating, so if I'm bleeding I of course lick the blood from them and - finally getting to the point of men's views about it - I've had a man watch me do this on numerous occasions and he loved it. I talk openly about menses, but have only two friends with whom I would delve in great gory detail about my blood, and he is one of them (the other being a woman). So I guess some men don't find it abhorrant or awkward, and even enjoy watching a woman lick and swallow her blood.

P.S. Is the title borrowed from Shortbus?

Well a long time ago I use

Fri, 01/27/2012 - 22:22
Jake E

Well a long time ago I use think it was disgusting because society said it was, with blue menses in tampon ads, but that disgustingness made it hot in a sexual context and very kinky. That legacy still does make it hot, but when it's given the kudos it desrves it has it's own hotness revolving around fertility which is still kinky in that it's still something that happens very privately. I think we should give menses kudos not disgust, but sexually for me I've found both views are a win win :)  

I think that part of it is

Kasini's picture
Mon, 01/30/2012 - 16:38
Kasini

I think that part of it is non-exposure. Most women feel anywhere
between discomfort about their periods to active disgust and culturally
we're taught that we're unclean and that we should keep our periods
strictly to ourselves. Mix that with generalized shame about our bodies
and shame and discomfort around sex and I can see why most women would
avoid sex while on their periods. If, while men are learning to be
sexual, women make themselves unavailable during their periods and do
not expect men to deal with it then it's understandable to me why men
also think periods and period sex is gross.
Having said that, though, my period is out of control -- unpredictable, usually heavy, and
my cycles tend to run 27 days at longest and sometimes as short as
13-15 days. I average around 22-23 days. For me, when I have a regular
sex partner, I need them to be ok with being sexual while I'm  on my
period. They don't need to want to penetrate me -- I'm fine using a
tampon or menstrual cup during sex, but they have to be totally fine
with the very real possibility that they'll encounter blood.
I stopped having sex with the guy who was my lover over the summer. Part
of why I stopped (a significant part) was because he refused to be
sexual with me at all while I was on my period. We ended up cancelling
several sex dates because of it and I finally got frustrated and angry
that he wouldn't even consider trying to work on the issue. Given how
stressful my menstrual cycle is (wrapped up as it is with my grief
around my infertility) it felt like insult added to injury every time a
sex date was cancelled because my vulva was, effectively, too disgusting
to have sex with. My time and my hard-won emotional health is too
precious to have to deal with someone else's issues. I'd rather have no
sexual relationships at all than ones where I was set up to feel shame
and (more) frustration over something I have no control over.

Some men like it, others don't

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 05:06
M.H. (not verified)

I've had a rather generous amount of lovers in my life (most of them men, not all) and very few of them have objected to sex during menstruation. I had a lover who even had a red blanket reserved for the occasion. Most of my lovers refrained from giving me oral sex during that time, and I have always respected their limits and not taken it personally. Not everyone likes the taste of blood. One lover performed oral sex on me during my period, and I was deeply touched and flattered. I even married him! We later divorced, but are still friends. I do enjoy sex during my period. It relieves cramps, makes me happy, and, yes, I like messy sex. 
 One of my most memorable sex-during-menstruation experiences was during a brief but tempestuous love affair last year. We argued, then had rough, angry sex, complete with cusswords, on a bench. Afterwards, the blood was everywhere and we both had scratches and bite marks on our skin. It was great fun. 

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