Diagnosis: Female

In “If Men Could Menstruate,” Gloria Steinem says, “whatever a ‘superior’ group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an ‘inferior’ group has will be used to justify its plight.” The way women learn to think about their sexuality throughout their lives comes down to the way their unique development is portrayed. The processes female bodies undergo have often been seen as a problem that is a direct reflection of women’s weaknesses. The issue with seeing menstruation and menopause as a female flaw is that menstruation and menopause are not uniquely female. Many trans men and gender nonconforming individuals also have to deal with these developments, but are often excluded and erased from the dialogue. Seeing menstruation and menopause as exclusively female problems is also troubling because it turns women and girls into specimen. Every behavior, choice, and emotion a woman has must be in some way tied to her womanhood, not the power dynamic in which she exists. By reducing women to their bodily processes, men can effectively detach themselves from conversations about sexuality, relationship expectations, and even sexual health. Girls, young women, and even older women learn to feel shame about their sexuality because it has been understood as a problem, rather than something natural and normal.

There has been a movement to normalize menstruation, but it continues to be exclusionary because it is so centered on periods as a women’s issue. In doing so, it can marginalize nonbinary people who either cannot have periods or have periods, which can feel incongruent with their gender identities. On one hand, care packages for young girls to get sanitary napkins and candy that are perfectly timed with their cycles is great. Something that was once considered a curse and a source of shame has been turned into an opportunity to engage in self care and self acceptance, which is especially important for girls beginning to develop a sense of their sexuality. On the other hand, it is important to be able to separate menstruation from sexuality, because menstruation and femininity are not indefinitely intertwined. For some people, having a period can be incredibly alienating and can cause feelings of dysphoria. Furthermore, girls who have reproductive difficulties and never menstruate, either because they are transgender or because of amenorrhea can feel less feminine or less valid as women because their bodies do not do what stereotypical female bodies can do.

Along with menstruation, there is a new rite of passage: Gardasil. Human Papilloma Virus is not exclusively a women’s issue, but it has become a girl’s issue with the advent of the HPV vaccine. In an attempt to sell the vaccine, Merck advertised it as a way to prevent cervical cancer, making it an issue of “girl power.” The problem is, HPV is not contracted or spread by women alone, and although people with cervixes are at risk for developing cervical cancer if they’ve had HPV, the advertisements completely avoid the elephant in the room. The target audience is young girls and their mothers, but what about transgender boys who have not transitioned or who have cervixes? There is no guarantee that the vaccine even prevents cervical cancer because there simply isn’t enough research. How ethical is it to be proposing that 11-12 year olds who are most likely not sexually active, or even have a full understanding of how HPV is spread, get vaccinated for something that is not posing a widespread threat to public safety? At 11 or 12, this is hardly informed consent, but underneath the veil of female empowerment and autonomy, it appears to be a good choice. There simply isn’t enough information to suggest that there’s any correlation between the age of vaccination and likelihood for cervical cancer, except one thing: sex. In the transition from girlhood to womanhood, it is morally imperative to protect your health. But it still comes back to boys and men; why is it only a female moral imperative to be safe and protected from HPV? Isn’t it just as morally important to be sure you don’t catch HPV so you don’t spread it to someone who could potentially contract cervical cancer? Why is the responsibility on an 11 or 12 year-old girl to protect herself from cervical cancer? This breeds a sense of fear in heterosexual girls beginning to explore their sexualities. There is a new level of blame that will develop for girls who choose to forgo the vaccine if they later contract HPV that boys simply won’t have to face, even if they are spreading it.

This deflection of responsibility is not new and is not limited to younger people. Judith Houck’s chapter about menopause is particularly startling for a number of reasons. Menopause and womanhood as a whole were, and in many ways continue to be, pathological. Failing families and struggling sex lives can all be reduced to one common denominator: aging women. First, women are taught to be ashamed of their bodies. As young girls, they are not allowed to talk about their periods in front of or with boys. They are told that it is a curse. Then, they are taught that the main objective of sex is to procreate and that they should save their virginity for their husbands because it is special and sacred. But then, at the same time, they must also cater to their husband’s sexual desires, even if the current objective is not to get pregnant. When they are no longer useful as fetal containers, women stop having sex because, well, they were told that sex is for having babies, so if you can’t have babies anymore, why have sex, right? So if your husband cheats on you, it’s because you stopped wanting to have sex. Or maybe because you want too much sex. Or maybe because you’ve become a bad mother, and you stopped washing your hair, and painting your nails, and putting on makeup, and you’ve gained weight. The absurdity continues. Although the focus of sex in some cases is to procreate, in other cases it’s to please the husband, but in almost no case is it for a woman’s own pleasure or desire. While theoretically women should feel most comfortable having sex when they no longer have to fear getting pregnant, by that point they have been conditioned to see sex as purely mechanical and goal oriented. Sex is an obligation, another chore women are expected to perform, but not participate in. If a woman hasn’t developed this view of sex, she is surely pathological as well. By this logic, husbands and men can relinquish all responsibility in a relationship when menopause rolls around. All the blame falls on the woman, although there are plenty of justifications for the sexual and emotional changes women go through during menopause, which can be either mitigated or aggravated by the man’s level of understanding and care.