I’m pretty sure I learned about PMS by watching TV. It was this thing that all women had and that made them bitchy and mean during the days previous to their period. I thought it was a TV thing, an exaggeration, an old way of thinking or a lazy joke. As years went by, I still didn’t have any practical experience of PMS. I didn’t notice it in my friends or myself, and my mother was bitchy every day so it was hard to compare days and moods.
The myth of PMS
Later on, as I explored the dark realm of feminism, I grew the idea that PMS was a myth, because a lot of women, like me, didn’t experience PMS. It seemed logical that it was a sleazy attempt by men to ridicule and belittle women. And I have to say that having a man pin your anger on your hormones is quite aggravating.
My old flatmate, back in France, used to have incredibly painful periods. She would stay at home for the first two days of it, curled up in bed, in the fetal position. I always thought that was so strange because I had never experienced such painful periods. I never saw her get especially cranky before her period, either. So I went on thinking that PMS was just a stupid conspiracy, a way for guys to deflect.
And then, I got married
When you’re 22, you think life is always going to be the way it is now. But life can change in the snap of a finger and your whole reality mutates with it. Getting married added many pieces to the puzzle of my womanhood. I thought I had understood what being a woman meant but I still had everything to learn. Life always gets more complicated. Being single in your 20s is great, but whatever your choices are, they are going to complicate your life once your enter your 30s.
Facing these new obstacles and sharing your life with someone at the same time bring a whole new set of situations to your life and you get to discover yourself again. You thought you’d never be like your mother and then you find yourself being her for a few seconds. You fight, you make compromises, sacrifices. I always held being ‘independent’ so dear to my heart, as if being married was willfully entering a patriarchal trap. It only becomes a trap if you keep clinging to your ego, and getting over your ego is a big part of personal development. Being alone is easy. But life is not about going out getting trashed and posting on Instagram. The real work starts when you share your life with someone else. And, apparently, my body knew that before I did.
Hormonal is not a bad word
Right after I got married, I started to have intense period pain. Every month, I die a little bit. I spend all night turning and moaning like a deer shot in the stomach. It lasts for only two days, but I do notice that I get particularly emotional a few days prior. I’ve had anxiety my whole life and I work hard to control it, but that becomes extra hard in that time of the cycle. Sometimes, it’s only after an argument that I realize that I may have overreacted a little bit. And that’s the thing, I hate petty drama. I’m not the kind to nag or make arguments out of nothing, which is why I tended to think that PMS was just an urban legend, because I thought it was just about the woman’s character.
But I can’t deny how hormones affect us. It’s just how it works. And I’m a very sensitive and emotionally-driven person. I feel everything intensely and I have the great gift of being able to laugh and cry at the same time. Bitches be crazy. Anyway, hormones definitely play a role in my behavior. Of course, they cannot be an excuse for inflammatory attitude, but it is a force that many husbands learn to recognize, sooner or later. This is why women have to be particularly careful. Once you understand what it is, you can handle it much better and learn to recognize when the PMS is talking.
Dog or God?
It’s like Cesar Millan said in the Dog Whisperer, when a dog behaves badly, it’s often because the breed has taken over the dog himself. A puppy is more bull than dog and behaves according to his programming when lacking in discipline. When you teach the dog right, it’s your sweet little Charlie walking by you and not an impulsive K9.
Some idiots will conclude from this article that I think women are dogs. For those who have more than 50 IQ, please keep on reading.
So, why is PMS showing its ugly nose now, you ask? Well, your body is an intelligence of its own. It knows a lot of things you don’t, and you somehow have to balance its need with yours on a daily basis. So, when I got married, my body smelled the scent of a possible chance for reproduction and opened up the valve as a reminder that I was open for business. I don’t want to have kids so I’d happily relinquish this sweet gift from the Gods, but it also makes me who I am and shows me how a woman needs to take on the pain, look at it and handle it with patience and courage, which is a chance that men don’t get. Being carefree, in this regard, would be great. No pain, no embarrassing moments at the pool, no tampons… But pain always brings insight and even if I think a woman’s wiring is icky, to say the least, it is a powerful tool that can elevate you to be a great woman, or lead you to be an angry bitch.
Why feminism doesn’t work
Today, a lot of women are reluctant to get married, just like I was. That’s fine, you can do whatever you want, but a lot of these women won’t get to experience and learn things that come only when you commit to a man, and I don’t think you can truly understand men and what they are by having boyfriends your whole life. And yeah, for a girl like me, a little bit rough on the edges and living alone since I was 18, sharing didn’t come easy. And yeah, sometimes you see yourself falling in the stereotypical couple shit, but if you only look at it from the outside instead of experiencing it for yourself, you’re missing a lot of knowledge, the kind of knowledge you can’t get from Vice, because your ego won’t let you.
What’s your take on it?
DD
October 30, 2019 7:12 pm
Hi,
I think your take on feminism is interesting. When I read this piece, it seems like “feminism” has this connotation of unrealistic demands, and fanciful thinking. Here in the United States where I am from, it has a bit more practical connotation I think. It is about protesting a specific injustice, usually where there is an alternative solution that is obviously better (to progressives, anyway. Conservative thinkers may disagree…) Or in general it is about fighting for equality — such that neither women are men are disadvantaged (or taken advantage of!) on the basis of their gender.
I think in the United States, we accept that science must be a part of progressivism, because the truth is the truth. Thus, we are not afraid of myths getting in the way and coloring people’s sense of womanhood — we welcome science as a decider of truth. In fact, science has documented that some women get horrible cramps. And hormones do not always leave your mood alone. The more science looks, two things become clear: 1) Every woman’s experience is different. 2) There are many natural variations, so one woman may get bad PMS, another woman may get nothing.
(Just like some women get heavy flows on their periods, other women have light flows. Some get a period at a regular time every month, some will have periods that don’t have any rhyme or reason or pattern to their timing…)
Long story short, I think PMS is real. Just that only some women will get it, and like you say a person may get PMS at different times, but basically: Not every woman has PMS all the time. Science agrees. So, feminist or not, it’s real!
(Also, unless a woman is being totally unreasonable, being in pain/moody doesn’t make your opinions wrong. If PMS makes you overly judgmental or lash out at people, then maybe you need to take a sick day and stay home. But just like being drunk, sometimes pain and moodiness just brings out the truth! That is to say: Just because a woman has PMS, doesn’t necessarily mean she is being unreasonable! Just sensitive. It depends how it affects you as an individual.)
Once again, in summary: PMS is real (but you won’t know someone has it without asking)… we should all be able to handle that as the truth, and hopefully feminists and non-feminists alike can handle this information!
Sorry for the rant, but your post really provoked a reaction in me, hehe.
I don’t mean to argue with you either, since you were opening up about your personal experiences. Just that I identify as a feminist, and I don’t think we feminists are silly or unreasonable!
Michael
December 6, 2019 4:22 am
I think feminism comes from a sense of feeling victimised by a male centric society (justified or not) and developing varying levels of narcissism due to the trauma. A false image of women is created in place of the true woman because they start to resent the reality of what being a woman is. Being the “weaker sex” (only physically of course), emotionally vulernable, deeply wanting a decent man in her life, a captain to lead her ship that she can trust respect and admire. One she can depend on if the world goes to shit to protect her and the kids. After a lifetime of disappointing men (for whatever reason), those qualities of yourself that make you want those things so badly start to feel like bad ones and you resent the fact that you have them in the first place. But those are an essential biological part of being a woman (to varying degrees of course). So to reject them is to reject womanhood. You have large groups of women now who view children as parasites and motherhood as slavery, rejecting the most sacred relationship on planet earth, the one between mother and child. Feminism has became less about equal rights and even less about the feminine. It’s become about the rejection of being a biologically harmonized woman coexisting in intimate monogamous relationships with biologically harmonized men. Mostly caused by mens failures in living up to the expectations and requirements for such intimate monogamous relationships. Which then goes back to the relationship with the mother. The most important relationship a man will ever have with the female species because it lays the foundation for how he will view women and treat them for the rest of his life. If a man cannot trust or respect his own mother how is he ever supposed to trust or respect any other woman? Women of course have their version of this, what’s referred to as “daddy issues”.