Period Pain...

There’s been a lot of talk lately about tampons. Frankly, it’s about time. I can’t hear enough about feminine hygiene products, and I don't think I'm the Lone Ranger in that regard. People don’t talk nearly enough about tampons and if they did, maybe the world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in.

You can bet that if men had periods, you’d never hear the end of it. Tampons would be free, you’d get the week off, all your mates would buy you drinks, and there’d be competitions to see who had the heaviest flow.

You may think it glib of me, as a man, to make light of something all women take very seriously. Maybe I’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman (at least not until I can afford the airfare to Thailand) but I’m not made of styrofoam. I can empathise, damn it! I get moody. I feel worthless and unloved (usually once a month when my ex-wife spent a week yelling at me and calling me names). Alice Cooper once said: “Only women bleed”. Well, I say until you’ve been repeatedly punched in the nose by a crazed menstrual termagant revved-up on PMS, don’t talk to me about bleeding, buddy.

It’s one of the great regrets of my life as a parent that I’ll never share the physical bond with my children that my ex-wife did. To make space inside your body to hold them, to move your very organs around to accommodate them, even grow new ones to sustain them, is a miracle that, sadly, I’ll never fully appreciate. And I’m more aware than anyone that I’ll never know the pain, nay, the agony of childbirth. (Secretly I think that men actually do know how painful childbirth is but you chicks will never let on for fear of losing your power over us). Well, never fear, my fine feminine friends! As long as you have vaginas you’ll always have power over us because you’ll always have something we want. The inherent nature of Man is to destroy, whereas the inherent nature of Woman is to create. You have the power of creation right there inside you, damn it, and that pisses men off. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re the dominant gender and we’ve conquered and beaten down anyone who says otherwise. It riles us no end that every woman is born with something that we want but can never have; something we can take but never own; something we can replicate but never appreciate.

Men don’t understand vaginas, and because of that we fear them. It wasn’t until my ex-wife became pregnant with our first child that I finally realised what vaginas were really for. But over time I came to see the beauty and the power of the “hairy chequebook”, and it will forever have my respect.

So there you have it. The answer to world peace? Let’s all sit down and talk about our periods.

Pass me the chocolate…(sob) I’m so fat!