Period: The Real Story of Menstruation

This book was nowhere on my radar but when I got an ALC from Libro.fm, I found the idea of it very interesting and because I've only been consuming audios recently, I got started with it almost immediately. And it turned out to be very good.

Considering how much of a taboo topic menstruation is ( my iPhone keyboard doesn't even show the word in autofill when I'm typing it out), I'm firstly glad we have books like this. When I first started menstruating as a teenager, I got no knowledge about it except that it happens and a small 30 mins health class at school. There was nothing about why it happens, the implications surrounding it, the pain and how to manage it or just about any other information. I'm just surprised but happy that I'm reading a book about it more than 20 years after experiencing it myself.

What I did like was the author giving her credentials in the beginning, mentioning that the book would be inclusive of genders based on whoever the topic is applicable to, and then proceeded to discuss many important topics - the historical discourse surrounding menstruation and how it came to be such an unmentionable topic, the impacts of patriarchy and our world being more male centric affecting the amount of time and resources dedicated to studying something like menstruation which happens to atleast half the world population, the various stigmas attached to it, and how much less information we have on the diverse ways in which people can get their period and how it affects their body and how circumstances affect it.

I don't think I got everything into my head already in this first read but I'm glad to have a general idea. But I definitely feel I will benefit from a more slow reread of it whenever I can in the future. And it'll surely be a more informative experience for younger kids who are just starting out and maybe knowing so much more than we did might help them manage their bodies better.