I have observed a thing: some men get squeamish about menstruation. Men with mothers and sisters. Men with friends and spouses who menstruate. Men who are learned and enamored with science and facts; men who are enamored with women.
I was taught early, by women, that a period was a curse, and I should obscure the reality of it—though it happened with dependable precision (every 24 days for decades for me) and bore the blame for women’s bad attitudes.
I remember feeling embarrassed to be a woman as I read in the Bible that menstruating was enough to defile the holiness of a place, and that women were regularly required to separate themselves until their uncleanness was over.
God made the period, but God did not like it.
Of course, the lessons I had learned politely, demurely gutted me, and reduced my resolve to love God with my everything. God didn’t love my everything, I thought.
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