I decided to start telling my friends and colleagues when I was menstruating. To be sure, discussing menstruation is marked ‘taboo’ in most cultures, but I’ve come to believe that it’s absurd that we don’t talk about the experience nearly a quarter of humanity has on a monthly basis. One that affects every aspect of our lives. 

I was taught to make excuses for the pain, poor attitude, and reduced energy I experienced each month. After two decades, I’d become a library of misdirection and deceit. The male discomfort with menstruation was clear from early in my life: from hiding sanitary pad purchases from my father as a teen to the boy who ran down the hall of our middle school yelling, “Tampons! Tampons!” It is something to be made fun of and hidden.

My period affects the quality of my work, enthusiasm for meeting with clients and colleagues, and overall energy. I learned to secretly adjust my schedule, to book appointments when I knew I would feel my best, and to defer work that might fall just before or during my period. I accepted that, as an entrepreneur, I would miss opportunities to network and build my business due to my body’s natural cycle. It is exhausting trying to hide each month something that is normal. I had become an acrobat, dodging the symptoms of my body’s needs in order to conform to a society that rejects it.

Fed up, I decided to shift my life into a social experiment. It was a ‘fuck it’ moment when the consequences that once held me back went out the window. If they aren’t comfortable with this important health reality, maybe they aren't worth my time. I was further emboldened by the fact that over one in ten men have never had a conversation with a woman about menstruation. My silence reinforced that paradigm.

The reality was I had already lost friends because I hadn’t told them the truth. Instead, I had hidden on the hardest days of my cycle, canceled plans with only hours of notice, and ghosted conversations until I felt better. There are friends I miss but who no longer return my calls. It’s no surprise — I didn’t return their calls, first.

If not explaining my absences was already straining my relationships, perhaps the truth would be better. So I went for it. I started with my business advisor, someone I felt safe with and who has a vested interest in our relationship. We were meeting biweekly to guide the launch of my new startup, a women’s non-reproductive health organization born from my own health challenges. I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a condition that causes extreme brain fog and depression before and during one’s period. I was in the throes of it then, and felt self-conscious about my ability to perform during the meeting. I felt pressured to maintain the appearance of competence one expects from a seasoned business founder and knew it would be difficult for me to keep up with his suggestions during the meeting.

“I just started my period and am coming out of a hard PMDD week.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid of misdirection. “I didn’t get as much done as we’d planned. I have trouble concentrating right now but will take copious notes to review at my own pace.” I’m used to men going stiff, shoulders up to the ears, face wincing in rebellion at any mention of that time. To my surprise, my statement went over well. In fact, it went over without remark. He nodded and returned to the topic at hand. It seemed my advisor had accepted what I said as if it was normal. Which it is.

Throughout the meeting, I allowed myself to double back on concepts and ask for clarity far more than I would have done if I were hiding. I didn’t have to fight the brain fog and pretend like I was as quick as usual. He now knew the reason I was circling back on topics. The mask was off, and it was an enormous relief.

Great, I thought after the meeting. This might be simpler and less nerve-wracking than I presumed. Emboldened, I kept going. 

The next person to hear of my mushy pre-menstrual brain was a long-time male friend. We had both since left the city where we first met and regularly send each other voice messages to stay in touch. Rather than pep up my voice to hide the lethargy I was experiencing, I told him I had decided to be more upfront about the effects of my cycle. That this was my reality and it was unreasonable for me to spend the effort hiding this normal experience every month. He replied, rather cheerily, “You can always say anything to me. I’m very comfortable with menstruation after having grown up with sisters. Say what you like.”

I know he meant well, but his response was a cousin to mansplaining. He was giving me permission to mention something as normal and ubiquitous as breathing. I know he intended to tell me that he is comfortable with something that most men are not. Yet, in trying to separate himself from an oppressive paradigm, he performed within it. I made a mental note; something to look out for from those who may not be as well-intentioned.

My friends who also menstruate greeted my frankness with appreciation and commiseration. Turns out at least half of my uterus-owning friends menstruate around the time I do, something I wouldn’t have known otherwise. It was an opening to greater support. 

My colleague at the office replied, “I just started mine today,” when I told her my mood might seem glum because I was in my PMDD week, just before menstruating.

“I’m on day two of mine!” A friend replied when we hung out on the first day of my period. 

I felt a sense of sisterhood. A shared experience in real-time. Shared pain and release. This wasn’t simple cycle syncing, a phenomenon that remains unproven. It was an opportunity to create a deeper connection by simply mentioning something we hide to make our male counterparts more comfortable. A unifying experience that so many of us share, yet miss out on due to the silence.

I had expected the men in my life to be uncomfortable with my honesty and was surprised (and thankful) to find a good deal of acceptance. What I had not expected during this experiment was the bias in the AI that drives voice-to-text iPhone apps. The word menstruate was typed as ‘men straight’ or ‘men’s street.’ It is well known that the Apple keyboard auto-corrects the word ‘fuck’ to ‘duck.’ Apparently, menstruate is also a curse word.

This comes at a time when my colleagues in AI are voicing concerns about training models being based on existing social models of sexism and misogyny. The autocorrect’s behavior isn’t new. The misogyny enshrined in tech has been unchanged for years. I experienced it every day of owning my tech company in the twenty-teens, and now run up against it regularly in the blockchain sector as a FemTech founder. Still, I had assumed common dictionary words to be known and accepted by the AI. I was wrong.

Two months into my experiment, I was absent from the office for over a week, with PMDD and menstrual cramps keeping me close to home. Our office is in a hip area of Berlin, where stickers and graffiti lace the walls and weekly protests ranging from women’s rights to environmental protections hit the streets. The office is a hub for many blockchain founders (a sector known for cryptocurrency but more widely focused on decentralized business practices), most of them younger than me.

The entry hall terminates at a long farmhouse-style dining room table. On the left are the pods of desks, on the right a full kitchen. At the table eating lunch sat a colleague who isn’t often in the office. I smiled, glad to see him.

“Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked in greeting. Of all the people I regularly worked with, I assumed he wouldn’t have noticed my absence due to his own.

“Oh, I was down a hole last week,” my reply more obscure than I had been striving for, surprised by his directness.

“What kind of hole?” he asked, adjusting his aviator glasses, fork hovering over takeout.

“A menstrual hole,” I stated.

He nodded. “I was down a hole last week, too. A K-hole,” he laughed, and I along with him, put at ease by his returned vulnerability. It was a classic Berlin answer. We are a city known for our clubs and techno, and many in the blockchain scene take part. The conversation then moved on with ease to our current projects, and that was that.

Was the wellspring of acceptance I received from my male counterparts a product of the kinds of people I spend my time with? Perhaps. But I also had to wonder: how much of the shame and hiding of menstruation was a holdover from the shame and hiding we learned as teens? From a time we felt unsure of how to talk about such things or even how to manage our bodies? From mothers who remembered garter belt pads and corporate-enshrined misogyny that gives no support for days taken off for period cramps because they don’t garner a doctor’s note? How much connection had I missed out on over the years when I hid my period from my female friends?

Emboldened by this experiment, I continue to tell my friends and colleagues the truth about my cycle, and I continue to be met with compassion and interest. Maybe, just maybe, my female friends will be emboldened to do the same.

Veronica Zora Kirin is an anthropologist, author, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Asterisk Women's Health and cofounder of Anodyne Magazine, both of which advocate for health equity for all. Her writing can be found in publications such as See You Next Tuesday and Maddyness. Find more of her work at https://veronicakirin.com/books or @vmkirin on all platforms.

Visual Art
John (aka)Jack Tricarico is a New York City painter and poet who has been published in poetry journals and anthologies in The United States, Europe and Mexico. He recently published a book of poems titled: Selected Poems. His artwork can be viewed at www.nyaw.com.


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