Anyone heard of the #PeriodsOptional movement? Sarah Lang talks to some Kiwi women who have opted out of periods or wish they’d done so – while others say ‘no way’
A fun fact: people who have periods over their lives spend an average of 2300 days menstruating. Another fact: now that I’m in my 40s, I’m coming close to the end of that, er, period of time. But I only just realised that I could have ‘opted out’ of periods, which for me are an inconvenience at best and two days of medium-sized cramps at worst. Why didn’t I know? Well, I don’t take hormonal contraception, so I guess the topic never came up with a doctor, and must not have talked to friends much about periods. I feel a little silly about this!
I only realised I could ‘opt out’ when I read a story in The Atlantic called ‘No One Has to Get Their Period Anymore’, written by leading science and health journalist Marion Renault, with the subtitle ‘menstruating is painful, expensive, and… unnecessary?.’ Renault writes that menstruation has now become “an elective bodily process’’.
“We now have the technology to make periods optional,” Sophia Yen, a paediatrics professor at Stanford Medical School, told Renault. “Once your periods are established, we can turn them off.” She’s talking about using hormonal contraceptives the pill, the patch, and the ring – and IUDs that use hormones.Yen co-founded and runs U.S. company Pandia Health, a tele-medicine service that matches you with birth-control and hormonal medications, with online support from doctors.
Yen, who hasn’t had a period for 14 years, is driving a movement called #PeriodsOptional to espouse the benefits of using birth control to ‘turn off’ periods. According to research conducted by Pandia Health, 58% of women would turn off their periods if they knew it would be done safely, 66% of women have never been informed by a doctor that they can safely stop their period, 53% of women worry about having an accident in public relating to their period, and 62% of women have ruined their sheets and clothes from periods.
I hear ya on all that.
Silly or wise?
There are strong opinions about whether it’s advisable to ‘opt out’ of periods – something reflected in how the process is sometimes called ‘period elimination’ and sometimes called ‘menstrual suppression‘. It’s hard to find the right verb, but many people prefer the term ‘opting out of’ or ‘turning off’ periods to ‘quitting’ or ‘silencing’ periods.
Wairarapa-based educator Bex Henderson, who has a background in fertility nursing, started The Period Project in 2021. She runs education sessions with high-school students about periods, the menstrual cycle and fertility. She also educates adults through Seed Fertility Consulting, for people trying to conceive, or who just want to better understand their menstrual cycles.
What does she want? “To support healthy menstrual cycles and informed decision-making regarding reproductive health. To normalise this natural and healthy cycle with no shame and stigma attached.”
“People can have different opinions about opting out of periods – some are pro, some are anti – but why shut down a system in your body? You’re shutting off hormones and your whole reproductive system. We need our menstrual cycle – to ovulate to get hormones that are beneficial to our health, and that improves brain health, bone health, skin and mood.”
“We aren’t taught [in society] about the importance of a healthy menstrual cycle, and aren’t given information on how to improve unpleasant menstrual symptoms – such as heavy bleeding and pain – through diet and lifestyle. I’m not surprised that many women would opt out of periods given the challenges that many of them face, but it really shows how extreme the lack of knowledge is in this area.”
Yay or nay?
I’m not going to get more into the science (because it’s complicated, plus deadline). And I’m in NO way giving medical advice – not even close. Talk to healthcare providers; female doctors tend to know more. If you’re looking to do your own research, these resources may be useful: Are Monthly Menstrual Periods Optional?: A European Perspective, Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk (NCI National Cancer Institute USA), General Approaches to Medical Management of Menstrual Suppression (The American College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists), Menstruation and Menstrual Suppression Survey – A Clear Check on Fact Sheet Current Perspectives, Do You Really Need Your Period?
Also, here’s a poll I conducted in a large Facebook group. My question: would you opt out of having periods if you knew it could be done safely? To that question, there were four times as many ‘yeses’ as there were ‘nos’. I was surprised! Of the ‘yeses’, the vast majority had already opted out. Many are using Mirena: the brand name for an intrauterine device (IUD) that uses hormones for birth control. Using one can lessen the number of your periods or stop them altogether.
People’s comments regarding ‘opting out’ include: “Best thing ever.” “God yes. I can do without the monthly crippling pain.” “God yes. Human biology is absolutely stupid.” “Yes, I haven’t had a period since I had my kids almost nine years ago. So good!” “I find this incredibly empowering. It took me till 41 to feel empowered enough.” “It’s been so amazing that I almost forget what it was like to menstruate.” “Mine have been off for nearly two years and my quality of life is massively improved.” “Yes, 100%. Interesting to imagine how it might level the playing field career-wise.”
Comedian Michèle A’Court says “Yes yes yes yes!” as to whether she would have ‘opted out’. “Periods were so heavy and painful for me. I had a hysterectomy at 41. If I’d been able to just turn off periods – and that stopped the debilitating pain – I would have been THRILLED. I feel kind of angry that I spent a whole decade – it got worse in my 30s – living with debilitating pain – to the point of vomiting and needing to lay down, and being unable to work. It seems so crazy – and yet predictable – that we know so little about periods and how to manage them. Imagine if men bled out of their penises every month! So yes, the patriarchy. It’s about who is in the room when research topics are being decided on. It’s about who are the ‘high value’ members of the workforce. Plus there’s an assumption that women make stuff up about their health and their level of pain.”
Kerri (her real first name) from Invercargill wishes she’d opted out of periods long, long ago. “I would have in a heartbeat. My periods were hideous until I eventually found a painkiller that worked for me. My whole life I’ve dreaded my next period. I’m counting down the days – one week exactly to go – until I am officially menopausal, as in one year without a period.” Why didn’t Kerri ‘opt out’? “I knew you could skip the sugar [contraceptive] pills and skip a period. But I’d heard it wasn’t good for your body.”
I tell Kerri I didn’t even know I could have opted out of periods! “Well,” she says, “there is probably still misinformation out there, and lord knows that education about women’s bodies is shit. And given the aging GP population, probably a lot of them are still stuck on whatever they learned, or personal beliefs about, ‘natural vs unnatural’.”
Thia Francis, a 41-year-old from Wellington, uses a Mirena IUD and hasn’t had a period for 15 years. “I don’t miss the bloody mess – stained sheets, underwear, clothes etc – but as I’m now in that peri-menopausal era, I can’t help but reflect that maybe part of me misses having that connection to my body, in the sense that everything that’s convenient about not having a period are the same things that encourage connection to the ebbs and flows of life, like reflecting on life being cyclical (seasons, maramataka) rather than linear. Am I romanticising something through the absence of it? I’m not sure, but I often ponder whether my ‘bleedingless’ joy over 15 years is in part driven by colluding with ideologies in which women’s bodies are problematic in some way. The convenience factor [of not having periods] keeps me in this boat but sometimes I wonder if opting out is because our lifestyles and society are dismissive and unsupportive of menstruating people. How can women’s diverse experiences can be better supported?”
No thanks
Some women don’t want to opt out of periods – often because they feel it’s a natural process and we shouldn’t stand in its way.
Zoe Barry, a 35-year-old from Wellington, says “it feels super gross having a period, but in my gut it feels unnatural and unsafe to not have a period.” Even though the pain can be quite bad.
Ananda (yes that’s the real spelling) Card, 44, isn’t eliminating periods. “While I enjoyed not having periods during and after my three pregnancies, I don’t really mind them that much now. They aren’t very heavy or painful and I’m not having sex right now so periods aren’t much of an inconvenience. I’m teetering into perimenopause so I’m feeling a bit like my periods are a reminder of the childbearing years of my life. I’ve always viewed PMS [pre-menstrual syndrome] rage and periods as connections to female power, to my female family lineage and to a greater feminine history.” So she wouldn’t opt out of having periods. “But I also realise the privilege – no specific trauma, endometriosis, PCOS [polycystic ovary syndrome] or other crippling pain – that enables me to have this perspective.”
Kapiti Coast writer Maria McMillan says: “I find this entire idea weird, dehumanising and neoliberal. The hashtag #periodsoptional is chilling. Making periods pain-free and destigmatising them, yes of course! And better research is needed. However, I think for me the hashtag represents a much wider idea that I’m uncomfortable with – it reeks of the commodification of our bodies and natural human experiences, particularly ones associated with womanhood. It’s neoliberal in the sense of suggesting we’re all consumers and that natural functions are things we can choose to ‘buy’ or not. Menstruation is at the core of human-ness, evolution, species survival, fertility, and female existence. To frame it as a weird thing that can be avoided is at best odd, and at worst a further stigmatisation of this much maligned, completely natural phenomenon and cycle.”
“To me #periodsoptional is a bit like saying, ‘oh toes are a bit annoying, I hate having to cut and clean my toenails, let’s get rid of toes, #toesareoptional’. It’s a violation of our bodily integrity. Women, in particular, already have so many attacks on our physical integrity and receive so much demeaning rubbish which pathologises our bodies or considers them wrong. This idea feels like a continuation of that.”
Unsure
Would Anna*, a 39-year-old Aucklander, keep having periods or opt out? “A bit of both? Is that odd? I think my anxiety would need me to have a period every so often, but it’d be convenient to just decide on certain occasions to not have a period and for it to be reliable.”
“There’s a lot of discourse between medical professionals and social-media chatter around the medium-term and long-term implications of stopping periods, so it’s hard to get factual advice and/or know what to believe. I think women are right to be cautious when there’s a blanket ‘this will be fine’, because we know that medical interventions and medical research on women’s health is severely lacking evidence and hugely under-resourced.”
Adi Brewerton, a 37-year-old from Levin, says she’d opt out of periods if it was shown to be safe. “My caveat is that I’m finding I’m developing a more sustainable lifestyle as I lean into the rhythms of seasons and cycles. In line with that, the idea of menstruating being a call to rest and to being nurtured by others sounds healthy, but it’s clearly pretty unlikely in our current culture and society.”
Ain’t that the truth.
