[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_69

I've often wondered if men, at least cisgender men, ever regret being men. I also asked myself this when I read some passages from Toni Morrison's book. Toward the first half of the book, a scene tells the story of the first menstruation through the eyes of the girls who experience it.

Pecola, the protagonist, has streams of blood running down her thighs; the two friends who are with her are scared. "Are you hurt?" they ask her. Pecola is confused; she isn’t hurt. Then one of the friends, the older one, understands: she is the only custodian of the great taboo that affects all women. She knows what to do,but she doesn't have time to explain, or maybe she doesn't know how to explain it, so she orders her younger sister to clean the blood from the floor and get some water without making her mother suspicious, in the meantime she asks Pecola to follow her outside the room. But the mother intercepts the girls' deception and, taken by suspicion, scolds them heavily without knowing what they are up to.

On the first day that menstruation arrives, the emotions that girls experience are always the same: fear when they discover blood on their underwear; confusion because the cause is not understood or, if it is understood, it takes time to accept it; shame, because the blood comes from the private parts and, like the private parts, must be hidden; anger, because it is a condition that was not chosen but which must be endured; pain because menstruation in many cases is excruciating.

They are not positive emotions, and they are not emotions that, culturally, we are expected to show. Nobody talks about menstruation: they are women's things, and, as such, they must remain in the sphere of women. That is, they must stay in the private sphere.

When you ask your colleague if she has a pad, you do it secretly, whispering. As if being heard talking about your menstrual cycle or being seen with a pad in your hand were offensive to others, the intrusion of the private sphere into the public one.

I have known women who experienced their first menstruation as a rite of passage, who celebrated it with joy and a sense of solemnity; they came from families where women were proud to be women and who tried to treat menstruation as a regular event, not as a sin to be hidden. But they are few.

My mother grew up believing that if she touched flowers during her menstrual period, she would kill them. Until fifty years ago, the belief was widespread in rural Northern Italy that menstruating women had infectious powers and should, therefore, be isolated. By making a couple of searches on the internet, it is easy to discover that beliefs of this type are far from rare, even today, throughout the world.

I remember my first day of menstruation: I was 11 years old. It was a summer morning, and I was with my dad, setting up an exhibition space for a town event and assembling wooden pallets. When I discovered that I had blood on my underwear, I didn't know what to do. Of course, I knew it was menstruation, but I felt ashamed to talk about it with my father, and there was no woman around to ask for help. I put some paper towels between my legs and sank into shame and loneliness. I remember that Dad, unaware, laughed and joked while I tried to move my legs as little as I could and to be careful how I sat, making sure not to leave traces of blood behind me. I couldn't even understand what Dad was telling me: my ears were blocked, and it seemed to me that the whole world around me was a muffled nightmare where only my body existed, bleeding in secret. I had to wait until the evening before I could go home and ask my mom for help.

I remember that my mother tried to appear happy about the event, trying to convey a joy that she didn't have: "It's a beautiful thing," she told me with a tight smile. Now you're a woman! You can have children.”

“And what's so good about that, Mom?” I asked her angrily.

My mother didn't answer. It was at that moment that I understood the massive catch of being born with a vagina. I have carried this sense of trickery for the rest of my life.

This is why I often wonder if men, at least cisgender men, have ever felt a similar feeling. Have they ever hated their sex? Their own “nature”? It has always seemed to me that men have penises while women are their vaginas.

It is dramatic to be a child and realize that you do not inhabit a body but a biological function; that yours is a double subjectivity because you embody the potential of motherhood, that an immense responsibility lives within you, that of giving life, and that manifests itself once a month, violently and painfully, like a curse, whether you want it or not.

I remember that after my first menstruation, a period of endless recommendations began: "Now you can get pregnant," they told me, "You have to be careful," "Don't do this," "Don't do that," "don't trust boys."The world had transformed into a hostile and insidious landscape: it was my duty to recognize it and take all the necessary precautions, even when the precautions included denying part of my freedom, such as going out alone and having male friends. In that period, toys began to seem like archaeological finds from a distant past: I couldn't use them anymore; something in me was broken forever.

While I underwent the beginning of a long segregation at home, as part of the protection plan from all unwanted maternities, my peers continued to play in the garden as if nothing had happened. While I took on all the responsibilities my peers didn't know and wouldn't have taken on, locking my dolls and a good part of my childhood’s enchantment in a box, nothing had changed for them. They remained children. And, in my heart, I knew they would remain so for a long time.