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_delia's review against another edition
Laughing so hard at that long “review” from the person who “consider[s] [themself] a feminist, anti-racist, unspecifiedly leftist, and an environmentalist” and proceeded to write a rant that very clearly demonstrates that they are not any of those things and/or doesn’t understand the basic definition of those schools of thought, and doesn’t consider anthropology or sociology a science.
Anyways, I thought this book was ok! I learned some, but do agree that beginning with a more comprehensive explanation of the menstrual cycle would have been beneficial, and some of the chapters really lagged.
I did come away from it with a better relationship with my body and period. I have a body that requires tending, baby!!!!
Anyways, I thought this book was ok! I learned some, but do agree that beginning with a more comprehensive explanation of the menstrual cycle would have been beneficial, and some of the chapters really lagged.
I did come away from it with a better relationship with my body and period. I have a body that requires tending, baby!!!!
enigmadame's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
2.5
This book is both fascinating and infuriating. The authors mentions and cites many health-related study hypotheses I hadn’t heard about, but also pontificates on non-related material and is a heavy hitter for the woke community. This book would have been so much better if she would have kept to the science and not used it as a manifesto. Still, if the reader is truly invested and interested, it’s worth reading past the opinion to learn the science.
kiki_13's review against another edition
5.0
Everyone should read this book - including non menstruating people. With nuance and research Kate Clancy paints a complete picture of menstruating people’s lives and how hidden menstruation is forced to be. Simply amazing work.
lynnietakalele's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
5.0
So much cool info! Loved that there was mention of the post-Covid vaccine survey. It appears I wasn’t the only one with heavy/extended bleeding afterward! (Would absolutely still get the vaccine anyway, btw). Lots of information I’d never known before!
paganh2ogoddess's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
savannahsshelf's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
4.5⭐️ really good book very interesting I think if you know nothing about menstruation this might be a bit much like maybe a little confusing at times and as a person who knows a lot about menstruation there were a couple times I got a little bored a little repetitive but it was over all great
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical content, and Misogyny
Moderate: Sexual harassment and Racism
Minor: Sexual assault and Ableism
thepurplebookwyrm's review against another edition
Edit – 26th of March 2024:
Okay, so... I did in fact push myself to read this thing in its entirety. I hate feeling like I might be unfair to a book the contents of which I haven't actually read. And I felt a little guilty that I went off on this book, so hard... just based on its introduction. To be clear though: I don't (and never) bear any ill will towards the author; I wish her the best of luck in her future endeavours, but like... outside of diverging worldviews/attitudes, this book is legitimately bad . And I'm left wondering: Princeton University Press, what the fuck were you smoking?Oh, right, you just wanted that 'woke' title-bait fat dollah fiction publishing makes on books they (largely) falsely advertise as 'feminist'. That sadly checks out.
This is, quite frankly, the worst non-fiction book I've read since Entangled Life, in 2021, and that was a lot better than this wishy-washy, virtue-signally nothingburger of a 'treatise' on menstruation. Next time, I swear to the freaking gods, I'm sticking to my decision to DNF, because gah dayum!
And I'm gonna go with bullet points for this one:
a) The stuff that repulsed me in the introduction very much continued in the rest of the text: it was way too 'Murican-centric, way too concerned with virtue-signalling and self-flagellation for the crime of being written by a non-dysphoric female human of European descent. To quote my boyfriend: the entirety of fucking Western medicine has colonialist, imperialist, etc... skeletons in its closet, can we thus please move the fuck on in a book purportedly about the phenomenon of menstruation itself? Like seriously, the book's conclusion all but argues women seeking information about their own bodies should first receive a class on the eugenic past of gynaecology to... create a better, more inclusive future (I guess). How about... no ? Just give me the fucking science already!
b) Which means there was also very little actual freaking science in this thing – medical or otherwise. The author tried to tackle way too many research angles (biology, anthropology, sociology, public health policy, social justice) over the span of a relatively short text, and failed to properly delve into any of them as a result. I learned next-to-nothing of note in this book (with regards to the perception of menstruation in other cultures, or the actual biology of menstruation, in relation to things like stress for instance) – it was the very incarnation of 'spread too thin' superficiality.
c) This is also because – and tying back to my first point – the author wasted way too many pages writing what essentially amounted to a political op-ed, pamphlet, manifesto, what have you... instead of an actual pop-science book.
d) Additionally, and this hits more personally, I'll admit: the section of the book that dealt with the long-term physiological impact of trauma left a very bad taste in my mouth. Yes, broader sociological factors impact individual experiences of adversity and/or trauma, but 'fighting the power' won't fucking change the fact I was abused, and raped, by individuals, and that these experiences impacted both my mind, and female body, as an individual victim. So I don't know what the author's fucking point was in contesting the importance of considering trauma in the assessment of a person's health issues. Especially since she disclosed, in her introduction, the fact she is also a victim of SA.
e) The simple fact is the book suffers from its obsession with 'identity politics/wokeness'. I always feel so freaking weird with this stuff because I consider myself a feminist, anti-racist, unspecifiedly leftist, and an environmentalist. But this... this stuff just falls into the most off-putting kind of un-nuanced, untethered, black and white thinking – blegh. I mean the book literally mentions the 'myth of personal responsibility'. Thing is: how the actual fuck is this a myth though? I get, on some level, that the author – probably – simply meant that, in this day and age of neoliberal (and still androcratic) capitalism, emphasis isn't sufficiently placed on collective (and institutional) responsibility. But why oh why this over-correction to the opposite extreme? Why does it always have to be a freaking either/or with these people?! It's both , for fuck's sake. Anyways, semi-off topic rant over.
In conclusion: this book was terrible. Read Caroline Criado Perez' Invisible Women for an infinitely better book about what I... think this one was trying to go for. And, well, something else to learn about the actual science of menstruation I guess. :/
Rant from the 17th of March 2024:
Okay I'm DNFing this one.
I won't give a rating, to try and remain fair, but holy crap am I angry.
31 pages in and the author is still harping on about 'identity politics', the Great Evils™ of the history of anthropology and gynaecology; going on completely unnecessary tangents about DSDs, and self-flagellating for being – shock horror – a 'White Cis Woman™'. Oh, and also about how she's 'doing the Lady's work by employing "feminist" methodology. No, madam, you are not; what you described there is simply called epistemology! Also congrats to the author for finally making me feel embarrassed to share the label of 'feminist' with the likes of her. 🥲
Then of course, there's the 'people who menstruate' bullshit that made me want to shoot myself. And it's hilarious, too, because the words 'women' and 'girls' were also used... so t'was all one giant, garbled mess. 🫠
Like seriously: is this what gynocentric non-fiction publishing is, just, going to be for the next couple of decades, until the 'Murican-centric Woke Wars calm the fuck down? It's bloody infuriating to me I can't read a book, and learn cool new facts about a central function of my female (yes, I said it, it's female, fucking deal with it genderists) body without being pelted in the face with nauseating, self-hating, virtue-signalling, woke punditry, and yes, anti-feminist, sexist and misogynistic female erasure. God fucking damn it.
The editors literally could've written in 'women*' instead of 'people who menstruate' (🤮) and have a footnote explaining the asterisk included trans-masc peeps. Or, they could've written in 'female humans', or 'women and trans-masc persons'. Any one of those options would've taken up less space, less ink, and... isn't saving on paper all the rage now in publishing, in any case, hmm? But nah: why do any of that when you can just reduce women to a function of their body? Whilst leaving men as, well... men, of fucking course. Can't possibly call men 'people who have testicles', amirite? 🙄
This author has absolutely no business calling herself a feminist (in this book at least, sorry not sorry), when she clearly doesn't understand feminist theory 101. 'People who menstruate have historically been controlled, with regards to their fertility, by people who don't menstruate', yes, you ---, that's men/male humans, as a class exploiting women/female humans, as a class for their reproductive labour! Jesus fucking christ this is the most basic you can freaking get in terms of feminist analysis! This is precisely what radical feminists have been pointing to for the past 20+ years: this Orwellian language capture prevents us from even naming the problem and discussing the roots of sex-based oppression!!! But of course, anti-racists and, say, marxists, can keep discussing their axes of material oppression just fine... it's women, per usual, who have to give in to accommodate the whims of others. Fuck our lives, I guess.
Okay, so... I did in fact push myself to read this thing in its entirety. I hate feeling like I might be unfair to a book the contents of which I haven't actually read. And I felt a little guilty that I went off on this book, so hard... just based on its introduction. To be clear though: I don't (and never) bear any ill will towards the author; I wish her the best of luck in her future endeavours, but like... outside of diverging worldviews/attitudes, this book is legitimately bad . And I'm left wondering: Princeton University Press, what the fuck were you smoking?
This is, quite frankly, the worst non-fiction book I've read since Entangled Life, in 2021, and that was a lot better than this wishy-washy, virtue-signally nothingburger of a 'treatise' on menstruation. Next time, I swear to the freaking gods, I'm sticking to my decision to DNF, because gah dayum!
And I'm gonna go with bullet points for this one:
a) The stuff that repulsed me in the introduction very much continued in the rest of the text: it was way too 'Murican-centric, way too concerned with virtue-signalling and self-flagellation for the crime of being written by a non-dysphoric female human of European descent. To quote my boyfriend: the entirety of fucking Western medicine has colonialist, imperialist, etc... skeletons in its closet, can we thus please move the fuck on in a book purportedly about the phenomenon of menstruation itself? Like seriously, the book's conclusion all but argues women seeking information about their own bodies should first receive a class on the eugenic past of gynaecology to... create a better, more inclusive future (I guess). How about... no ? Just give me the fucking science already!
b) Which means there was also very little actual freaking science in this thing – medical or otherwise. The author tried to tackle way too many research angles (biology, anthropology, sociology, public health policy, social justice) over the span of a relatively short text, and failed to properly delve into any of them as a result. I learned next-to-nothing of note in this book (with regards to the perception of menstruation in other cultures, or the actual biology of menstruation, in relation to things like stress for instance) – it was the very incarnation of 'spread too thin' superficiality.
c) This is also because – and tying back to my first point – the author wasted way too many pages writing what essentially amounted to a political op-ed, pamphlet, manifesto, what have you... instead of an actual pop-science book.
d) Additionally, and this hits more personally, I'll admit: the section of the book that dealt with the long-term physiological impact of trauma left a very bad taste in my mouth. Yes, broader sociological factors impact individual experiences of adversity and/or trauma, but 'fighting the power' won't fucking change the fact I was abused, and raped, by individuals, and that these experiences impacted both my mind, and female body, as an individual victim. So I don't know what the author's fucking point was in contesting the importance of considering trauma in the assessment of a person's health issues. Especially since she disclosed, in her introduction, the fact she is also a victim of SA.
e) The simple fact is the book suffers from its obsession with 'identity politics/wokeness'. I always feel so freaking weird with this stuff because I consider myself a feminist, anti-racist, unspecifiedly leftist, and an environmentalist. But this... this stuff just falls into the most off-putting kind of un-nuanced, untethered, black and white thinking – blegh. I mean the book literally mentions the 'myth of personal responsibility'. Thing is: how the actual fuck is this a myth though? I get, on some level, that the author – probably – simply meant that, in this day and age of neoliberal (and still androcratic) capitalism, emphasis isn't sufficiently placed on collective (and institutional) responsibility. But why oh why this over-correction to the opposite extreme? Why does it always have to be a freaking either/or with these people?! It's both , for fuck's sake. Anyways, semi-off topic rant over.
In conclusion: this book was terrible. Read Caroline Criado Perez' Invisible Women for an infinitely better book about what I... think this one was trying to go for. And, well, something else to learn about the actual science of menstruation I guess. :/
Rant from the 17th of March 2024:
Okay I'm DNFing this one.
I won't give a rating, to try and remain fair, but holy crap am I angry.
31 pages in and the author is still harping on about 'identity politics', the Great Evils™ of the history of anthropology and gynaecology; going on completely unnecessary tangents about DSDs, and self-flagellating for being – shock horror – a 'White Cis Woman™'. Oh, and also about how she's 'doing the Lady's work by employing "feminist" methodology. No, madam, you are not; what you described there is simply called epistemology! Also congrats to the author for finally making me feel embarrassed to share the label of 'feminist' with the likes of her. 🥲
Then of course, there's the 'people who menstruate' bullshit that made me want to shoot myself. And it's hilarious, too, because the words 'women' and 'girls' were also used... so t'was all one giant, garbled mess. 🫠
Like seriously: is this what gynocentric non-fiction publishing is, just, going to be for the next couple of decades, until the 'Murican-centric Woke Wars calm the fuck down? It's bloody infuriating to me I can't read a book, and learn cool new facts about a central function of my female (yes, I said it, it's female, fucking deal with it genderists) body without being pelted in the face with nauseating, self-hating, virtue-signalling, woke punditry, and yes, anti-feminist, sexist and misogynistic female erasure. God fucking damn it.
The editors literally could've written in 'women*' instead of 'people who menstruate' (🤮) and have a footnote explaining the asterisk included trans-masc peeps. Or, they could've written in 'female humans', or 'women and trans-masc persons'. Any one of those options would've taken up less space, less ink, and... isn't saving on paper all the rage now in publishing, in any case, hmm? But nah: why do any of that when you can just reduce women to a function of their body? Whilst leaving men as, well... men, of fucking course. Can't possibly call men 'people who have testicles', amirite? 🙄
This author has absolutely no business calling herself a feminist (in this book at least, sorry not sorry), when she clearly doesn't understand feminist theory 101. 'People who menstruate have historically been controlled, with regards to their fertility, by people who don't menstruate', yes, you ---, that's men/male humans, as a class exploiting women/female humans, as a class for their reproductive labour! Jesus fucking christ this is the most basic you can freaking get in terms of feminist analysis! This is precisely what radical feminists have been pointing to for the past 20+ years: this Orwellian language capture prevents us from even naming the problem and discussing the roots of sex-based oppression!!! But of course, anti-racists and, say, marxists, can keep discussing their axes of material oppression just fine... it's women, per usual, who have to give in to accommodate the whims of others. Fuck our lives, I guess.
Sex is a designation that often has to do with a person's gonads, genitals, and/or sex chromosomes, whereas gender refers more to shared cultural experiences or identity. Yet both are neither solely biological nor solely cultural, and it would be scientifically inaccurate to try to make categories for sex or gender binary.
Okay, so you don't understand reproductive, and/or evolutionary biology, got it. And you don't understand feminist theory/analysis, got it. ✅
{...} gender inequality is a series of social practices unrelated to biology that has biological consequences.
Okay you definitely don't even remotely understand feminist theory/analysis, got it! ✅
And yes, this is 'Murican-centric as all hell. Harping on about white privilege, slavery, eugenics and how those things shaped the emergence of gynaecology in North America (and not a peep about how midwives were pushed away from female medicine in Europe itself, of course). Yes, those things are horrible parts of history, but again: if I wanted to read about the influence of imperialism, colonialism, etc... on the development of gynaecological medicine, I'd go read a book specifically about that! As it stands: this grovelling virtue-signalling gave me second-hand embarrassment, I swear to the bloody gods.
All I wanted was to learn about menstruation, without being made to feel 'woman', and 'female', are dirty words. Is that really too much to ask?! 😫
So please, if anyone knows (of) a book about the current science of menstruation that doesn't stoop to this level of abject muppetry, do let me know. 'Cause I just can't with this one.
tessmcb's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
5.0
I have just been diagnosed with endometriosis and this really helped me understand the bigger picture of menstruation. Really worth the read for anyone and everyone!