Is there a killer inside YOU? Let's find out!

Lately there's been lots of bad news coming around regarding abortion. There's the US House of Representatives voting to defund Planned Parenthood,  racist propaganda billboards, and a variety of bills being introduced in South Dakota, Iowa, and Georgia with frightening grey area surrounding the basic human rights of abortion providers and women in general. There is much to be said about all of this, but I will refrain because others have already said a lot much better than I could.

What I want to post about here is the campaign launched by Devery Doleman in reaction to a bill being proposed in Georgia. In short, Georgia Representative Bobby Franklin has sponsored a bill that would require all women who suffer a miscarriage to prove that the miscarriage included "no human involvement" (whatever that means). This is of course in addition to outlawing abortion, which Rep. Franklin chooses to re-frame as "pre-natal murder".

Devery has posted her letter to Rep Franklin at Tiger Beatdown, in which she writes:

Dear Representative Franklin: 

I need your help. I need your Uterine Investigatory Crime Unit and every bit of biological lady-part know-how your degree in Biblical studies and Business Administration from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, can bring to my case. I’m scared, Representative Franklin. Because I think – I think there is a killer inside me. The killer is MY UTERUS. Help me stop it before it kills again. 

...I’m trying to do everything right: I have the ClearBlue Easy Fertility Monitor. I stand on my head after sex. I even wore a red muu-muu while we did it with a picture of Faye Dunaway as Serena Joy taped to the headboard! And then there’s that period of suspense when I think I am with child: the metallic taste in the mouth, the dizziness, the rage out of nowhere, the yen for a salt lick. But turns out it was just hateful old PMS. The killer has struck again. 

...Your proposed law declares that “[prenatal murder] does not include a naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known medically as a ‘spontaneous abortion’ and popularly as a ‘miscarriage’ so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” I’m so confused, Bobby! Don’t you see? The event is happening inside me which would seem to indicate that this particular human, aka ME!, no matter what happens, no matter what I eat, breathe, say or do, is deeply, deeply involved! 

...I can’t take this uncertainty any more, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to start sending you evidence right away. There’s still a bloodstain on our mattress pad, I have a bunch of old period underwear, and I’m happy to bag and send you my tampons next week if the killer strikes again. Usually I go through an OB Super once every 2 hours the first couple days so there will be ample material for your lab to analyze to determine what in the hell is going on here and to help bring the relevant parties to justice.Help me, OB-GYN Kenobi – I mean, Representative Franklin. You’re my only hope.

Her idea is taking off within the blogosphere. Jill Filipovic at Feministe has posted her own letter, which includes:

As I’m sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs –Georgia citizens! — naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens — and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths. 

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself. 

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell.

The campaign therefore encourages women to send evidence of so-called potential pre-natal murders to Representative Franklin to be investigated. This evidence is best presented in the form of used tampons and pads, as many miscarriages present themselves in the form of a heavy period when the murderer, er, woman in question hasn't even yet realized she was pregnant.

If you would like to submit your evidence (just pictures! As Jill says, "we can’t actually send used tampons through the mail — sending bio-hazardous material to an elected official can get you in BAD TROUBLE, so don’t do it"), here is Representative Franklin's contact information:

Rep. Bobby Franklin
401 Coverdell Legislative Office Building
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
Phone: 404.656.0152
Fax: 404.656.5562
bobby.franklin@house.ga.gov

I will say that my gut reaction to this idea was very positive, as it appeals to the punk-rock vulgarity of my youth (ha), and is a bold statement. Even so, I gave some careful thought to posting about it here. This is arguably pretty vile and disrespectful, but you know what? So is the bill.

Obsolescence?

The Moon Inside You is a documentary by Diana Fabianova about menstruation and what it means. I have not seen this, but the trailer looks amazing! (Unfortunately, the other clips on the website are not in English.)

What stood out to me in the trailer is the brief discussion about periods being/becoming obsolete. Thanks to modern medicine, it is now possible to eliminate having a period at all. One of the [male] doctors in the trailer asks out loud, "Is menstruation natural? Is menstruation normal?"

The question of it being natural or normal doesn't sit right with me. What would be unnatural or abnormal about it? To me, it seems much more unnatural to load yourself up with synthesized hormones.

I'll be honest, the idea of having no period freaks me out and I have difficulty accepting that it could be healthy. But, I also recognize that as someone who has relatively drama-free periods (negligible cramping, very predictable timeframe, no outrageous hormonal mood swings), I don't have as much to dread. Not that I get head-over-heels excited about it, but I actually kind of like having my period.

I can see why women would want to skip their periods, but I feel like some of that dread comes from our culture. If you see your period as embarrassing or disgusting, why wouldn't you want to escape all of that? But if we as a culture just saw it as something that happens without all this negativity, do you think there would be such a push to get rid of it? Perhaps I would feel more comfortable with discussing the idea of eliminating menstruation if there wasn't so much unfair cultural baggage to unpack around it.

I think it's Karen Houppert in her book The Curse that compares menstruating to having a runny nose. When you have a cold, stuff comes out of your nose, you get a Kleenex, you take care of business, and that's that. It's the same as having a period. Stuff comes out of your vag, you deal with it, even if it's not necessarily sexy or exciting or glamorous, and life goes on. I can't imagine there ever being a movement for medication to eliminate boogers, questioning whether or not they were normal.

"Vampires were our first freedom fighters!"

My mom has told me about this several times, but I never realized it was from Gloria Steinem. I had never heard the whole thing. It's pretty dang sweet.

If Men Could Menstruate: A Political Fantasy, by Gloria Steinem

A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make the person more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles.

Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis-envy is "natural" to women - though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb-envy at least as logical.

In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless - and logic has nothing to do with it.

What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

The answer is clear - menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much.
Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.
Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. (Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of commercial brands such as John Wayne Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-dope Pads, Joe Namath Jock Shields - "For Those Light Bachelor Days," and Robert "Baretta" Blake Maxi-Pads.)

Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve in the Army ("you have to give blood to take blood"), occupy political office ("can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priest and ministers ("how could a woman give her blood for our sins?") or rabbis("without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean").

Male radicals, left-wing politicians, mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could enter their ranks if she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month ("you MUST give blood for the revolution"), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment.

Street guys would brag ("I'm a three pad man") or answer praise from a buddy ("Man, you lookin' good!") by giving fives and saying, "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!" TV shows would treat the subject at length. ("Happy Days": Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still "The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row.) So would newspapers.(SHARK SCARE THREATENS MENSTRUATING MEN. JUDGE CITES MONTHLY STRESS IN PARDONING RAPIST.) And movies. (Newman and Redford in "Blood Brothers"!)

Men would convince women that intercourse was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself - though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.

Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets - and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind: the fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life or connecting to the universe, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine traditional women agreeing to all arguments with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month": Phyllis Schlafly. "Your husband's blood is as sacred as that of Jesus - and so sexy, too!": Marabel Morgan.) Reformers and Queen Bees would try to imitate men, and pretend to have a monthly cycle. All feminists would explain endlessly that men, too, needed to be liberated from the false idea of Martian aggressiveness, just as women needed to escape the bonds of menses-envy. Radical feminist would add that the oppression of the nonmenstrual was the pattern for all other oppressions ("Vampires were our first freedom fighters!") Cultural feminists would develop a bloodless imagery in art and literature. Socialist feminists would insist that only under capitalism would men be able to monopolize menstrual blood...

In fact, if men could menstruate, the power justifications could probably go on forever.

If we let them.