Tracking menstrual cycles another sign of the times

More than 30 years ago, feminist icon Gloria Steinem wrote an essay titled “If Men Could Menstruate.”

The short piece flipped the script on the biological differences between the genders to examine the way society thinks about those differences. Steinem wrote:

“So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

“Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:

“Men would brag about how long and how much.

“Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners and stag parties would mark the day.”

As the essay moved on, it conjured a world that obviously doesn’t exist, but it was farcical only to a point. After setting the stage, the piece poked at liberal and conservative thinkers, men and women alike. Disparate parts of society fall in line, all playing a role to rationalize, reinforce and amplify certain notions of gender — if prompted heavily enough by those holding the most power. And for issues of sexuality and reproduction, that’s long been men.

Steinem’s essay ought to be required reading. It’s especially relevant in light of the emerging scandal in Missouri, where the state health director testified about spreadsheets state workers created to track the menstrual periods of Planned Parenthood clients.

News that the spreadsheets had been created was revealed during an administrative hearing to determine if Missouri was justified in withholding the license of the state’s one remaining Planned Parenthood clinic able to provide abortions.

The state was looking for a pretext to shutter the last clinic. Investigators identified four patients out of 3,000 who needed follow-up visits to the clinic after what the state termed as “failed abortions.” One patient’s second visit for the procedure was not properly reported, the state alleges. The charting of women’s periods, using information obtained in clinic reports, was part of the inquiry.

The news hit social media like a meteor. Women were outraged by the overreach, the arrogance and complete disrespect for privacy that inspired the creation of the spreadsheets.

Younger women, in particular, will not stand for this kind of nonsense. They don’t know a world where birth control wasn’t widely available, and they’re not going to stand for a world in which the way they manage or monitor their own menstrual cycle becomes fodder for someone’s political gain. Many women seek out birth control to manage their periods as much as they do to control reproduction.

The idea that some bureaucrat could tabulate women’s cycles for his own politically motivated purpose (or those of a politically appointed superior) is outrageous and creepy. And, no, it doesn’t matter if the younger generation is supposedly prone, as some creeps have tried to argue, to “overshare” about personal matters.

Other apologists for this invasion of privacy have tried to argue that the practice was about protecting the health and safety of women and children. Nobody believes this. It was about shutting an abortion clinic with no valid legal pretext. It was just another Machiavellian tactic serving an unprincipled and deeply sexist political point of view.

Steinem was right.

If men, not women, could get pregnant, ours would be a different world. Men, as the gender who have long held the most political and social clout, would have seen to their own needs.