According to this book, there are more than 5,000 euphemisms around the world for menstruation. Not that its author, Dr Jen Gunter, tends to be euphemistic. Once described as “the world’s most famous – and outspoken – gynaecologist”, she is already the author of The Menopause Manifesto and The Vagina Bible – a book that became a bestseller despite ads for it being banned on social media because algorithms flagged “vulgar, obscene or distasteful” words.
Language and the naming of things are important to Gunter, and she is clear about her dissatisfaction with many of the terms of her profession: pudendum, from the Latin “to be ashamed”, for example, and “vagina”, meaning “sheath”. “The hymen is possibly the most offensively named of all the structures in the body,” she writes, “as it is named after the Greek god of marriage.” Blood is the latest salvo in her quest to wrestle women’s health out of the grip of the patriarchy and give them new ways to communicate about the healthcare they need and deserve. An older term for ovaries is “stones” – because that’s what they look like – and she suggests using it to connote bravery instead of saying that someone “has got balls”. It takes serious stones to cope with many of the side effects of menstruation, and with having them dismissed by a medical profession that’s grounded in belittling women’s pain.
