Periods, Male Chauvenism and the Pope .....

Somebody said that if men had periods bleeding would be an Olympic sport and there would be free or tax-deductible menstrual cups, pads or tampons. Everyone would sport jewelry celebrating the happy event of a period instead of feeling ashamed or worried about what's happening.

Those women who hate the idea of this natural, feminine process may have found this part of The Bible troublesome. Actually it may be part of their feelings on the subject:

Leviticus 15: 19-33: "¹⁹ ‘If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be ^[a]set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. ²⁰ Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. ²¹ Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. ²² And whoever touches anything that she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. ²³ If anything is on her bed or on anything on which she sits, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. ²⁴ And if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be ^[b]unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean. 

²⁵ ‘If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond her usual time of impurity, all the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean. ²⁶ Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and whatever she sits on shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her impurity. ²⁷ Whoever touches those things shall be unclean; he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.

²⁸ ‘But if she is cleansed of her discharge, then she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. ²⁹ And on the eighth day she shall take for herself two turtledoves or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. ³⁰ Then the priest shall offer the one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for the discharge of her uncleanness.

³¹ ‘Thus you shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness when they defile My tabernacle that is among them. ³² This is the law for one who has a discharge, and for him who emits semen and is unclean thereby, ³³ and for her who is indisposed because of her customary impurity, and for one who has a discharge, either man or woman, and for him who lies with her who is unclean.’ ”

While Leviticus obviously was an idiot or, to say the least, very, very unknowable in the female anatomy this guy with the box of Tampax looks like one who knows enough about what's going on to deal with it in a rational manner. And, of course, that's how it should be in our modern society of science and knowledge. 

Women should not be made to feel "unclean" by the bodily process, and they are the only ones who should be allowed make jokes about periods if there are situations where that's what's called for.

However, I feel pretty sure that most - but not all - women would prefer never to have periods. Actually, that's possible and has been so for the last 40 years or so, but the pope was against this "unnatural" development in the lives of women: The hormonal birth control pills were designed in a manner so that those who used it had something that looked like, but wasn't a natural period. Women had to bleed to appease the pope. That's quite interesting: 1) Leviticus is very clear about what makes women "unclean" and thus socially unacceptable, and 2) the pope wants to keep it that way ....

https://www.simplehealth.com/blog/the-pope-and-your-birth-control

https://www.brmc.com.au/portfolio-posts/was-the-pills-21-7-regime-really-invented-to-please-the-pope/ 

 https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-due-masculine-dominance-gynecological-science.html