Hi friends, and welcome, newcomers! Thanks to the Women's Sports Policy Working Group (Nancy Hogshead, JD, Oly, Martina Navratilova, Donna de Varona, Donna Lopiano, Tracy Sundlun) for helping me develop this idea. It’s embedded in our updated Model Policy for Eligibility for the Female Category in Competitive Sport, designed to be a model for sport governing bodies, high school federations, and community organizations.
We need to talk to men about mentruation. Even if it triggers womb envy.
Remember when your fifth-grade teacher herded all the girls into a special, private assembly, inexplicably shrouded in shame? We need to talk about menstruation again.
I want to offer you this sentence to add to your list of reasons why girls and women need female-only sports and spaces: “Also, women menstruate.”
You have my permission to say it out loud. Even when talking to men.
Most women do not enjoy discussing menstruation with men. Too many of them, worldwide and throughout time, have used this evidence of female physiological health – this essential aspect of our life-giving powers – to shame us.
Their shaming has been largely successful. In public and private mixed-sex settings, women rarely mention menstruation. Can you imagine lightly joking about it during a business meeting, while grabbing your menstrual supplies en route to the restroom? Pretending menstruation does not matter – pretending it does not even happen – has been a survival strategy in a male-dominated world.
In sports, to gain access, we have needed to elbow our way onto the playing fields. We have needed to act as assertive as men – while not threatening them too much. Reminding them that we menstruate has never been part of the winning formula.1
Bleeding, Bloating, and Breastmilk
But now that men are claiming a right to compete “as women,” we need to talk about female bleeding, bloating, breastmilk, and related facts of life. We need to talk to men about it— even if it triggers womb envy — since men who want to be considered women are the ones infiltrating women’s sports and spaces. Men are also the rule makers: the people in charge of most policy, lawmaking, and judicial decisions, including two Supreme Court cases coming up on January 13.
The female reproductive cycle affects sports performance throughout our lives. And the female reproductive cycle never affects male performance, no matter how much men may “feel like women.”
Female athletes spend about twenty-five percent of their thirty-eight or so fertile years menstruating or in a premenstrual phase (about seven days per 28-day cycle). Over that same time span, we navigate the logistics of menstrual management; ovulation; mood and energy fluctuations; cramps; breast tenderness; joint pain; back pain; weight gain; headaches; appetite changes; birth control-related hormonal changes; fertility treatments; conception; unwanted-pregnancy anxiety; pregnancies; morning sickness; miscarriages and terminations; labor; delivery; C-sections and recovery; postpartum mood changes; breastfeeding; other hormonal fluxes involving mood and libido; and all manner of endometriosis, fibroids, and cysts. You could probably add to this list.
Sometimes we resume training with a drastically altered body, a maternity bra to facilitate breastfeeding between workouts, a new sense of self and our priorities, and a needy infant in tow.
After all that, for masters athletes, here comes perimenopause; menopause; post-menopause; heavy, prolonged, or irregular bleeding; hysterectomies; oophorectomies; hot flashes; night sweats; sleep disturbances; vaginal dryness; brain fog; bone density decreases; metabolism shifts; increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease; and more.
Your fifth grade teacher did not mention those details. Thankfully. It’s a lot.
We usually don’t try to explain it, either. We usually don’t talk to men about what it’s like to live in a female body because we can’t describe it, or don’t feel a need to, and how could they understand, anyway?
Also, we don’t want to brag.
Or complain. We don’t want to remind men how different we are. We want to be respected as peers. We don’t want to be the one basketball player who, in the heat of a pickup game in a gym with nine men, says, “Excuse me, I need to go change my tampon.”
When Does the Female Reproductive Function Affect Performance?
Always. Because this is how biologists define female: The type of body that was designed to produce large gametes. Even if something goes wrong and we’re infertile or undergo hysterectomies or mastectomies, our bodies still operate on female hormones, in female bodies, with female hips and bones and heads and everything else. There are no times of the month, nor times of the day, when female athletes can compete in sports without their female genes, chromosomes, hormones, anatomy, and physiology, all of which are significantly different from men’s. We’re not always producing or nursing babies. (Thank goodness.) But our bodies are all designed for that function, and retain that design throughout our lives.
An independent U.K. report on women’s football (soccer) estimated that only six percent of sports-science research is focused on the female body. Why? The vagaries of the menstrual cycle make research on women more difficult – or so they say – than research on men, so male athletes become standard. Again.
As a result, there isn’t enough research to standardize training and performance recommendations related to periods. But note: The existing research only evaluates such things as whether women are more susceptible to ACL tears during ovulation. (Inconclusive.) Scientists compare women to other women, and to their own performances over time. As they should.
No scientist even thinks to compare the impact of female reproduction on athletes to the impact of male reproduction on athletes. Apple orchards to miniature currants.
Males will never experience monthly menstrual cramps. They will never spend entire days screaming during labor. They will never blush off the pickleball court with blood gushing down their inner thigh. Or miss a tournament due to debilitating endometriosis. These are ordinary, everyday things – but only for women.
The female reproductive cycle is our ultimate strength: a superpower. How ironic to have to argue, after decades of advocating for athletic opportunities and respect, that the lifegiving purpose of our bodies comprises a weakness!
It does not, in the context of the human species’ need for sustainability.
But when comparing women to male athletes who claim to be women, it does.
A New Era Calls for New Rationales
The original arguments for adding males to the female category (“there aren’t very many of them,” “just be kind and inclusive,” and “you’re a bigot and transphobe”) have failed. Almost eighty percent of Americans are on our side now, and even trans leaders – such as Chase Strangio and Sarah McBride – are showing signs of surrender.
The trans activist side is shifting to “no categorical bans,” meaning that some males should be allowed to compete in the female category, especially when male puberty has been blocked.
Doesn’t matter. Males cannot go through female puberty, no matter what drugs they take. All male people are forever male.
Your other rationales for female-only sports, more numerous than I can list, are still valid.2 Now you have a new one to add: “Also, women menstruate.”
You’re welcome.
***
Thoughts? I’m always curious. With love and courage, Mariah
We’re not there yet. Women still lag far behind men in athletic opportunities in high school and college, 53 years after Title IX’s passage.
A quick refresher on other key arguments in the sports debate:
Males are stronger, faster, and bigger than women, with less body fat, more muscle, and larger lungs and hearts, all of which provide significant athletic advantages over women in virtually every sport.
Sports categories are defined by sex because they’re based on immutable physical differences between the two sexes, not ideas or beliefs or identities.
Sports categories are inherently exclusive. They exclude everyone except the protected group. Only by excluding all men can women be included in fair sports opportunities.
Males who weaken their bodies via testosterone suppression before or after puberty retain performance advantages over women.
Female-only policies do not ban males. Boys and men can still compete in the male category.
As a followup to this December "Also, Women Menstruate" article… So pleased to see that our message sinking in. In a biomechanical analysis of male vs female hockey speed, an IG account called AugusteHocky adds to the long list of bio differences that “she also has to contend with everything related to menstruation” (paraphrase). Thanks @Nancy Hogshead, JD, Oly @WSPWGhttps://www.instagram.com/reels/DUlbSNXCKIf/
“But *some* women don’t menstruate, therefore males should be allowed …”
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#CategoryFail