The word "menstruation" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to the biological process of a woman or other female-identifying person's body releasing blood and other tissue from their uterus. For example, "Women experience menstruation every month during their reproductive years."
Yet nearly all advertising for sanitary products encourages us to hide this chunk of our lives – three thousand days for most women – by preventing leaks that might embarrass us and everyone else; by ensuring we don't, God forbid, smell of menstrual blood; by putting menstruation behind locked doors and safely enclosed in euphemism.
It was clear from their stories that it was usually women themselves hiding menstruation behind silence and shame.
In 1986, Gloria Steinem wrote that if men got periods, they "would brag about how long and how much": that boys would talk about their menstruation as the beginning of their manhood, that there would be "gifts, religious ceremonies" and sanitary supplies would be "federally funded and free".
From that, we can extrapolate that many adolescent girls are also iron deficient to the point of being anaemic; more so than adolescent boys, because of monthly blood loss due to menstruation.
The lack of girl-friendly facilities is a huge problem when it comes to menstruation.
A recent report for WaterAid in Nepal found that roughly half of the girls questioned had been absent from school due to menstruation, mostly because of a lack of privacy for cleaning and washing.
Sanitary disposal facilities and single sex toilets are important requirements- as Richard Jolly at the Institute of Development Studies says, "unless there are separate facilities for girls many parents don't want their girls to be in school – especially when the girls are starting menstruation".
Research differs as to the impact menstruation has on sportswomen's performances.
Menstruation is not "woman trouble" – or even "being touched by the goddess".
Quint's mission is to take the shame out of periods, to "help alter the visibility of menstruation, so that it's at least normal to talk about it.
In countries where sanitary products are inaccessible or unaffordable, menstruation can mean missed school for girls (UNICEF estimates 10% of African girls don't attend school during their periods) and an increased dropout rate, missed work for women and repeated vaginal infections because of unsanitary menstrual products.
