This post ain’t gonna make much sense. I’m particularly scatty-minded, and my writing makes a wonderful, Turin-Shroud like copy of my brain, so enjoy.

I am female, and as a female, once a month I have a period.

This, if you are living in the same society I am, is for some reason a topic which is treated with a great deal of “bleugh”, or “hohoho, you talked about your period, you’re so wacky.”

This has come up in conversation the past few days because I tend to get very, very miserable when i’m on my period. The women in my family nickname this feeling the “Can’t-Help-Its”, because you want to be cheerful, but every small thing is upsetting you, and you are feeling snappy and generally miserable.

I don’t like to admit I occasionally go through this, because people like to abuse it as short-hand for “her opinion doesn’t matter”.

And so before I say anything else, I will just like to point out three important points.

1) This does not happen every month, and even when it does, I, like everyone else who gets it, am not controlled by it.

2) Acknowledging the existence PMT and menstruation-related moods does not give anyone, anywhere an excuse to undermine or dismiss what a woman says.

3)While I will happily admit that my periods make me a little more battle ready than usual, I have never been angry about something while on my period that I haven’t been passively tolerating for the rest of the month.

For me, the occasional spike in irritability is just what I need to summon up the balls to tell someone that they’re mysterious and misdirected rudeness has to stop, or to ask my obviously stressed boss for a holiday.

 By no means am I a wilting flower without the extra progesterone, but I tend to overthink things. As such, I have two pieces of criteria for resolving possibly difficult situations directly. These are:

1) Is it actually worth the trouble? For example, if I don’t like the way my supervisor throws his weight around, is telling him to stop worth the possible fallout when I might not work with him that often?

2) Would it be unkind/inconsiderate of me to do this? For example, is asking my boss for a holiday going to cause her yet another headache as she has to figure out how to cover me?

My monthly battle-dress makes me more impulsive than usual, and in both the cases above, I took action that led to a less cuntish supervisor (around me, anyway), and getting my time off when I wanted it.