Can A Stick Truly Penetrate a Spiral?: The Unfortunate Consequences of Patriarchy

by Sarah Dajani’ 26

Staff Writer

Wicked, whiny, wonderful feminists, get your anti-men posters and get ready to complain about….

Women, are you sick of sucking at keeping up a healthy diet, routine, or even mode? I have the solution for you…I mean, I am not writing for a tabloid, but I might have an explanation for you.

You know that quote that pops up on your Instagram and is falsely attributed to Einstein that tells you not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree? Well, sorry to break it to you my dear fish, but not only are you judged while climbing that tree, you are expected to do it exactly like a monkey, and do it perfectly! Let me explain, usually a uterus is accompanied by a menstrual cycle and this menstrual cycle involves severe hormonal changes over the period of a month. Exactly! A period of a month, but it’s still a cycle because it repeats every month. The idea of routine is falsely associated with consistency in an easily recognizable pattern: daily, biweekly, monthly, and so on. However, there is a pattern in our bodies—well, some of our bodies—that occurs cyclically, we just have not figured out its details. Whenever you feel so proud that humans have reached the moon remember that we cannot tell, anywhere near certainty, whether a woman is menstruating on this day or not. 

A long history of oppression, imperialism, and exploitation turned the world into a white male oligarchy. Since men do not exactly care about the menstrual cycle, even more so with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there was rarely any money dedicated to studying and researching the female body…scientifically at least. Therefore, a method of determining when exactly one would get their “period” is a deep mystery and a far-reaching dream. Some of you might still be wondering why this is by any means significant; It is significant because, if we were to start viewing our month in cycles, our routine would be designed to best fit our body. Take the gym for example, consider increasing the weight you lift during your follicular phase but being kind to yourself when bloated and exhausted during the luteal phase just before menstruation.

“Do not blame your ignorance on patriarchy.” Years without a right to vote, own property, earn money for house labor, etc., almost no effort was dedicated to understanding the female body. This is why across hundreds of diseases women are diagnosed about four years later compared to when conditions are recognizable in men. Despite males’ tendency to seek help at a later stage, diseases and disorders are spotted in them first because they have served as human lab rats for most medical research. The research was conducted by them, for them, and on them. The same misogynistic mentality inaccurately models our spiral monthly cycles on a linear calendar, where hormones are constant and days are similar. In other words, the calendar we currently use to model our menstrual cycle is incapable of representing it properly because a stick will never fulfill the qualities of a spiral.