I have any number of icons that would be hilariously inappropriate for this topic

[sholio]

I ran across an interesting link today on how/whether to write about periods (as in, women having them):

http://madelineashby.com/?p=1492
(detailed discussion of bodily fluids, as one might expect)

This reminded me of the time menstruation came up as a topic on a worldbuilding/spec-fic mailing list I used to be on circa 1996 or so. One of the guy writers on the list asked the women to weigh in on how they felt about fictional depictions of menstruation. Mainly he wanted to know if female readers are thrown out of the story if it's not mentioned, and did we feel it would plausibly affect a female character's ability to ride/fight/etc to a degree that should be mentioned for realism?

IIRC, the eventual consensus (which I think is pretty reasonable) was:

- The range of female experience is so incredibly broad that almost anything is at least plausible;
- It isn't noticeable (to most readers) if it's not mentioned;
- Writing it awkwardly or gratuitously is a lot more jarring to most readers than not writing it at all.

In other words, what we ended up with was: no need to write it if you aren't comfortable with the topic or just don't care, but it adds a bit of realism if you do mention it occasionally (especially if they're in a situation where it might plausibly come up, like trapped somewhere or out in the field for months) and there's enough individual variation that you can basically get away with whatever your plot needs.

Anyway, I don't agree with everything at the above link (in particular the implication that a writer has to mention it for realism, which is very much not my belief), but it has some interesting discussion, especially in the comments. I was particularly interested by the comment which mentions that female cycle-syncing is largely a myth, which has certainly been my experience.

What do you think? Have you ever mentioned it in a story yourself, or seen it done well? Would you write it? Is there a scenario you think is usually done poorly that could be done better?

Comments

[heliopausa]

I've seen it a few times in Narnia fanfic; since there are female characters going from child to adult to child, menstruation (or the lack of it) can be a useful indicator of that whole change, and characters can talk about that (as in "I thought I was late, but now I realise it's just that my body's changed"). I don't think I've ever seen menstruation treated as something which impedes action for the characters, though.

[sholio]

One interesting thing about all of this discussion is that it really is making me think about how I handle it in my own fiction! (Fannish and otherwise.) I compared it in another comment to writing about weather; there have been times when I've realized I got so caught up in the plot that I've given the characters a month or two of nonstop sunny weather and, you know, there probably should be at least SOME inconvenient rain in all of that time, unless they're in like the SAHARA or something. I think this might be one of those things, where it's really easy to get caught up in plot details and not think about it. Now I'm going to try to think about it a little more!