So I’m supervising a student who is doing a questionnaire study on the relationship between body shame – specifically genital shame – and preventive health behaviors like Pap smears and condom use. (If you’re college age and born female you can participate in the survey if you like.)
One of the question is “When was the first day of your last period? (i.e., on what day did your last period start?)” It’s an open ended question, not a calendar or anything fancy. And one respondant answered:
wednesday? i don’t remember? why is this relevant?
Which made me laugh out loud, but it also reminded me of something folks don’t talk about enough, and that’s the role of the menstrual cycle in research on women.
I think many of the problematic or confusing research results would be at least partially clarified if the researchers had taken the time to ask about menstrual phase. At any rate, it would increase the power of our observations.
It’s like the dodo, and the people who ate it. Some people described it as greasy, some people described it as tough. Why? Because some people ate it in winter and others ate it in summer, and the dodo had a seasonal body fat cycle. In order to describe what the dodo tasted like, you had to have a picture of how it changed across the seasons.
Example with women. One of the things I talk about pretty regularly is the lack of correlation between what a vagina is doing and how the person with that vagina feels. Whereas a penis’s degree of erection is a very, very good (not perfect, but very, very good) predictor of EXPERIENCE of arousal, vaginal lubrication and vasodilation just are not. But. Some studies – and by some, I mean not all – have found that while subjective reports of arousal don’t change across the menstrual cycle, physiological arousal DOES.
Random other things change too. Like attractiveness ratings for faces, preferences in body smells, and attitudes like body dissatisfaction – women report greater body dissatisfaction around menstruation, which may just be a function of mood, but I’m studying body shame and health behavior, so knowing that participants’ attitudes might be shaped by menstrual phase is important.
All that said, let me acknowledge that one of the remarkable and powerful things about women’s sexuality is the extent to which it is emancipated from hormones. Women will both consent to and initiate sex at all phases of the menstrual cycle, after menopause, and even when they’re pregnant or breastfeeding, which makes us VERY strange mammals indeed.
And the literature on something like sexual interest across the menstrual cycle is far from definitive: while on the one hand there seems to be a small peak in many women’s sexual activity around ovulation, there’s a much more pronounced peak around the weekend. Context is a crucial component in understanding women’s bodies.
So it’s a subtle thing I’m trying to pay attention to. But when you study an oscillating system – and a woman is, among a great many other things, an oscillating system – you have to measure it all points in its cycle in order to say what it’s like.
I’m a college-age woman and just took the survey. I’m curious why you chose questions related to safer-sex behavior that don’t allow for any answers if you haven’t had a new partner in the past 6 months.
Interesting post and interesting study!
the technically accurate answer is “That’s how the questions are written in the instrument from which we lifted them,” but that only demands “So why are they written that way in the original instrument?” for a variety of reasons, but mostly because people’s recall gets increasingly inaccurate the farther back in time you go, and 6 months is a reasonable threshold, and also because we want to learn about the relationship between your attitudes and your behavior now, not the relationship between your attitudes now and your behavior 6 months ago. that make sense?
Uhhh, except it didn’t ask about my behavior enough! Just because I said I wouldn’t have sex without a condom doesn’t mean I held to that standard! =S
I also took the survey, and have had the same sexual partner for over six months, and used our first time as my reference for answering many of the questions, but I felt uncomfortable answering ‘never’ for the questions related to STI testing. On the one hand, the answer makes me feel terrible as an advocate for safer sex and knowing one’s status. On the other hand, it’s truthful, and legitimate, since my partner and I were each other’s first sexual partner, and continue to be each other’s only sexual partner.
I’d definitely be interested to know the results of this study!
Interesting point, Emily. I’m studying sexual behavior and attitudes, and didn’t even think to ask about this. I wonder if the responses will change based on *when* I conduct interviews. ::runs to the library::
I took the survey, but have had only one partner for several years. So I just answered based on how our sexual interactions first took place, and I was still a college-aged female at that time, so I hope my answers can still be useful. I was also curious as to the role of pregnancy and chilbirth in body image…before I was pregnant I hated my body (I was also a victim of sexual abuse too though, which greatly affected me and my body image.) I always love your topics…and I like this topic especially. I feel our cycles are to be embraced and understood…it’s also my chosen form of birth control so I have gotten as familiar as I can with it.
Beth, so neat to hear you celebrate your cycle and birth control that way. One of the great joys of life was the many years my wife and I used basal temperature birth control, and our discovery that I could be trained (or train myself) to know her temperature each morning as we were waking to within a tenth of a degree. It was, for both of us, an amazing and brand-new form of intimacy.
Interesting. I’ve had similar “why the heck is this relevant” reactions before to this question, usually in the doctor’s office. I have a sore throat and you want to know about my last period? I twisted my ankle, and you want to know about my last period? (Docs: If you want to know if I could be pregnant, just ask straight out, please.)
But, in relation to your study, how it this affected by the use of hormonal contraceptives? Is that one of your research questions?
Hear, hear. Really, does the dentist need to know this? Did the guy taking out my wisdom teeth need to know if I have any STD’s? (Yes, that one got asked.)
Also, I am on Depo and haven’t had a period for years, so HAH, I have NO IDEA when the last period was. And thank god for that.
The question that asks “have you talked with a partner about homosexual experiences”… um… well, I’m not going to ask them about that if we’re both the same sex, cuz we’re already DOING it.
Took the survey, but I had to leave the whole set of partner questions on “decline to answer” because I’ve never HAD a sexual relationship (heck, only had one relationship period). There definitely should have been a “Not Applicable” answer in there somewhere.
Yep, same here. Also: When I answered the questions concerning my attitude to women’s genitals in general I couldn’ t help thinking that pretty much none of the replies would have been the same if I had been asked about my attitude to my own genitals.
@The Nerd: Thank you!!
Also, having positive feelings about vaginas in general doesn’t mean I don’t still have negative feelings about my own. I don’t. I love all vaginas, including mine. But the survey doesn’t really ask that. Hmm…
Ah, I had not read this comment when I wrote my comment. Sorry. That said, I agree.
Interesting!
I never thought much about my cycle in the past, mostly because I never had to. I wasn’t sexually active, it was more or less regular (or regular enough, I suppose). I started tracking my period on a couple sites, and recently with an app, for fun. When I found out cycle tracking was a natural birth control method, it became practical and fun! Now I’m always mildly conscious of where I am in my cycle, especially if I’m anticipating something, even something as minor as a presentation date.
I also used to think genitals were disgusting, and worse yet, that my genitals were exceptionally disgusting until I discovered VaginaPagina over at LiveJournal. They have a project called The Everyday Bodies Project (requires membership in community; while the specific page isn’t NSFW, its links to the galleries are) where volunteers over 18 submit photos of various body parts to form a community-based collective of what real, average, everyday people look like. It’s a great eye opener for those who base their perceptions of beauty on what they see in things like porn, and really quite liberating for those who participate. Had I not discovered that, my answers to that questionnaire and attitudes toward bodies, my own body, and sexuality would have been drastically different.
I think I felt a lot of body shame before I discovered menstrual cups, and up until then, I also HATED my period. It sounds weird, but having to get to know myself in that intimate, yet not-quite-sexual way was pretty empowering. Now I like my period, because I get to use my cup.
Oh wow, I didn’t even know there were such things as cycle tracking sites! Which one/ones would you recommend?
I just quit using hormonal contraceptive for a three month trial period. I had to undergo surgery twice last year to get a cyst removed and since then I have suffered from dryness and pain and am now trying all that perhaps could give me a healthy vagina again.
I also just bought a menstrual cup and have only used it half a period yet. I understand that it can take up to three months to get used to it, but even after a couple of days I’m really, really satisfied with it. Although I did experience some pain during inserting and removing the cup I’m thinking that not using tampons and pads would be at lot better for my vagina.
I use Femilia and Monthly Info. I really like that you can log in at different points in your cycle and see what’s going on in your body based on the information you input on the latter site, and most trackers will also track ovulation and/or most fertile days.
There’s definitely a fairly steep learning curve with the cup, but it really is worth it in my opinion! Have you tried different folding techniques? (Sorry if you’re already part of that community and this all just ends up being redundant, haha.) I could never handle the C-fold most of the instructional pamphlets included with cups recommend. I use a combination of the punchdown and 7-fold for insertion, and press it into a light C-fold for removal. It could be an issue of general comfort, too, if you’re not used to it yet.
Thank you very much, Michelle! I will certainly check out these sites.
I have only checked out some Swedish sites about the cup and not thought so much about folding techniques. Now I see that the punchdownfold could be something for me to try out, since I thought it was quite painful to insert the cup. But I’m in no hurry, I’m sure that I will find techniques that are suitable and comfortable for me.
Thank you for your help!
I laughed at the homosexual activity question as well. Wish there’d been a text field for selecting “other” – both my orientation and race are complicated, hah.
And a nitpick: The AIDS virus? Why not use “HIV”? Or at least “Been tested for HIV/AIDS”?
I took the survey, but uh… I don’t think you’ll get any useful information out of it, because I haven’t had any new partners within the last six months, so I just put “don’t know” for all of it. Maybe I should’ve put “decline to answer” instead, but I wasn’t really declining to answer, and I think “I don’t know” captures my confusion about not being provided with an appropriate option better.
I also really wonder why there wasn’t any neutral option for questions like “I think women’s genitals are beautiful.” That threw off my responses quite a bit as well, and probably made some of my answers seem contradictory and more negative than they should be… when in reality, my overall view of women’s genitals is neutral-positive. If this had been in an open-answer format instead of forced-choice, I would’ve put something like, “They’re not my thing, but I can see how other people would consider them beautiful.”
So… while it’s good that it asked about menstrual cycle, I really question how useful the survey results are going to be, and wish it were designed better/implemented with a little more foresight. If it’s not going to measure behaviors in the past or behaviors with partners who aren’t new, then maybe you could at least specify that the survey is only for people who have had new partners within the last 6 months before people start taking the survey.