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For many women, sexual stress reflects negative associations with female body functions. As we have discussed, it is women alone who menstruate, gestate, and lactate. They should feel unique, special, and proud. Instead, they often feel embarrassed, inconvenienced, and inferior. Why?

A look at some common taboos shows how women get the message that being female is a physically and psychologically unhealthy state of being.

Don't swim during menstruation.

Don't wash your hair during menstruation, because you will get sick.

Don't handle flowers during menstruation, because they will wilt.

Don't get a hair permanent during menstruation, because it will not take.

Don't have intercourse during menstruation.

Menstruation is particularly singled out for negative attitudes. Just when a young woman is trying to cope with the stresses of adolescence, she begins to menstruate. In some cultures, this is a cause for celebration. In our culture, it must be kept a secret.

Jennifer's first menstruation started while she was at school. At first, she was frightened when she noticed red stains on her underpants when she was changing into her gym clothes. She was twelve and had no sex education at school. Her mother had never spoken to her about menstruation—or about anything else that personal, either. Jennifer had never allowed herself to think about "that part" of her body, nor look at her genitals with a mirror. She had only a vague notion of her sexual anatomy, and wasn't too sure exactly where her vagina was in relation to her urethra.

Jennifer had heard from the boys on her school bus that the first "period" was the bloodiest. Her fear turned to worry. She didn't dare go to gym, leave the locker room, or even get up off the bench. She was trapped. She wondered when the cramps and headaches she had heard about would start. Maybe in a few minutes when the flow really began, she concluded. She was still sitting on the bench, frozen by her anxiety and confusion, when she was rescued by a teacher-in-training.

Advertisements for tampons and sanitary napkins emphasize the need to hide any signs of menstruation, avoid any possibility of an "accident," and forego adjusting one's activities in any way. "No one but you will know," they seem to be saying.

Like Jennifer, many adolescents worry about hiding their secret month after month. They feel odd if they start menstruating early in puberty, they feel odd if they start late, and they feel odd while they are menstruating. It's certainly not hard to understand how females can develop negative feelings about a body function referred to as

The curse

Being unwell

On the rag

Sick time

Bleeding

A visiting friend

That time of the month

Once a woman starts associating her vagina with a "curse," it is but a short step to developing self-conscious sexual inhibitions.

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