Up to 20% of women suffer from cramping severe enough to interfere with daily activities – and many grimace through it without ever speaking up

I’d never been squeamish about talking about bodily functions. At university, I was a peer contraceptive counselor (meaning I handed out condoms on the quad and happily explained the inner workings of our reproductive systems to fellow students) and I’ve gone so far as to solicit drawing of vulvas from people, so I was surprised that when I started experiencing menstrual cramps so bad that I could hardly get out of bed in the morning, I kept quiet. Despite the fact that the pain made it so hard for me to go to work, it took me a year to tell my boss. And I hardly mentioned it to my closest friends and family.

Sign up for the latest from Vagina Dispatches Read more

Dysmenorrhea, the technical term for extreme period pain, is a common problem. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, up to 20% of women suffer from menstrual cramping severe enough to interfere with daily activities. But unlike the skiing-aficionado in your office who excitedly explains how he broke his arm on the slopes, many menstruating women grimace through their pain in silence.



In 2013, I was surprised to find myself as one of these silent sufferers. I started having two-week-long periods accompanied by cramps so bad I couldn’t move for days. I bled heavily for 12 to 30 days at a time, often with only days of a break in between. Put another way, the average ovulating woman has bled for a total of nearly one year since the 2012 election but I’ve nearly doubled that. Added together, I’ve had my period for longer than Trump’s presidential campaign. Hard to say which is worse.

When I finally had surgery to have fibroids removed from my uterus this year, friends remarked how they’d had no idea I was ever suffering. Now that I’m recovered, I have the energy back to think through what happened. Why didn’t I speak up about my menstrual pain? Why don’t others?



Some doctors don’t take women’s pain as seriously

For women who do speak up, their pain is often downplayed or ignored. I’ve read story after story after story after story of women whose pain was not taken seriously by physicians when something was seriously wrong (I saw three specialists before I was finally treated properly). A study, The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain, found that while women experience “more frequent and greater pain” than men, they are likely to “be less well treated than men for their painful symptoms”.



Dr Beth Darnall, a clinical associate professor in the division of pain medicine at Stanford University and a pain psychologist at the Stanford Pain Management Center has seen this phenomenon first-hand. She said that by the time patients reach her pain clinic, they’ve “seen multiple providers, they’ve been through primary care for their pain, they’ve probably seen another specialist, and then they come to us”.

It’s already hard to be a woman in the workplace

As a woman in the workplace, there is a maze of social issues navigate. You need to pay extra consideration to how to talk, how to dress and how to ask for a raise … and you still may receive a biased performance review. Considering that the mere fact of having a woman’s name can be enough to hold you back from a promotion, it’s easy to imagine how you might not want to remind your co-workers about your painful bleeding vagina.



Some companies are adopting menstrual leave policies to deal with the problem. Coexist has created an official “period policy” to let women take time off after director Beth Baxter noticed “women at work who are bent over double because of the pain caused by their periods” who “feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell.” But not everyone is in favor of this idea. Self magazine found that women at Coexist were divided on the policy, but those arguing against it wanted more flex time for all employees.



Menstruation is still stigmatized

Periods are such a social taboo that in one study, women who dropped tampons out of their purses were perceived as less well liked and considered less competent. Others didn’t want to sit next to them. So you can imagine my anxiety about displaying an ultra-level tampon (yep, they exist) on my way to the bathroom.



Vagina 101: can you pass this anatomy quiz? Read more

It was hard to talk about the pain I suffered from an abnormal period, but it’s often as hard to even talk about normal ones. This is a large part of what the Vagina Dispatches series is trying to address. It’s hard to talk about periods, period. Even ads for tampons and pads – supplies designed specifically for periods – still show blue liquid instead of blood.

... and as a result, women aren’t receiving the education they need

Menstruation is natural, but for it to cause extreme pain isn’t. However, because so many of us are never taught very much about what to expect from our periods in the first place, it’s hard to tell when something’s wrong. “Menstrual pain is wrapped up in a natural female phenomenon,” Darnall said. “We may be more likely to minimize it until it’s a really big problem.”



Some celebrities, such as Lena Dunham and Padma Lakshmi, are raising awareness about menstrual pain. But even those without famous names or named disorders shouldn’t suffer in silence.