Period Retreats. They’re A Thing. And The Creator Of Them Is ‘At Your Cervix.’

A clever and competent reader emailed us this story, and after I got done laughing at it, I decided it needed exposure, in case anyone out there needed a reminder about how totally batsh*t some feminists are.

So here’s the gist.  There are women spending Actual Money and Actual Time to take period retreats.  What’s a period retreat, you ask? It’s a 7 day trip during which time you “get in touch with your body” and “reclaim your period.”

Reclaim it from whom, you ask? I have no earthly clue.

This is all the brainchild of anthropologist Iris Verstappen, now 28 years old, who founded Cycle Seeds.  Cycle Seeds arranges for women to take getaways to places like Menorca and Malta and “connect with other women, with yourself, and with your cycle.”  According to the sourcelink, she signs her emails, “At your cervix, Iris Josephina,” which is clever but also ridiculous.

She’s one of those women who believes menstruation is too taboo, and not talked about enough.  So she has these retreats where participants learn about their cycles, visit stone monuments which Iris calls “ancient vortexes of sacred feminine wisdom,” and spend time “sitting with their blood.”

WTF is “sitting with your blood,” you ask? It means collecting enough of your menstrual blood to examine it, feel it, even smell it.  It means free bleeding (which we’ve discussed here and here and here.)  Iris says free bleeding can be empowering.  Because why shouldn’t we find strength in periods, you guys?  WHY I ASK YOU.

Not to get all TMI on you, but 8 years ago, I had my uterus taken out.  I was done having babies, and I had fibroids, and so I was positively delighted when my OBGYN told me she could just take my uterus out altogether. Do I miss having periods?  HELL TO THE NO.  They are a huge pain in the ass, they’re inconvenient, they’re messy, and they often come with side orders of cramps and bloating.  Empowering?  Give me a break. If you’re a woman who genuinely ENJOYS 5-7 days of bleeding every month, I question your sanity.

Now, I’m not suggesting for a second that periods are abnormal or something to be ashamed of.  They’re normal and natural and just part of the deal of being a woman.  But they’re also not something to make a huge weird fuss over, because that’s freaking wack.

People like Iris, however, and people like the CEO of Thinx (the period panties), are determined to make periods something people talk about ALL THE TIME.   The Thinx CEO said, “Girls need to learn that their periods are not something they need to be afraid of. It holds us back when we don’t talk.”

There’s a lot of daylight between making sure girls aren’t afraid of their own periods, and talking about periods all the time.  I’m all for appropriate education.  But there’s a difference between appropriate education, and convincing girls that they should free bleed in public because #EMPOWERMENT.

Iris did a blog post a couple years ago in which she shared several photographs of herself completely naked, with period blood dripping from her, her hands soaked with her own period blood, and streaks of her period blood across her face.  Obviously, I’m not posting them here because GROSS.  But if you wanna see ’em, have at it right here. 

Why did she do that, you ask?

From the horse’s mouth:

1. There is still too much taboo around menstruation in our world – this influences our daughters and sons negatively. I wonder why we keep doing this and think change is not as hard as we think.
2. Around the globe, there are still too many menstruators humiliated and shamed for what their body does every month.
3. I see our body as the ultimate piece of art and I am done hiding my beauty.
4. I want to shift ideas on what ‘beauty’ is — we have strange beauty standards that influence us negatively. This has to stop.
5. I know too many people who are struggling so much to feel comfortable in their bodies. This breaks my heart.
6. I have transformed from a shy girl in the background to a badass change-maker. That’s just who I am. I am not here to shut my mouth. I am here to speak up — also for all of those who want to but cannot raise their voice for whatever reason.
7. I want to truly embody the #menstrualrevolution I have started.
8. Young girls who do not bleed yet have questions no one seems to be willing to answer. In my workshops, I have girls asking what a period looks like, what it feels like, how much blood there is.. They deserve to know. For some of you: do you recall how scary it was that NO ONE told you what EXACTLY was going to happen when you would start bleeding, that blood would flow from your vagina, where your vagina is, what color the blood would be, whether it would hurt? I do. And I think it’s unfair to get uncomfortable and turn our head away from their brutally honest questions.

Iris also says:

Blessed in blood, I will leave you with my powerful medicinal sacred photos. You are welcome to look at me. I allow you to look at me. And I am asking you to see YOU when you look at me. I invite you to look at the blood. I invite you to see it as something sacred. I want to ask you to not sexualize my body. I want to ask you to not see my body as an object. I want you to open your heart and eyes and see it as something absolutely sacred. And with that, I want to invite you to, from now on, see every single body (whether it bleeds or not) as sacred.

The timing of me seeing this article was kinda weird, because I had my annual visit with my OBGYN today. You know what I’m talking about. The one with the stirrups. And as I was reading about Iris just now, I found the Cycle Seeds Facebook page, and saw this post.

I laughed out loud at the part where she suggested that women say to their OBGYNs, “Please wait until my yoni opens, she does not feel safe yet.”

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

My OBGYN is my age, she’s hilarious, and we’re FB friends. If I said that to her we would both bust out laughing. But even if we weren’t friends, and even when I had OBGYNs that were dudes, I never saw the speculum as a freaking “TOOL OF OPPRESSION,” because I’m not a total lunatic and I don’t think I’m being violated or denied “agency” just because a doctor is giving me a papsmear.

If Iris wants to watch her cervix “wax and wane like the moon,” that’s her business, obviously.  But when she talks about it publicly and suggests that we all need to talk about periods more, I’m gonna have to weigh in to remind her and everyone else that there are PLENTY of bodily functions that are completely normal, but that we’re not all compelled to talk about for the sake of “empowerment.”

Everyone poops.  Is there gonna be a pooping retreat we can go to? Is Iris going to do a photoshoot with poop next? And if she’s not, why isn’t she?  Why doesn’t she see that as something sacred? When is the #pooprevolution? Why won’t Iris open her heart and her mind and see pooping as sacred?  When is she going to do a blog post with photos and say, “I will leave you with my powerful medicinal sacred photos, blessed with poop?”

GAWD.