Menses has been on my mind more than usual for the last six months. My daughter got her first period just five months ago. I wrote to Betty Dodson some months later asking for advice to help my daughter with inserting her first tampon. My daughter had asked me for help and I had sat down and got her looking at her vulva and vaginal opening with a mirror explaining all about it. However it was way too tense an experience for her to get the tampon in. Meeting her reflected vulva was like meeting a stranger for the first time who had been living under her bed her whole life and that was all she could handle that day. I gave her Betty’s advice,to spend time alone before going to sleep at night between this period and the next, when she was most relaxed, inserting a finger into her vagina. She did so and the next time menses rolled around she was a dab hand with the tampon, no help requested or needed. Problem solved!

The next period issue I had was my own though. I used a menstral cup back in 2006 but I lost it and never replaced it. However the only brand of tampons I use in Australia were an organic female owned and operated company that have vanished whilst I was living in Amserdam. So this month I decided to switch back from tampons to a JuJu which is the Australian version of a menstrual cup. I bought it not only because I intend to use it for it’s 10 year life span and not have to buy tampons again, but also because I want to do some blood play for a fetish shoot on my website. Interestingly I had a friend of mine, a male friend, react quite strongly to me talking about period openly and publicly showing a photo of my new JuJu. What was so interesting about this is this guy spends hours playing the most violent video games depicting “real as possible” images of blood and gore as he murders people. I struggle to understand why men who adore blood and gore are terrified of menstrual blood. No one I have asked has ever been able to give me a decent answer. So after asking him this I asked him if he could cope with the image better if I had overlayed a gun sight/target sybmol over the top for him. Would he then be okay with the idea of a woman’s blood?

Public talking about menses makes people squeamish, so I love doing it. Public images of bleeding just DON’T happen right? Except they do. Once I was bleeding and carrying two suitcases and a small child and my tampon leaked and ran down my legs whilst I was on a public bus. The driver and my fellow passengers looked truly agonised both for themselves and for me. So I flashed them a smile and a shrug and said… “what can you do? it happens”. I remember right up until it was pouring down my legs I was mortified and begging divine forces of the female persuasion to stop it from happening… afterwards I just thought…”fuck it”. Why was I so scared of it anyway? men urinate in public spaces without batting an eyelid. The trickles of blood down my legs also seemed strangely beautiful and cathartic. Acceptance is peaceful and eventually people stopped staring at me and went back to their business.

Personally I love a woman’s blood. I love fucking a woman when she is bleeding, not all women are horny at this time, or comfortable with their own blood, but when they are…phew…it’s intense. I love having the blood on my hands and on my sheets and I get off on the murder scene-esque visual of the sex. I have always wondered why men find it so very very abhorent. Is it a biblical legacy from judaism claiming that women are unclean and unholy whilst they bleed? Is it misogyny? Gynophobia? Can the fellas out there tell me what about it especially bothers you? It’s life giving just like sperm and we know the boys love cum shots… so what is it about this excretion that makes you say ew?

I am anti-censorship and all for freedom of speech. Yes yes yes unequivocally. So if rapists (or anyone who sees the humour in rape) wants to get together and tell jokes about it go ahead… but not on my time. I would walk out/change channel of a movie/comedy act/misc performance that had a rape joke and ask for my money back, I would walk out of a conversation that had a rape joke and tell someone why first. I would do this if someone was being homophobic, racist or sexist too. Yesterday I read two great articles about rape jokes that are quite long but are very interesting reading as responses to rape jokes.

http://oforganon.tumblr.com/post/11150747104/to-all-those-men-who-dont-think-the-rape-jokes-are-a

https://sexgeek.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/why-rape-jokes-arent-funny-even-if-youre-kinky/

and here are links to articles that support their claims

http://www.oneinfourusa.org/statistics.php this has statistics that corroborate the bloggers

Follow this link for an article with an indepth study of a convicted rapist It indicates clearly how he normalises his behaviour using cultural dialogue about rape that trivialises it and blames the victim. (He was unequivocally a violent rapists who as part of a pair of assailants abducted his victim and then both raped her so there is no doubt that he is a rapists though he describes his behaviour as normal male sexual behaviour).

http://www.jstor.org/pss/800239

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/sex_offenders_and_lads_mags_using_the_same_language.htm

http://web.viu.ca/crim/Student/TBauman.htm

I have heard rape jokes. I had an ex-boyfriend who made them once or twice (yes he had issues with consent, violence and sex also) and there was the T-shirt campaign on facebook. They were advertising T-shirts that said “It’s not rape, it’s surprise sex”. Understandably there was a big angry response and but I remember saying at the time.

“I’m okay with this T-shirt…you see I’ve always thought we should brand rapists with an R on their foreheads for future reference but unfortunately that is illegal…this t-shirt saves the trouble as you know that any guy wearing it is basically telling you he’s a rapist, a potential rapists or he is okay with rape and finds it funny. I, for one, am glad to be given the heads up on who to cross the street and avoid.”

Often when anyone tries to talk about rape jokes people start crying “censorship”. No one, in either blog, or this one, is asking for censorship and the second article details that REALLY clearly. Everyone should be entitled to freedom of speech and that includes telling racist or rapist jokes AS WELL AS calling a racist joke or a rapist joke something that trivialises and condones an evil in our society, WHICH IT DOES, like it or not. I understand that makes people feel uncomfortable if they find rape jokes funny. This does not necessarily mean you are a rapist but it does mean you may have eased the mind of a rapist or potential rapist when you laughed at his joke. That’s your shit to deal with. However, it is being obtuse if you refuse to acknowledge that humour can be used to reinforce dismissive attitudes to cultural prejudice, injustice, abuse and violence. REALLY REALLY OBTUSE. Racists jokes were used by racists in a culture that condoned racism, racial violence and slavery. Sexist jokes were used in political debate before women were allowed to work in certain careers, study certain things or to vote. I think it is safe to say the same is true of rapist jokes… our cultural dialogue is complicit in the justification of rape. Yes rape has been a crime in the west for a long time but only in relation to whether you were the property of male who would fight for your honour(=damages to their property). Only recently was it made possible for rape to be legally recognised between a man and his wife. Rape is still the only violent crime where what the victim was wearing is admissible as evidence for the defence (only if the victim is female identified though).

I don’t think comedy should be censored, in fact I think the way Sarah Silverman uses racist jokes and rapist jokes is very effective at using irony and sarcasm to illuminate this very issue we are discussing about humour. She has certainly had her fair share of shit for the jokes she tells and I hope (and believe) she welcomes it and the debate. I think it is important to discuss what we’re laughing at freely and call it what it is. A joke told repetitively in the public dialogue is not “just a joke”. Jokes exist within a cultural context. Humour is not a neutral tool that should go unanalysed and not have to answer for its part in our culture. Humour does not exist in a vacuum. It observes, critiques, represents and perpetuates shared cultural beliefs.

I also think humour is getting tyrannical when it refuses to allow itself to be scrutenised and discussed by crying “censorship” and “it’s just a joke”. It’s not censorship to point something out that is negative about a joke. Everyone is so scared of someone telling them they “don’t get the joke” or “their not in on the joke” or horror of all horrors the totality of “humourless” that they just let this shit slide. It’s not ‘cool’ to talk seriously about a joke and what it means and what it perpetuates culturally. We’re all just supposed to laugh along with it or we may get excluded from the funny people group.

So whilst I’m NOT calling for these jokes to be censored I am calling on people to expect and welcome debate about what we’re finding funny.

This got me thinking about rape fantasy also, there is a direct correlation. So I discuss them as I have had them. Many folks are concerned that saying this out loud will encourage a rapist to think women enjoy rape or want rape. This is why I never discuss it without also discussing the fact that rape fantasy and rape reality are actually opposites. The fantasy gives you control and consent and rape robs you of both. If someone is telling a rape joke but then shouts down any debate on rape and culture that brings up, that is really dangerous. If someone tells a rape joke and then willingly engages and acknowledges the necessity of discussion and debate about that issue..well that changes the context.

For my other blogs on rape

http://liandradahl.com/blog/?p=235

http://liandradahl.com/blog/?p=222

http://liandradahl.com/blog/?p=171

Today I have edited my alt.com profile to make it clear I want a damn PONY. I looked under the tree this Kissmas and had no luck that way (I found this was the same experience when I was a young little eight year old Li but of course that was a totally different kind of Pony) so now I am out to get one for myself.

WANTED: PONY, preferably a colt or stallion
**Must be in need of breaking in**

So Ponies, make Li’s wish come true, if you’re living in the Melbourne area get in touch. Liandra the horse whisperer will have you doing dressage in no time.