Period Sex: Yes, No or It Maybe So? by Voluptuous Voltarian

When I first started dating my last boyfriend we were sitting in his car one day discussing our sexual do’s and don’ts. I told him I didn’t like rough blow jobs; I didn’t find anything sexy about gagging and choking and I didn’t want to vomit all over someone’s junk which would surely happen if he were to push my head down and shove his dick down my throat. I needed to be in total control of the blow job. I was a blow job fan but any vigorous fucking of my face would quickly turn that fandom to damn-dom.

He told me he didn’t like anal sex. He said in Twi with a very straight face “Why go through a window when there is a door?” I agreed. I told him I didn’t like super-rough stuff, choking, slapping, punching and any of their disciples. I was particularly averse to any kind of spitting: spitting on my pussy to make it wet, spitting on my face or my boobs, spitting *shudder* in my mouth. I didn’t even believe in the him-spitting-in-his-hand-and-using-it-to-lubricate-his-dick thing. “I would always be more than wet enough” I promised. I didn’t mind the saliva that happens with kissing and licking and blow jobs and all that good stuff but the sound of spitting, that quick furtive ptth noise, chale, it really made my skin crawl. “Cool,” he said.

I asked him about period sex. He raised an eyebrow like it had never even occurred to him and said “Nope. Don’t do period sex.” I bit my lip. I wasn’t surprised. Still, I asked him why.

“Is it the blood that grosses you out?”

“It’s the everything” he said. “Everything.” “E.ve.ry.ting” “What kind of sex kwraaa is sooooooooo essential to your life that you can’t do without it for a few days?”

I almost said “Mine. Mine is that necessary. It’s like air. A few days will feel like eternity to you” lol, but I didn’t want to be that cocky when I hadn’t gotten the cock so I held my tongue.

Secret? I love period sex. I didn’t think I would, really. I’ve never been one of those people who are grossed out by my period, even though being raised in Africa I had been taught it was this secretive, almost impolite thing that everyone else must be shielded from. As early as Class Five the Life Skills teacher, Miss A, had taken all the girls in the class aside and showed us this thing called a utility kit that she said every girl must have. No exceptions. The kit consisted of a pencil case (so of course no one could tell that what you were carrying were for dirty dirty periods) filled with a sanitary pad, an extra sanitary pad, an extra pair of panties, a bar of soap and a page of newspaper. The sanitary pad was for if you got your period unexpectedly in school or if the one you were wearing soaked through — you would always be prepared. The extra one was backup. The panties were so if your period soaked through the pair you were wearing you could take them off and switch them out with the new ones before the blood got on the back of your school uniform. The bar of soap was to wash the soiled panties you had just taken off so you could put them back in the utility kit and take them home. The newspaper was to wrap up the sanitary towel you had just taken off before you disposed of it so no one would have to look at a bloody pad in the wastebasket.

The utility kit was compulsory. Like, by force. Frequent random checks were conducted every few weeks to ferret out those who didn’t have theirs in their bag. Like the way prison authorities come and toss cells without warning looking for shanks and alcohol made in toilets. Miss A would suddenly appear in the middle of another teacher’s lesson, send all the boys out of the classroom and ask everyone to put their utility kits on the table. Everybody’s pencil case would be opened and inspected. She would go down the checklist. If you didn’t have an extra pad you would be caned, if you had forgotten the panties you would be caned, if you didn’t have the newspaper you would be caned, and of course if you had dared to come to school without the utility kit at all then yawa for you. You wouldn’t be able to sit down for days.

In retrospect the kit was a good thing to have. Getting your period is annoying enough but getting it unexpectedly really sucks and always knowing you have stuff to handle that situation gives you a certain peace of mind. But the idea behind the utility kit and the extent to which it was prioritized was also mired in the kind of shame that the world teaches girls to have about their bodies, particularly their vaginas, and especially their periods. We were taught in school and at home that getting your period in a way that was indiscreet, in a way that did not meet the required standard for secrecy, which was that boys and men would remain oblivious of it, was the worst thing that could happen to you. Getting a period stain on the back of your skirt was considered the most embarrassing thing in the world, even though our uniform bottoms were dark brown and no one could really see red blood — just having that outline of a wet spot on your skirt was enough to betray you, which of course meant the end of your life as you knew it.

We called it “soiling yourself.” I mean let’s take a second to think of the psychological effects of the word choice; equating people seeing your period with shitting on yourself, or insinuating that your being/soul was somehow damaged. If it happened to you in school and the boys saw it, you would get teased and shunned within an inch of your life. Chale, the soiling-prevention-sisterhood was a serious thing. Even a girl whose boyfriend had bought you yogurt after school and told everyone that he didn’t like his girlfriend and if he got you he would melt like sugar —a situation that had made her cry and ask God to curse you every night before she went to bed— would discreetly slide behind you and check the back of your skirt for stains if you asked her. A girl who didn’t speak English would find a translator to tell you if you walked by and she saw you had a period stain. It would have been inconceivable to soil yourself, and have even a 100 pesewa-sized spot, and just not give a damn and walk around like the world wasn’t going to explode.

So yeah I had probably internalized some shady stuff about periods. But still I had enough self-awareness to just kind of leave it at the door once I grew up. My periods were extremely painful— my housemistresses used to get doctor’s notes about the severity of my cramps before every school year (the way you get a medical exemption for a child with a disability), and I used to bleed like Jesus on the cross for five out of the seven days which my periods lasted for. I hated getting my period. And I was really frightened and diligent about not soiling my clothes. But I wasn’t one of those people who felt bloated and nauseous and emotional and couldn’t even imagine someone coming near me during that time. I was crying and screaming from pain, and I was lightheaded from anaemia, but physical touch didn’t make me cringe. In fact, I discovered, one day while my period came when I was masturbating, that things happening in my nether regions actually eased the pain. So before I started having sex, occasionally, very occasionally, if my period was getting towards the end and I had minimal bleeding and I was feeling horny I would crank one out with my vibe. Then I’d wash and sanitize the vibe and put it away. Easy peasy.

When I started having sex I didn’t expect to have sex on my period. I knew a lot of men who were grossed out by any kind of blood. Patriarchal conditioning makes it such that even men who are not grossed out by blood from cuts and scrapes somehow feel like once the blood is coming from *gasp* a vagiiiiiiiiiiiiina it somehow becomes a different category of blood. Phlebotomists saf no dey want do. So I knew how guys felt about it and even I couldn’t really imagine, with how wet I got and how much blood would probably get on the guy, that it was something that was possible. But my first boyfriend and I were like addicted to each other. And somehow one day we were getting frisky and I said I was on my period and he said he didn’t care and we got busy. I loved it. Like, for real, no joke, loved it. From the beginning of the foreplay my cramps had started to recede from my mind. The pain hadn’t gone away but it was being offset by a different sensation. By the time my guy slid into me I was so wet the blood there had gotten all silky and the entire time we were fucking it was like I was high.

It wasn’t at the height of my period so there wasn’t a lot of blood, and it seemed as if once I started getting wet the bleeding had somehow kind of stopped itself, and so we didn’t get a lot of blood on the sheets. But there my love for period sex was born. In the beginning I think we had sex mostly at the beginning and the end of my period when I wasn’t bleeding like I had been the victim of a drive-by shooting. But after a while we didn’t even care. I would be bleeding like whoa and we would just put a towel down and fuck till the world receded. He was white and one time I ended up riding him and when I climbed off after he came he had bright red blood all over his thighs and crotch and chest and even I was like “Eish.” But he was on his way to medical school and blood just didn’t bother him at all. So he wiped the blood off with a tissue and we jumped into the shower and scrubbed down and went about our business. I thought it was so sexy.

He started doing this thing where if I had a tampon in he would tug on the string slowly, kinda in and out, almost like he was fingering me with it and I would get so turned on. It’s weird, ladies tell me if this happens to anyone else, but if you have a tampon in and you get wet the tampon kinda starts to inch down like it’s going to come out. It doesn’t but it settles like right at the edge of the hole and it feels really good when it’s sliding out of you. There was this other thing he used to do where we’d be grinding on each other naked and he’d just slide his hand between us and yank the tampon out of my pussy and shove his dick in in like the span of one second. I would almost come right then and there. I get even tighter than I usually am when I get my period, because I think the tampon being up there makes the walls contract even more, so his above-average dick felt even bigger in those awesome times. The tightness really worked for him too. So even though my period wasn’t something we looked forward to like it was Farmer’s Day and we’d get the day off from school we didn’t see it as much of inconvenience. All the usual foreplay could happen. The tampon keeps everything plugged so he could touch my clit and everything without getting blood on his hands. When the agoro started to sor one of us would take the tampon out, wrap it in some tissue and throw it in the trash. If I was bleeding a lot we’d put something down on the bed. If I wasn’t we’d just get it on immediately. Then afterwards we’d take a shower, or if there was very little blood on either of our junk we’d get a soapy, wet face towel, wipe each other off, rinse it out, wipe again and dry ourselves. Then I’d put a new tampon in, dress up and keep it pushing. So I got used to period sex and I just kind of assumed that it would keep happening.

Then here comes this new guy. He tells me he’s not into period sex and I try to sympathize because I really do understand how icky it might seem and I respect people’s boundaries. But I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed. He asks me, kind of judgily, if it’s something I’ve done before and I say “Yes, I don’t mind it at all” and I can see his eyes kinda narrow like “Woooooooow, she’s freaky.” But we start fucking and we get addicted to each other and one day he’s all hot and bothered and I say I’m on my period and he says he doesn’t care and it just happens. He’s like “Eh, that wasn’t gross at all” and I’m like “Told ya” and then it just becomes part of the repertoire.

I know it isn’t for everyone and some people have genuine issues with blood of any kind or don’t want to mess up a towel by putting it on the bed or don’t want to have sex in the shower. I know a lot of women just don’t want to be touched in any way, which I think should be totally and utterly respected. I know women who hate the whole menstruation process and are disgusted by blood and don’t want it anywhere on their bodies. I know women who feel like their period is a super-private thing and they don’t want to discuss it, share it, or have anybody see or know about it, which is also totally valid. And I also know women who think the quality of period sex for them is not high enough to make up for the wahala of the whole process.  The cost-benefit analysis just doesn’t work out for them.

But for people who don’t fall into any of those categories, when I probe about why they are so opposed to period sex, a lot of the responses I get are that it is just taboo. It’s disgusting just becaaaaaaaaaaaause. A lot of the women I know just feel like any guy who couldn’t wait for their period to be over is an asshole and a lot of men I know feel like any girl who would ask them to fuck while she’s on her period is a dirty girl. Not even just dirty like freaky but like physically dirty, someone who has bad hygiene. It all just makes me go “Hmmmm.” A guy who would pressure you into sex when you don’t want to is definitely a creep but what if his not wanting to wait for three or five or seven days is not about how entitled he feels to your body and just about him really wanting you? A girl who would belittle you for not fucking her on her period and whine until you do is a twit but what if she doesn’t do that, she doesn’t try to be manipulative and she just gets really horny at that time so she finds you extra sexy and she just wants some Vitamin D to take the edge off?

If you are not deathly afraid of blood or squeamish about the more common bodily fluids, like pussy juice and semen, then why is vagina blood so particularly problematic? As long as everyone properly wraps up the pad or tampon during sex and discards it properly afterwards how disgusting is seeing the stuff for one second? As long as everyone takes a shower or cleans themselves in whatever way they see fit so they are not walking around with dried blood on their bodies how dirty are they? And as long as people are two consenting adults doing what they want to do how judgey do we really have the right to be? Please tell me in the comments how you feel about period sex. Have you done it? Did you like it? Would you do it again? If you did it and hated it could you tell me why? Adventurers, I’m really interested in what you have to say about this one. So let the jist begin.

Read this article in French