According to this book, there are more than 5,000 euphemisms around the world for menstruation. Not that its author, Dr Jen Gunter, tends to be euphemistic. Once described as “the world’s most famous – and outspoken – gynaecologist”, she is already the author of The Menopause Manifesto and The Vagina Bible – a book that became a bestseller despite ads for it being banned on social media because algorithms flagged “vulgar, obscene or distasteful” words.
Language and the naming of things are important to Gunter, and she is clear about her dissatisfaction with many of the terms of her profession: pudendum, from the Latin “to be ashamed”, for example, and “vagina”, meaning “sheath”. “The hymen is possibly the most offensively named of all the structures in the body,” she writes, “as it is named after the Greek god of marriage.” Blood is the latest salvo in her quest to wrestle women’s health out of the grip of the patriarchy and give them new ways to communicate about the healthcare they need and deserve. An older term for ovaries is “stones” – because that’s what they look like – and she suggests using it to connote bravery instead of saying that someone “has got balls”. It takes serious stones to cope with many of the side effects of menstruation, and with having them dismissed by a medical profession that’s grounded in belittling women’s pain.
The language Gunter uses in the book is a dizzying combination of the rigorously scientific (we’re one of the very few animals to have periods because of our decidualising endometrium); the unashamedly personal (period diarrhoea plays a starring role); and the elaborate analogy. Some of these are more effective than others: it’s helpful to understand that “an ovulatory bleed is analogous to using the tablecloth to lift everything off the table cleanly” while “anovulatory bleeding is a cat knocking the dishes off the table”; but the idea of the levonorgestrel IUD being “the Swiss Army knife” of gynaecology might make some readers do an involuntary pelvic floor squeeze.
The book is at its most fascinating when explaining what our bodies are doing and why. The point of having periods (something many people who menstruate have wondered about) is to help humans give birth to healthy babies. But they are a drain on a body’s resources, and they can go wrong. Gunter is evangelical about sharing knowledge, insisting that painful periods are not just an inevitable part of life; that debilitating conditions can often be treated; and that no woman need suffer in silence or shame. At times it veers towards diagnostic handbook territory, but those bits can be skimmed or skipped. Think of Blood as like a Haynes manual for your uterus.
Gunter is also explicit about the information she doesn’t have – which is a lot, thanks to the lack of medical research into women’s bodies. Time after time she states that “more long-term data is needed”, and worries about the information vacuum that enables charlatans and organic snake oil sellers to frighten and bamboozle women. Gunter became famous for criticising Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and its infamous jade eggs – now she turns her ire on social media influencers who sell women unevidenced tests and treatments under the guise of “wellness” – “an interesting overlap of the ‘natural’ movement and the religious right that is rooted in purity culture, not empowerment”. Knowledge is power, she says. And if this book is packed with perhaps a little too much information, it’s because she wants every reader to find the hard medical facts they need.
Gunter is on a mission to counter any force that threatens women’s bodily autonomy, whether that’s as old as patriarchy or as new as online disinformation. In a chapter about polycystic ovarian syndrome, she writes “sometimes I just want to punch evolution in the face”. This book will be a valuable weapon for anyone who fights those battles.
• Blood: the Science, Medicine and Mythology of Menstruation is published by Piatkus (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
