ITT female scummers talk about their periods - KEEP OUT

[Sarcastro]

Orcas are dolphins, not whales.

[Sarcastro]

I HATE my periods, I swear they want to kill me...

I'm scared of tampons too.

Im not the only one!

I think the only person who hates my period as much as I do is my BOYFRIEND. Since I can get CRAZZZZZZZZZY

Odds are that you only do because you believe you will. Most women don't actually get PMS; they're just conditioned to expect it.

[Sarcastro]

I HATE my periods, I swear they want to kill me...

I'm scared of tampons too.

Im not the only one!

I think the only person who hates my period as much as I do is my BOYFRIEND. Since I can get CRAZZZZZZZZZY

Odds are that you only do because you believe you will. Most women don't actually get PMS; they're just conditioned to expect it.

Actually I do get PMS. I know what you are saying and it is definitely true in many instances. However, when its almost time for my period, my emotions DO get out of hand. I'm usually much calmer during my period than right before my period. Its not just that I get depressed or angry, I also can get really excitedly happy, among other things.

I have been working towards controlling it though. Its not as if I try to use PMS as an excuse for my actions. Whenever I realize whats going on, I try to keep on my toes, and try to figure out why I feel the way I do about certain things so that I don't blow up and I don't go on emotional rampages. I can't always control it, but I definitely try to...

Look, I know that nobody likes to be told that something is "in their head", and I obviously can't say with certainly whether your symptoms are "imagined" (and I realise they obviously wouldn't feel "imagined" to you), but the fact that you only list the signs of PMS that are most played up in our cultural (the emotional ones) is a bit telling.

I don't mean to start an argument about it, and if you feel sure that your symptoms are not psychological, that's fine. It's just that it's a very human thing to think that it might be in other people's heads, but it's real for you, and it's important to recognise the fallibility of the brain.

More people are self-conscious about their dandruff than actually have dandruff, after all.

[Sarcastro]

Are you trying to start a fight or something?

Maybe she sites the symptoms most commonly publicized because they are actually common to women.

I don't think most women ever have PMS that causes them to commit murder or anything very serious, but I believe it exists.

Please comment again when you have a uterus.

No, I'm not trying to start a fight, as I specifically pointed out. I bent over backwards to make it clear that I wasn't saying it was necessarily true, just that it's a possibility.

And I never said that PMS doesn't exist. There's medical evidence that it exists. There's also evidence that it seems to occur a lot more frequently where people are conditioned by the media and other cultural factors to expect it to happen to all women.

The idea that I shouldn't be able to talk about these things because I'm not female is sexist and kind of offensive, to be honest.

Brandi, I'm sorry if you got the impression that I was telling you that you don't really have PMS. I thought I had made it clear that I was not saying this. All I was trying to say is that a lot of women's symptoms are psychological, rather than physical. I realise it might seem like an insult to suggest that you could be one of them, but the simple fact is that a lot of people simply don't understand the psychology of their own minds and refuse to accept that their perceptions could be incorrect.

For example, people on average tend to believe that commercials affect them less than others. Even if you tell them this, a lot of people will still insist that commercials affect them less. Of course, some of them are actually correct.

In much the same way, more women believe they get PMS than actually do. But that doesn't mean that none of them do.

So I'm sorry if I insulted you, because I was really trying to go out of my way to be sensitive about something I knew could be seen as an insult. Clearly I didn't do a good enough job.

[Sarcastro]

Oman, you can believe whatever you want; that doesn't make it true.

[Sarcastro]

Oman, you can believe whatever you want; that doesn't make it true.

Like you believing that was witty?

What are you talking about? I wasn't trying to be witty; I was just pointing out that it doesn't matter what you "believe" - orcas are dolphins, not whales.

[Sarcastro]

By the way, you all fail at language (some more than others). In the immortal words of one Bender Bending Rodriguez:

"The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention! Now that! Is! IIIIIRONYYY!"

[Sarcastro]

By the way, Periods suck.

Lies.

[Sarcastro]

Sarc trying to comment on PMS is like me trying to tell you it shouldn't hurt if you get kicked in the balls. And if it does, it's probably in your head. Unless you have done a medical study on women and PMS, then you know nothing because you can't even comment from personal experience since you DONT HAVE A UTERUS.

I agree that the brain is a weird place and can influence your body enormously. Stress can actually make you sick. So, yes, I do agree PMS can be in some women's heads. But I never hear that argument when people talk about getting the flu. "You're probably puking because you got so grossed out other people were puking." Which is entirely possible. You can feel sick after watching others get sick. But nobody ever tells you it may be in your head.

So even though Sarc was trying to be sensitive to women, he was actually reinforcing the stereotype that women are crazy/emotional.

I mean. Okay. We may be crazy and emotional. But so are men.

So your assertion is that your personal experience is more valid than actual scientific evidence? I have not personally conducted any studies, no, but I am perfectly capable of reading about them. That is where my information came from - I'm very surprised that you thought I was just making up everything I said based on personal experience, but that would explain why you thought "you're not a girl" was a valid argument.

I'm not trying to reinforce any stereotype - you projected a meaning onto my words that was never there. The fact that PMS happens to be confined to women doesn't matter to me or to the studies. And yes, all people are crazy, as the other two examples I brought up - dandruff and commercials - demonstrate.

Isn't Sarcastro the fellow who failed so miserably in the religious debate thread?

No, you're probably thinking of everyone who argued against me. Easy mistake to make, really.

(Note that it's not clear which religious debate thread you're talking about, because there have been so many, but I've won all of them, as far as I can recall.)

[Sarcastro]

Dueling studies is tech.

http://www.uptodate.com/patients/conten ... crin/10662

Mild PMS is common, affecting up to 75 percent of women with regular menstrual cycles; PMDD affects only 3 to 8 percent of women. This condition affects women of any socioeconomic, cultural, or ethnic backgrounds.

That'd be great if it were an actual study, Flay, and not merely an assertion. For all we know those numbers could have been reached by women self-reporting that they have PMS, which is obviously going to happen in either case.

Here is an article that references the study, although I didn't find the study itself.

Harding asked 101 University of Melbourne employees to fill out daily diaries on stress and health for 10 weeks. Not one reported mood changes meeting the diagnostic criteria for PMS for two consecutive cycles. Yet 40 percent of the participants said they suffered from the disorder.

"When I looked at the actual patterns of the women who said they had PMS, there was no association with mood and cycle," Harding reports. They were as likely to say they thought they had PMS whether they showed postmenstrual change, occasional menstrual change, or no change at all. "It's as if this label allows them a socially sanctioned time of month to be irritable."

About 18 percent of the women she studied occasionally showed marked premenstrual mood change. But emotional change was really not very different among women who, because of age or hysterectomy, were not menstruating.

[Sarcastro]

Not really.

First of all, the title was obviously begging to have guys come into the thread and post. It's like telling the fat kid not to eat another cookie.

Secondly, we're just talking about a freaking bodily function. The females discussing it don't seem the least bit shocked and appaled... yet they're surprised when we don't get shocked and appalled?

And some of us correctly guessed that it was not actually supposed to be about PMS.

[Sarcastro]

God Made us like we are.. there's nothing gross about it.

Prove it.