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COMMENTARY

“Don’t Say Period”: Now Florida

wants to ban students from
discussing menstruation
Florida’s “Don’t Say Period” bill can’t stop the menstrual wave

By RACHEL KAUDER NALEBUFF

PUBLISHED APRIL 11, 2023 6:03AM (EDT)

Ron DeSantis, surrounded by tampons and pads (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

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H
ouse Bill 1069, also known as the "Don't Say Period" bill, which passed in
Florida's Republican-controlled House at the end of March, means what you
think it means. 

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The bill proposes banning any form of health education until sixth grade and would prohibit
students from asking questions about menstruation, including about their own first periods,
which frequently occur before the sixth grade. If passed by Florida's Senate and signed into
law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the ban will be effective July 1.

 In response, much has been written about the harms of depriving young people of
information about their own changing bodies, and how in such a void, schools will instead
be teaching a culture of shame. 

It's a dizzying moment.

How do we make sense of a culture in which state-sponsored shame and ignorance is

possible in the very same year that Hollywood is set to release the first major motion
adaptation of Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," an ode to puberty and
menstruation, ushering us into what critics have called a Judy Blume-aissance?

Related
Florida to stop asking high school athletes about their menstrual cycles — but
many states still do

How do we make sense of censoring conversations about menstruation in U.S. schools

one year after Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products
universally accessible, and when Spain, just two months ago, became the first country in
the world to offer paid menstrual leave? 

How can all of this be happening at the same time that youth activists are advocating for
free menstrual care products in their schools, grassroots groups across the country are
distributing free period products as part of mutual-aid initiatives, and we are witnessing
what is a veritable menstrual justice movement?

Because Florida's "Don't Say Period" bill is a backlash. 

But like the proverbial King Canute, helpless in stopping the rising tide, conservatives are
powerless against a rising wave of open dialogue. This bill can't and won't stop the cultural
tide.

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As the editor of two educational anthologies about menstruation, I've talked with people
around the world about periods —first periods, last periods, missing periods, transitioning
genders and menstruation, miscarriage, and menopause—for over 20 years. We are finally
at an inflection point where we are talking about menstruation across ages and genders,
and beyond just the private sphere. This is a blood awakening.

We are finally able to see that while it's important to talk about menstruation as a biological
phenomenon in health class, that's the bare minimum. Talking about menstruation is a way
to understand ourselves, our cultures, and our inherited histories. Menstruation is also a
part of our daily lives—or daily reality of your classmate, teacher, lover, or colleague—and
therefore all of ours to understand.

Republicans' "Don't Say Period" bill can't stop the menstrual wave

We can start talking about menstruation at the very beginning. Far before sixth grade.

We can talk about menstruation when a child first asks where they come from. 

We can talk about menstruation when we learn about color. 

We can talk about periods when someone is running out to the grocery store and ask them,
no matter their gender, to help pick up supplies. 

We can talk about menstruation when we learn about cultural practices around the world—
including efforts to reclaim Indigenous rites of passage that have been erased due to
colonization and are being performed now, in some cases, for the first time in generations.

We can talk about menstruation when we talk about history. My work as an oral historian
was inspired by hearing a story from my great aunt, who got her first period while fleeing
Nazi-occupied Poland. Her account — the image of a trail of blood running down her legs
while being strip-searched by an SS officer — allowed me to relate to her history in an
embodied way, one that I'd never experienced from a textbook. 

We can talk about how in the U.S., almost two-thirds of people who menstruate and live in
poverty have to choose between food and period products. We need to understand how
this affects school attendance. And how a lack of affordable and free supplies in schools
and workplaces and public spaces affects our ability to participate in society. 

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We can talk about menstruation when we talk about strength and rest. In the UK, the
Chelsea Women's Soccer team trains according to their cycle. All of us could learn to
harness our strongest times of the month — that is, if we talked about menstruation first.

We should talk about periods when we are in physical or emotional pain due to cramps,
fibroids or hormonal dips, or are overwhelmed by hot flashes — and yet so much of this still
happens in silence.

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We need to talk about menstruation — from an early age, and for the rest of our lives —
because these early conversations are foundational for all our later conversations about our
bodies, gender, sex, desire, consent, and the ways we physically evolve as we age. And
because if we don't talk about menstruation, this silence leads to, someday, a room full of
people who pass unimaginably harmful legislation. 

We can all contribute momentum to this cultural wave by talking. And talking far and wide
beyond the classroom. 

Let's flood the airwaves with talk of blood. Let us talk about our aches, our pains, our
moods, our needs, our cultures, our connectivity. Let us listen. And we'll see that there is
nothing that Florida legislators can do to stop our much larger consciousness-raising that's
underway, try as they might. 

By RACHEL KAUDER NALEBUFF

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff is an oral historian and the editor of "Our Red Book: Intimate Histories
of Periods, Growing, and Changing," a collection of firsthand accounts about menstruation from
voices of all ages, as well as the creator of the New York Times bestselling collection of first
period stories, "My Little Red Book." She teaches nonfiction writing at Yale University.

MORE FROM RACHEL KAUDER NALEBUFF

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