First period - how do you handle it with male members of family

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do r co sister having a period to be a medical event. In my entire life I have never spoken to my father about my period. I never bled heavily throughout the house and he has never cleaned up my blood. He also never was sent out to buy period products. I am older but privacy and bodily autonomy is far more important to me than thinking any man she might encounter needs to know her uterus lining is shedding in case she bleeds somewhere.

Never in 50 years has my father NEEDED information about my menstruation cycle. It isn’t a medical event, it is the normal reproductive function of a female body.

As someone who had horrifically heavy periods starting in my teen years, I can’t imagine a father in the same house not knowing. The first time I had a bad period, I ended up in the hospital due to anemia. Something that you consider a normal bodily function can go sideways very quickly.