Period

The Real Story of Menstruation

By: Kate Clancy

Narrated by: Kate Clancy

This audiobook narrated by Kate Clancy shares a bold and revolutionary perspective on the science and cultural history of menstruation

Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual’s period as useless and some doctors still believe it’s unsafe for a menstruating person to swim in the ocean wearing a tampon. Period counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science.

Blending interviews and personal experience with engaging stories from her own pioneering research, Kate Clancy challenges many of the myths and false assumptions that have defined the study of the uterus. There is no such a thing as a “normal” menstrual cycle. In fact, menstrual cycles are incredibly variable and highly responsive to environmental and psychological stressors. Clancy takes up a host of timely issues surrounding menstruation, from bodily autonomy, menstrual hygiene, and the COVID-19 vaccine to the ways racism, sexism, and medical betrayal warp public perceptions of menstruation and erase it from public life.

Offering a revelatory new perspective on one of the most captivating biological processes in the human body, Period will change the way you think about the past, present, and future of periods.

©2023 Kate Clancy (P)2023 Princeton University Press

Critic reviews

“Kate Clancy shatters the taboo and stigma surrounding periods that pervade Western cultures, offering a powerful and necessary rethinking of everything society has told you about menstruation. Profound and insightful, Period opens a window into what menstruation could be in a more just, more feminist future.”—Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Disordered Cosmos

“A tour de force of careful and robust science, personal reflection, and deep compassion that debunks misinformation and points the way to true menstrual liberation. With sparkling narrative and a commitment to care, Clancy shows why menstruation matters for all of us.”—Agustín Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional

“This book is a revelation. Kate Clancy demolishes the centuries of pseudoscience and misogyny that have wrongly made menstruation seem repulsive, and replaces them with a far more rigorous and fascinating view of this vital and nigh-miraculous act. Period is both an authoritative work of scholarship and a soaring, hopeful manifesto for a better culture and a more just science.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

An excellent book with mostly solid informa

The book provides a good summary of the biology, mythology, and cultural traditions surrounding menstruation. It is an excellent source of basic information in a world replete with false beliefs and misogynistic ideas about the process. It dispels the idea that there must be a "normal" period and that any woman who deviates from the norm is ill and in need of hormone therapy, and the book links the origin of this thinking to the discredited eugenics movement. Although it gets a bit off track toward the end with a few bits that extend beyond what can be said, the overall structure of the book is well done, readable, and a good starting point for information on a biological function half the world engages in.

Incredibly Informative

I’m not sure why this book has a low rating. I listened to it on 1.5x in less than a day. The way she goes into detail of the science of menstruation keeps me satisfied without being overly esoteric. And the history of science in women’s studies is so eye-opening and explains so much about the public lack of knowledge on menstruation. Fantastic work