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Eh?

‘God, I was disgusting!’ – Ali Wong on why women’s bodies are the last taboo

They are? I thought we had rather more public display and conversation about them than ever before.

Why is it still so taboo for women to talk about bodily functions and all the fluids and secretions that ooze out of us?

What taboos about what secretions?

Oh, sure, the Guardian and the like are full of pieces shouting that “We’ve got to talk about menstruation. Why aren’t we?” but they get all huffy when told that by having just published 1200 words on the subject – for the dysmenorrheac 30th straight day in a row – they are in fact talking about menstruation.

True, the male conversation on the subject would be limited to “It happens. Cool.” but taboo? Today?

13 thoughts on “Eh?”

  1. “Men won’t talk about my secretions. #Patriarchy!”

    “Men are obsessed with my secretions. #Metoo!”

  2. Men do not care to talk about ‘women’s problems’. If they did, they would be told to shut up as they know nothing about it. So it’s not really an interesting subject, not while there’s trains and football. And everything else that women do not talk about due to their obsession with their own issues.

    Or I could have quoted Admiral Akbar: It’s a trap.

  3. Jesus Christ. Ben Elton was making jokes about Tampax ads and what it would be like if men had periods in the early 90s.

    And her delivery and material are shitty. It’s that comedy of “isn’t that right, ladies”. It’s like lefty comics who just have a go at the Tories and it’s like a circlejerk.

    You want controversial? Try Doug Stanhope’s routine about how Indian men gang rape so much because they’re too weak to do it on their own.

  4. I can’t remember – was the Guardian in favour of shutting down The Vagina Monologues because it excluded men who don’t have vaginas but pretend to be women, who are very angry that their not-vaginas are not being talked about, or not?

    Either way, they do virtually nothing else but talk about “women’s issues”.

  5. “In 2016, Netflix launched her special, Baby Cobra, and she has since had a second, Hard Knock Wife. She has also co-written and starred in a romantic comedy film, Always Be My Maybe; […] and published Dear Girls, the memoir […]. Her tours sell out and her peers rave about her…”

    When will she ever get her voice heard, people!?
    When will the censorship end!?

  6. It’s fine to write about menstruation (or whatever) in the Guardian, but unfortunately the author of this piece is the kind of person who would like to have a “conversation” (i.e. a monologue) about her bodily fluids over dinner. Then she wonders why she doesn’t get invited back.

  7. Steve

    No it isn’t OK.

    I might be offended that you weren’t paying sufficient attention to me babbling on about the neat new loudspeakers I just bought and how good they sound with Dirac turned on and isn’t that piece by Ben Duncan in Stereovile on how the structure of the harmonics in measured distortion insightful and useful?

  8. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Taboo? We haven’t been able to get a word in edgeways since Eve Ensler inflicted The Vagina Monologues on us (or, as I prefer to call it, Cunts That Won’t Shut Up).

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