Catamenial Mania: Looking Towards the Prevalence of Period Porn

art by Marina Manoukian — art by Marina Manoukian

it’s easy to blame porn. it’s easy to give porn credit.

throughout history, the depictions of porn and our interactions with it have offered reflections and refractions of humanity’s most truthful and most unaware designs. manifestations of the most extreme and the most banal flights into fantasy prejudices and biases for all to hear and see and come to.

it’s a safe bet to say that periods predate porn.

the scarcity of period porn has not gone unnoticed and was the topic of a talk at the first world pornography conference in 1998. it had crossed my mind on a number of occasions why period porn had never popped up as often as i thought it would, considering that it had never popped up at all. once i debated with someone that such a thing as yeast infection porn couldn’t possibly exist, least of all because having sex with a yeast infection is a horribly uncomfortable experience. and despite it all it only took a single search on PornHub to find a video.

it’s understandable that some people prefer to keep porn as a fantasy. but how can fantasies incorporate every conceivable thing but still want to keep themselves untainted by a little blood. how could period blood not be a part of someone’s fantasy, anyone’s fantasy, especially when it’s a fact that most people with cunts get especially horny on their period.

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while there are a number of factors that play into what kind of porn is made, how it is made, who it is made by, and where it is accessible, in the hierarchy of censorship it turns out that one of the main hindrances to period porn are the payment processors rather than the porn industry itself. billing companies and payment processing companies such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal for example, impose content restrictions and strict regulations around the words used and content provided and reserve the right to refuse to process payments for companies and websites if they allow content on their platform that violates these regulations, due to their designation of such websites as ‘high risk.’ i was exposed to this thanks to a terrific thread by writer Lux Alptraum.

“the cunt cannot help the blood it puts forth. it cannot help but flounder in life and death and creation. ambiguity and instability are implicit in its folds and people with cunts are all too aware.” (click to tweet)

looking at one example of a list of forbidden words, at first glance it doesn’t seem entirely outrageous. it’s understandable that one wouldn’t want to be promoting or legitimizing abusive, violent, or non-consensual content. it’s understandable that one wouldn’t want to be associated with snuff films. some words come in a variety so it’s clear that someone wants to cover all their bases. one can rationalize how blood might come to be on that list in regards to violence or abuse or death. however, with the inclusion of ‘menstrual, menstruate, menstruation’ it becomes clear that blood isn’t innocently forbidden.

to highlight multiple versions of menstruation (not to mention ‘period’ is also on that list, right in-between ‘pedophilia’ and ‘popper’) and put them on the same level as abuse or bigotry or slurs is a blatant demonization of people with cunts. to instate a policy that underlines natural and healthy bleeding as something that should be restricted or forbidden is nothing more than a dehumanization. to say that the blood that comes out of someone’s legs is so shameful is so dangerous that even the mere mention of the word to describe such an act is impermissible does nothing but reflect the face of patriarchy.

even unrelated connotations suffer under this. according to an interview in a Vice article that investigates this censorship a BDSM site remarks that they can no longer use red candles in their wax play because “wasteland's payment processors seem to think melted red wax is a dead ringer for blood.”

there are no good reasons to look down on menstruation. there is absolutely no excuse and there is absolutely no justification that is not based in misogyny. it is the only blood that belongs outside and yet in our daily content we find ourselves exposed to every kind but.

“anything that denies a person with a bleeding cunt is demonstrative of patriarchy.” (click to tweet)

this is how power dynamics manifest now in the neoliberal world we have generated; through the withholding of not just money and profit but the ability of exchange in itself. these payment processors and billing agents have nothing to do with the money that is being exchanged but through the mere threat of withholding the act of exchange content disappears from sight. not to say that it’s impossible to find but how many people look further than PornHub or XVideos or whatever one’s main site happens to be. this lack of visibility is entirely intentional not towards creating a fantasy but towards upholding a system of oppression and erasure. porn companies and independent porn producers can keep making all the self-conscious and feminist porn they want, but billing companies will ensure that their content never becomes mainstream.

even the act of trying to find information directly from Visa or Mastercard proves difficult. Google searches don’t seem to register the term menstruation and instead change it to ‘period’ in their algorithms. whether or not this is a prerogative of Google’s or an SEO pairing function from the billing companies is unclear.

the act of withholding payment processing when others don’t abide by your values is neither new nor limited to the world of porn. as of the writing of this post the United States is still considering imposing financial sanctions on Venezuela that may lead to Visa and Mastercard being unable to process payments in the country. another effort against Maduro and his supporters, the United States expresses its dissatisfaction at dissent not by withholding money but by withholding the ability to use money.

it’s easy to think that through the withholding of money or the ability to exchange money, values may be influenced. it’s easy to think that that’s the only way to influence people’s behavior. but besides the fact that it’s fairly agreed upon that economic sanctions don’t really work, it’s absurd to think that the act of exchanging money is being withheld in order to keep people from being exposed to the blood that comes from cunts.

“to instate a policy that underlines natural and healthy bleeding as something that should be restricted or forbidden is nothing more than a dehumanization.”
(click to tweet)

around the world one of the common denominators of patriarchy is the damnation of menstruation. the effects of patriarchal thinking vary around the globe but the misogyny of stigmatizing what comes out of a person’s cunt seems to be a constant. whether through refusing to call it by its name offering odd euphemisms in its stead taxing products designed to aid the process making products hard to find making people with cunts seclude themselves following them to watch them change causing pain misattributing pain ignoring pain silencing them deeming them impure deciding everything touched is impure or some other sort of nonsense.

not everyone enjoys period sex. not everyone enjoys watching period porn. this isn’t about preferences or comfort levels. this is about the erasure and mistreatment of something that happens to people with cunts at least 450 times in their lives. what other constant is so widely ignored. what other biological constant is used as blackmail against profit.

anything that denies a person with a bleeding cunt is demonstrative of patriarchy.

Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 3rd ed Edition

this denial is not new but nor is it timeless. in both roman and etruscan mythologies there existed a goddess of the dead of spirits of chaos called mania (or manea). in Greek mythology, Mania is the goddess of insanity and madness. her name ties her to another roman goddess called Mana Genita, whose name Plurarch derives the latin verb manare, meaning to flow to shed to pour forth. in itself this bleeding is the standard for normativity. its madness is essential towards existence. it is only through our own interactions with it whether we decide to respect it or vilify it.

there is nothing wrong with chaos. there is nothing insane about insanity. it is all a part of being alive being human being whatever this concoction of cells happens to be. but the more we deny what is basic in us the harder it will be to figure out what is extraordinary.

the cunt cannot help the blood it puts forth. it cannot help but flounder in life and death and creation. ambiguity and instability are implicit in its folds and people with cunts are all too aware. to watch those around you participate in its erasure is infuriating. but people with cunts never forget.

further play:

marina manoukian is a reader and writer and collage artist. she currently resides in berlin while she studies and works. she likes honey and she loves bees. you can find more of her words and images at marinamanoukian.com or twitter/instagram at @crimeiscommon.