This Woman Is Using Period Blood To Help Break The Stigma Around Menstruation
"Our disgust toward our bodies is not innate – it is a learned societal behavior."
This is Demetra Nyx. She is a California-based sex coach who is passionate about helping to break society's stigma around menstruation.
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She told BuzzFeed, "I’ve traveled the world by myself, attended four universities, and owned a yoga studio and a business teaching women how to lift weights online. Now, I’m a sex coach. Because sex is an area that is so shamed in our society, we tend to hold a lot of our emotions in that area – I always say that when I coach someone around their sex life, their entire life opens up."
Growing up in a conservative area in Northern Pennsylvania, Demetra always felt ashamed of her period.
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"Like most women, I used to be embarrassed of my period – being paranoid that people would see a stain through my clothing, or that I would stain my boyfriend's sheets. It felt like a disgusting and annoying thing my body did," said Demetra.
Demetra suffers from painful periods and shows signs of endometriosis.
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She said, "I had a copper IUD for a while and it made my periods go from painless to incredibly painful. Now, five years after it was removed, my periods are still very painful, and I have a lot of symptoms of endometriosis."
However, in 2013, Demetra started appreciating her body during menstruation. "I started tracking my cycle and noticing that my moods and patterns were the same on specific days of my cycle. I really started falling in love with my body and what it does," she explained.
In what she says was a "fun impulse," Demetra decided to smear her period blood on her body.
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"I have friends who paint with menstrual blood and give it back to the earth. I was considering other ways we could connect with it more deeply. In many ancient cultures, they believed menstrual blood was incredibly powerful. Also, many celebrities sometimes get blood facials – and menstrual blood in particular is full of stem cells and nutrients that are made to support a baby, so it is good for your skin."
"It feels silly, fun, and powerful to put my blood on my face – and to claim something that is often referred to as dirty and disgusting as clean and beautiful."
Since doing this and sharing it on social media, Demetra said she has experienced a lot of negativity from people.
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"People have equated it to putting poop on my face, which just validates for me how uneducated our culture is about what blood actually contains. People also claim that I’m doing it for attention, acting like attention is a bad thing and not a basic human need. Of course I want my message to get attention, because I think it's important."
Demetra said her goal is not to get every person who menstruates to put their blood on their face. She said, "If I take something many people find disgusting and I touch it and play with it, then maybe some little girl will see the blood between her legs and think, 'Well, if Demetra puts it on her face, maybe this isn’t that gross after all.'"
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"I also want adult women to not feel repulsed by their own bodies. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from women who can’t touch their own periods, and I think it’s sad that our bodies literally create life but we still can’t love them," she said.
"I do get a lot is women saying, 'I was so triggered by your period posts at first, but, eventually, I became inspired and now I love my cycle too.' I receive a lot of DMs of women with their blood all over themselves! They just don’t feel as comfortable to share it publicly."
Demetra said that people wouldn't be so bothered and reactive to what she does with her menstrual blood if they didn’t feel disgust toward themselves, on some level.
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"Our disgust toward our bodies is not innate – it is a learned societal behavior. Our bodies want to protect us, and when we learn that having a certain view might get us rejected socially, we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. But since it’s learned, we can unlearn it. I think it’s about time we started questioning our narratives of the world and started feeling shameless in our own lives."
Demetra has a podcast called Sex, Love, & Power.
You can also read more about her experiences with menstruation on Medium.