seriously. I really really REALLY FUCKING HATE THE WHOLE "SHE'S PMSING" comment as if to disregard our real feelings of anger and that our feelings aren't valid.

I don't appreciate it when guys tell me that I need to "get laid" or "calm down" when I am angry and speak out on something.

the PMS retort is one of the most offensive insults ever.

I've never experience PMS and am somewhat skeptical about it's existence. I think it's interesting that in countries where they don't have it as a medical category women don't experience it.

Anyway, I've had people (always men) try to dismiss my calm and valid arguments by claiming that I'm PMSing. When I was managing a Starbucks I had a male assistant manager foisted upon me who did it several times. I calmly replied that I had good reasons for my expectations of him and every employee, and that I was willing to discuss it, but he needed to provide some sort of reason why I was wrong, since ad hominem arguments don't establish anything. Of course, in both cases he was speechless, and I ended up looking like the calm rational one in front of my employees.

In my experience, PMS accusations are just attempts to undermine your rationality and right to make a claim. The best response is to point out how irrational your opponent is being by using an ad hominem attack, calmly explain your reasons for taking the position you're taking, and ask them why they think this is wrong. Chances are, they have no good reasons, and that's why they resorted to the ol' PMS attack.

One last note: I've taken to commenting that an irritable male is "feeling hormonal" today. People always think it's funny, but it also gets a conversation going about how using that terminology gives us permission to dismiss his concerns as irrational. Too much fun.

Take advantage of your father giving you a free pass to be pissed off. Next time he says something sexist, key his car and blame it on PMS.

Scientific fact: the week before her period is when a woman's estrogen levels are the lowest.

In other words, the "pre-menstrual" days are the time when her body chemistry is most like a man's.

I've never experience PMS and am somewhat skeptical about it's existence. I think it's interesting that in countries where they don't have it as a medical category women don't experience it.

That is quite possibly the biggest load of ignorant bullshit I've read all day.

You don't get it so it doesn't exist? Seriously? And what makes you think women in other countries don't experience it? Just because doctors tell them not to? Because doctors ignore their complaints or "there there, dear" them?

When I'm premenstrual, I'm fucking miserable. I get cranky, tired, weepy, sore, bloated and just uncomfortable all over. And lots of times I don't even recognise it for what it is until the period hits me and all the pieces fall into place. As in one of those "OH! So that's why the telecom ad made me cry and I snapped my husband's head off for asking me where the toothpaste was!" moments.

So please, don't patronize me. If I hear "It's all in your head" one more time, I'm going to explode.

Luna: I had a similar problem but my doctor figured out it was because of the way that my brain reacts to the hormones, and I took a little extra mood stabilizer (I have it for other reasons) the week before I knew I would get my period. When I went on birth control the problem went away anyway, but the mood stabilizer worked like a charm before I did so.

I think women REPORT it more when it's a clear-cut medical diagnosis, and they probably just figure it's a bout of the blues or something otherwise unless they are REALLY heavily influenced by it. Also, many women abuse the menstrual excuse in our culture as a way to get away with acting rude, and that can cause people who don't experience it to be a bit less understanding of the women who have a legitimate problem from it.

PMS is a largely cultural phenomena. It only appeared into the public conscious in the late 1980's when it was used as a defense strategy in a court case in Britain. It's a Western disorder, it is almost unheard of in other cultures.

Now that's not to say that women do not have some form of pre-menstrual discomfort. Lord knows I've spent enough days curled up in bed with my heat pad and an IV of midol. But most of the mood symptoms are very sketchy if you ask me. Irritability, mood swings, aggressiveness, all those... those sound like a woman not being feminine and thus it must be some form of disease to make her so. PMS today has just become another way for the patriarchy to sanction the action of women. Brianna, blaming the supposed girl who uses it as an excuse to be rude is just aiding and abetting.

There is a condition called PMDD that is definitely a more scientifically rigid disorder surrounding the menstruation cycle, but only 3-5% of women are afflicted with it. (And this is what YAZ is designed to fight... I really wish they'd say that instead of trying to market it as a pms drug and sell women on the fact that, "Hey, you're supposed to be super fucking moody around you're period, but if you take this you'll be just dandy.")

Luna, I'm not trying to patronize you, but try tracking all your symptoms on a calendar. You might find some other stressors that are causing your discomfort around menstruation to escalate. I found it really helpful to me back before I got on birth control and my stress levels directly affected how crippled I became with my cramps.

When I was a teenager, I was terrified of PMS -- I didn't want to be that irrational, bitchy woman culture tells us manifests herself with PMS. I responded with hostility to comments about PMS, especially from my dad and brother. Fortunately, I've never experienced it the workplace...yet.

I found that the best response to these types of comments is to respond with wit, which ridicules sexist comments more than anger does. Men expect you to get angry, to whine or complain -- they're thrown off when you subtly undermine their comments and make them look like idiots. Such as the "he's feeling hormonal" joke.

Anyway, I'm not telling you that your anger is not warranted and this is certainly a great place to vent, but I suggest channelling it into some effective. When your sharp tongued, and not afraid to launch a well aimed barb, men stop making those sorts of comments, at least in your presence.

Every time a man or woman uses PMS as an excuse or way to dismiss a woman or call her incompetent-
Remind them that men commit most violent crimes.
Men tend to commit more crimes during hot summers. Or during economic struggles!
Men repeatedly lose control of their emotions, though they claim to not have emotions.
That a crime of passion is a crime of out of control emotions.
Too often to count, men lose custody of their children because they couldn't control their emotions (out bursts and temper tantrums are emotional reactions) during the legal process of divorce and child custody hearings.
That "he has a bad temper" means he can't control his EMOTIONS.
every time, let them know that enough is enough-
we've had it with double standards.

I've never experience PMS and am somewhat skeptical about it's existence. I think it's interesting that in countries where they don't have it as a medical category women don't experience it.

There are tons of culture-bound syndromes all over the world. That doesn't mean it's all in their heads. So I think it's disrespectful to assume that PMS is fake when many women experience it.

I think some people misunderstood Rachel_inWY.
She was pointing to the academic argument--quite an old one, in anthropological circles--that PMS as a syndrome or "condition" is socially constructed, in part to further play up gender roles and emphasize the inevitable "difference" and irrationality of women.

There actually were a lot of articles in academic journals on this, I'd say maybe in the mid-90s or so. The one study I can remember compared Western (U.S., British, and maybe one other European) women with Japanese women and another country I can't remember. Women themselves were interviewed; medical reports were not relied on because women often avoid reporting things to hostile establishments. The results were that PMS is largely socially constructed in some countries, and non-existant in others.

These studies were coming from a PRO-woman (and usually feminist) stance, not a patronizing or anti-feminist one.

Luna, I think one way of looking at is: Say you've suffered all your life because people persecuted you formanifestations of your gender or race. And then a social scientist comes and tells the world, "Um, actually, gender is not nearly as immutable as biological sex and people have built up gender roles culturally, and race is a social construction altogether." The researcher is not patronizing you/telling you that your suffering was imagined. They're saying that your suffering was real but that it was misclassified by those around you.

Wow Luna. That's a quite a leap from my skepticism about PMS, which is frequently used to belittle and marginalize women, to me being ignorant, condescending, and telling you it's all in your head. If you research the topic a bit (like, in order to avoid ignorance) you'll find plenty of reason to at least entertain the idea that it's a patriarchal social construction. I'm not saying that for sure it is, but I think the idea merits some thought.

There's no scientific basis for most of the symptoms of PMS (no underlying hormonal cause) as most people think, and anyone who's having a bad day, male or female, will have many or most of the symptoms listed. Also, research has shown that women who feel more stress and "repressed rage" at the increased workload placed on them as a result of cultural gender expectations are far more likely to report experiencing PMS than those whose lives are less stressful. So this theory suggests that our cultural conception of PMS provides the framework that women use to express and explain the way they feel, but the underlying cause is not biological. This does not mean that your claims about what you're experiencing are not valid, or that anyone who accepts this theory is going to dismiss your lived experience. It just means that the explanatory framework that has been presented by the patriarchal western medical establishment is open to question. Always.

Incidentally, if you search for information on the symptoms and cause of PMS, every site you find is directly or indirectly supported by some sector of the pharmaceutical industry, which has an intense interest in convincing women that their stress and discomfort stem from some sort of chemical imbalance. To my mind this supports the social-construction theory.

"You don't get it so it doesn't exist? Seriously? And what makes you think women in other countries don't experience it?" Well, let's see. Based on our past discussions of this, three of my international friends (Swiss, French, and Greek) claimed that they had never heard of PMS until they moved to America, and that they had never experienced it before. Maybe they were lying to make American women feel bad.

@ AnUnfunnyFeminist, I never suggested that anyone's experiences were fake. I'm just not ready to buy the patriarchal explanation and dismissal of women's complex life experiences. It is simply not the case that the only two options here are "it's all in your head" and "it's caused by a chemical imbalance." There are other options, and I choose to explore them. So shoot me.

And I forgot to say thanks, Okra.

A couple months ago I was reading about how women who expressed dissatisfaction with their spouse or family, or any other major frustrations, were systematically institutionalized and/or treated with electro-shock therapy back in the day. So now they get patted on the head, told that their behavior and thoughts are merely the result of their raging hormones, and given some pills. I agree that this is better, but I'm still not willing to collaborate with anyone that attributes my thought, feelings, or behavior to some kind of undocumented hormone issue. Fuck that, I say with a clear and unbefuddled brain.

I guess the people who say things to women about PMS don't really think about it, but since when is it my responsibility to report to you the current point of my menstrual cycle? Would you like a period diary, maybe with descriptions? Would you like to know about any vaginal discharge or breast tenderness? Would you like to know what else may or may not be going on in my vagina or uterus?

In other words, asking a woman about her PMS or insinuating she has PMS is kind of icky and none of anyone's fucking business.

My own sister would use this tactic on me whenever I would become angry with her. Now I can put in words why it infuriates me. Next time she does that, I can formulate into words that what she said was sexist and that I shouldn't take her seriously after that since she obviously can't talk out her feelings like an adult.

"I've never experience PMS and am somewhat skeptical about it's existence. I think it's interesting that in countries where they don't have it as a medical category women don't experience it.

That is quite possibly the biggest load of ignorant bullshit I've read all day.

You don't get it so it doesn't exist? Seriously? And what makes you think women in other countries don't experience it? Just because doctors tell them not to? Because doctors ignore their complaints or "there there, dear" them?"

I don't get it either. I also don't get cramps. For whatever it's worth, there is some evidence that diet and environmental pollution can affect symptoms of menstrual pain, so I imagine they could affect things like mood as well.

To the OP:
I'm sorry that it is your own father who said it, too. Mine doesn't talk about PMS, but has used the whole "women are emotional/moody" thing before to explain behavior of my sisters and myself (which I think is actually more caused by the fact my mom is very emotionally abusive). Anyway, it's hard hearing sexist stuff from your own family members, I think. I was always a bit jealous of those girls from uber-progressive, sexism-aware families.

I agree with Rachel In WY. Many hormonal effects that come from PMS also occur when a person has the flu or the headache. I don't think PMS causes women to be anymore prone to irritability than any person on this planet is after waking up with a hangover. There are no standard set of rules for what a woman feels during PMS, as people react differently when they feel ill, and therefore it's just easier if the Patriarchy enforces that all women are cranky bitches once a month because they're bleeding from their vaginas.

I think we do expect ourselves to be "ornery", but that doesn't mean it's "all in our heads" because there certainly ARE chemical effects. But in personal experience from my own cycle and those of my friends/family/acquaintances, they hardly fit the standard write-up, so I don't see much point in making it out to be a medical condition.