Why I love my menstrual cup

 Content note: obviously, this post talks about menstruation

One thing I did for environmental reasons that I ended up loving for its practicality and ease of use was buy and use a menstrual cup. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, a menstrual cup is a reusable, bell-shaped vessel about two inches long (this can vary), usually made out of rubber or silicone, that is inserted into the vagina, creates a “seal” with the vaginal wall up near the cervix, and catches menstrual blood as it comes out of the uterus. They serve as a replacement for pads and tampons.

For those of you who do know what I'm talking about and want more details, the kind I bought was a silicone DivaCup, the smaller size for nulliparous women. When I bought mine (I think I was a freshman in college, to give you an idea) there weren't nearly so many kinds as there are now. This morning I went to menstrual_cups, a LiveJournal community dedicated to the subject, and counted about twenty kinds now listed in the sidebar, only half of which I recognized. I would imagine that the proliferation of kinds makes it easier to find something for almost any body and comfort preferences, but also that having so many options makes it harder to choose.

Growing up Asexual in Christian Purity Culture

 Growing up asexual in Christian purity culture was weird, though I didn't realize it at the time.

I wasn't immersed in the strictest of it. I never took a purity pledge or went to a purity ball. I certainly was never expected to “court” rather than date. (I didn't date much, but that's a story for another time.) I knew, though, that my parents and the members of my church expected that I wouldn't have sex until I were married, and that I was supposed to regard premarital sex as sinful. There were a lot of other messages floating around about how I had to be prepared to resist this strong temptation, and I was. I was so prepared.

I was not, however, tempted.

I think I felt slightly smug, or at least accomplished, that “staying pure” was so easy for me. I didn't understand how anyone could possibly have a problem with it. I extrapolated from my not wanting sex or feeling attraction to anyone, to assuming that none of my peers felt attraction to anyone, either. I thought that they were having sex because of peer pressure. I thought that I was able to resist the temptation I was supposed to feel because I was so good at standing up to peer pressure. I probably felt a little superior. I made it to eighteen and was still expecting that at some point in the future, I would reach a natural age to “want” sex.

Thankfully, I grew out of the judging. I never grew out of not wanting sex. I was probably twenty before I started to realize that sex just wasn't my particular temptation, and it took more time after that to realize that I was, in fact, asexual. I'm not sure, but I think the messages I received from my Christian subculture, that sexual temptation was inevitable and I needed to be prepared to resist it, delayed my realization that there was something inherently different about me. Because sexual attraction was presented as universal, along with the temptation to have sex, I thought for years that I would eventually experience it. On one hand, I got off much easier than some of my peers-- I had no internal battle between what my church told me was right and what I wanted to do. On the other hand, the messages I got kept me in the dark about my own sexual orientation for a long time.

I didn't escape damage from purity culture entirely. Like many other people, I was convinced that masturbation was a terrible sexual sin, and it took me a long time to get over that. But in some way, because I simply had no desire or reason whatsoever to go against its demands, being asexual gave me a pass from some of the worst experiences of purity culture. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that.