Sex is great. Period.

After I wrote about underwear last week, I had some excellent feedback on the piece from a friend, who, as well as making several good points about length and structure, pointed out that I keep writing about things I don’t enjoy, and that it feels like I’m apologizing for not enjoying them – not very sex-positive of me. She ended the email with this:

“Can you write something about sex and periods next?! I’d like to see your thoughts on that…”

Yes ma’am, I most certainly can. For starters, period sex (I can call it that, right?) is an area where I can be 100% sex-positive; it’s not a fetish of mine, and I don’t enjoy sex more when my partner has her period, but neither do I enjoy it less or seek to avoid it. That goes for vaginal penetration, mutual masturbation, and oral too: I can’t say I particularly like the taste of blood, but if you let me I’ll lick your clit till the cows come home. As my friend pointed out, women bleed for the best part of one week in every four, so why would I want to deny myself or my partner 20%+ of our available fucking time??

In this sense, at least, it may help that I came to sex relatively late. At 21, I’d outgrown any squeamishness I might have experienced as a teenager, and I’d also read enough erotica (god, had I read enough erotica) to have shed a fair number of my preconceived ideas about sex.

Not everyone views it that way, of course. I’ve had discussions with male friends in which they’ve reacted with disgust when asked about period sex, and I’ve also had a number of female partners who have had an issue with it, for reasons that went well beyond physical discomfort or affected libido, or even the ‘ew, ick’ response of the guys I’ve spoken to.

I’m not going to explore those reasons in any great depth here. Partly because it’s been done far better elsewhere (try Googling ‘period sex feminism’ if you’re interested), and partly because, as a man, it’s not my place to do so. Women certainly don’t need men telling them that period sex is gross, but they also don’t need us to point out the various things that are really, really dumb about that notion, or indeed to dissect where it came from. Like the pressure to remove armpit and leg hair, it sits firmly in the tradition of denying women physical and sexual agency, and of venerating purity and cleanliness over pleasure, desire and comfort. It sucks, basically.

As a man, what I can do is ensure that I give my partner just as much sexual attention during her period – assuming she wants it – as I do at other times. If I date someone who is shy about period sex, I can try to find a workable middle ground between reinforcing that view and pushing too hard to change it…which admittedly usually involves exploring all the non-penetrative ways to give both of us pleasure, and waiting for her to get carried away and jump me. If I’m talking to other guys about it, I can avoid lecturing or hectoring, and instead point out how ridiculous it is to short-change themselves in that way – not least because a lot of women seem to be especially horny during their period.

Being body- and sex-positive is something we learn as much from our partners and our friends as from the wider sexual culture. For that reason, I think that even if the mess and the blood did make me a little less keen to fuck, I’d feel a moral obligation to ignore that feeling. As it is, I’m happy that feigned enthusiasm isn’t required: as far as I’m concerned, period sex differs from sex at other times of the month only in the number of towels and tissues required, and I’d like to think that both my partner and I benefit as a result of treating it that way.