Uncovering the Blood Mysteries

I cannot recall the season or the lover but I remember the moment—like a photograph stopped in time. It ended up changing the course of my professional life yet it was far more intimate than you might imagine: I was menstruating and I wanted to have sex.

As I opened the laundry-closet door in my New York City apartment looking for something to protect the sheets, a wave of unease hit my belly. I paused, exploring the sensation with curiosity . . . it was tinged with embarrassment. But not for the reasons you might expect.

Decades earlier—in a state of mild euphoria—I had prayed to get my first period. 

At the time, I was 12 and living with my dad (whom my mother had recently divorced). As a child of hippies, I truly believed that menarche (the onset of menstruation) would initiate me into the powerful woman I was told I could become. So after my mom divorced him and moved to California with my two older siblings, I was left trying to grow up—fast. 

One late summer day, my Dad had driven me to his friend’s house in rural Louisiana. While they visited, I wandered outside alone. After fervently praying in a little shed outside, my first blood miraculously appeared.

I felt empowered and ecstatic.

In the car on the way home, I proudly told my father the news. His response, too, is etched in my memory. He looked at me with an expression of pain mixed with anger and said, “So, you’re a woman now.” With his bitterness from the divorce dampening my joy, I turned inward and became silent.

A few years later, after falling in love and having sex for the first time, I felt more of that sense of empowerment I craved, yet it was still too soon for a full flowering. Making love during my period had come naturally to me. I didn’t have a problem with it and, luckily, I never dated a man who did either.

So back in NYC it wasn’t simply embarrassment that made me pause as I searched for an old towel, it was something else. 

I was perplexed that in an ever-expanding marketplace, no one had designed a product specifically to protect the bedding during period sex. Sure you could use an old towel (which isn't leak proof) or a disposable hospital pad (humiliating). But wasn’t the moment deserving of something more elegant?

I was even more intrigued by something deeper: hidden underneath the surface loomed a shadowy sense of shame. It was only years later, while launching my business, Venus Matters, that I began to understand the full extent of the shame I sensed that day.

It’s a shame that has infected cultures through the ages. A mental poison fueling old taboos that claim periods are impure, even dirty, and must, at the very least, be hidden. At worst, menstruating women were—and, sadly, sometimes still are—punished.

Yet at any moment, millions of women are quietly menstruating around the world.

It was painful to realize that menstruation had been so denigrated —or simply ignored— that a seemingly obvious need had become, in fact, invisible. Surely ancient matriarchal societies had created ceremonial cloths for the important rites of birth, menstruation, and death...? But that was in time immemorial.

Venus Matters to help change that.

It's time to bring female biology fully out of the dark ages.

Menstruation is nothing to be ashamed about. There’s nothing evil, gross, or wrong about it. Menstrual blood is actually kind of amazing and incredibly rare in the animal kingdom.* It has sustained evolution for millennia. Indeed, human life itself, has arisen on the magnificent red tide of menstrual blood.

And it’s nice lube.

It turns out there’s a clear biological underpinning to a woman’s desire for period sex: after an egg fails at insemination, the sex hormone testosterone kicks it up a notch, often making women feel more sexually aroused leading up to and during their periods.

But some religions have a different agenda, claiming women are untouchable during menstruation—making sex completely out of the question. In India, parts of Islam, Nepal and some orthodox Jewish communities (among others), women can be expelled from their partner’s beds or prohibited from entering temples or fasting or even reciting prayers out loud—simply because they’re menstruating.

The belief that periods make women untouchable can creep into our relatively secular world too. The other day, a customer confessed that her ex-husband wouldn’t kiss her during her cycle. She then proudly told me she had divorced him and was happily reclaiming her self-acceptance while embracing her cycles.

Of course, many women experience painful periods so sex may be the last thing on their minds. Venus Matters stands for a woman’s sovereignty and her right to choose what happens in relation to her body at all times. For women who are struggling on their periods, it may be interesting to note that orgasms can help reduce cramps by releasing oxytocin—a powerful pain inhibitor.

Still, even some of my sex-positive friends are reluctant to publicly talk about period sex or that other controversial topic a Venus Mat addresses: female ejaculation. And I get it. It hasn’t always been easy for me to pull back the veils on my personal or pleasurable experiences either. 

Some of the first conversations I had as CEO of Venus Matters (especially with men) were awkward, even humorous. I could sometimes sense folks blushing over the phone when I mentioned menarche, period sex, or “Amrita”—the Tantric term for the fluid some women emit during sex (and no, it's not just pee).

With each conversation I have become more committed to helping bring women’s biology into the light while supporting the sacred right to a pleasurable life.

Venus Matters because the human body is a temple, and desire—unfettered by cultural or religious constraints—is holy.

The spiritual and physical realms, so often seen in opposition, beautifully interplay in the etymology of the word “bless.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “bless” originally meant “To make 'sacred' or 'holy' with blood.” Bless was also influenced by the Latin benedicere, meaning “to praise, worship,” and later by its association with “bliss.” The blood mysteries, in my view, are integral to the whole and holy human experience.

Maybe Descartes got it wrong. It’s not “I think, therefore I am.” But rather, “I bleed, therefore I am.”

The wounds of my father made him incapable of blessing that exultant 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, but she knew menstruation was a kind of magic.

We are tender and we bleed. We are powerful and we bleed. So bleed in bliss, without shame, dear sisters. And dear brothers, join us in uncovering and truly honoring the blood mysteries.

Jules Cazedessus, Founder & CEO

*Only five other animals are known to menstruate: monkeys, apes, bats, the spiny mouse and possibly elephant shrews. See Ted Ed,  and the recent Spiny Mouse discovery. 

The body is a temple. We created an altar cloth. If this essay resonates with you, explore Venus Mats — luxury waterproof intimacy mats made in the USA, PFAS-free, guaranteed 10 years. Because the blood mysteries deserve something beautiful.

Painting by William Blake Richmond, “Venus and Anchises.”