Hey folks! Here we are again at the cycling of the...cycle. Just a quick couple of links this month to keep you in the menstruation loop, as it were. And a shout-out to all my friends out there dealing with cramps and heavy bleeding on top of travel, family, and holiday anxiety this Thanksgiving week here in the States; I feel you. We can do it. If I had any photoshop skills, I would put a picture of Rosie the Riveter with a tampon in her fist here, but I do not, so please accept this Beyoncé version as a consolation. (And if any of you out there with Photoshop know-how want to help me out...that would be amazing.)

Yeah, it's not Monday, but we're still going to talk about menstruation. Don't stress out about it too much; alliteration is not the only literary device we know how to use here.

1. I've recently started more actively using the Clue app and while I'm not yet ready to actively endorse it, I do quite like their newsletter, which has been bringing all kinds of interesting period content to my inbox. I'm not sure if you can subscribe without registering in the app, though, so I'll pass along the best stuff here for those who don't want to sign up. First off is this piece, "Is Period Slang Ever Useful," offered in support of Clue's #justsayperiod campaign. It's built around an interview with the professor who taught my menstruation studies class, and it's all about the power of words and language, so I might be biased, but I think it's worth a read. And don't ever forget that the term "period" itself is a euphemism. Interrogate ALL THE THINGS!

While my PMS brownies (Ghirardelli double chocolate from the box plus a few swirls of chunky peanut butter—the perfect combination of low-effort and high-reward that my current mental and physical state demands) are cooling on the stove, let's go for a quick surf on the crimson wave: Welcome to another Menstruation Monday!

I'm sure #menstruationmonday isn't a thing, but I'd definitely like to make it one, so I'm starting this week by sharing some recent(-ish) interesting internet ephemera on the subject of periods.

This is the fifth in a five-week series of posts recapping a micro-seminar I'm taking on Critical Menstruation Studies through the Boston-area Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies.

Last week we had the final meeting of our micro-seminar. The theme for the week was "Resistance to the Menstrual Status Quo" and it seemed designed to give a hopeful, progressive view for future work and activism (and to trouble them, naturally). Of course, it also ended up being a general wrap-up of the course. Most everyone agreed that we wished we had more time to tackle all the complex issues that we were just starting to get a handle on, but that's something I've felt at the end of most classes I've taken, not just those that only lasted a total of 10 hours. In any case, here's what we read for the last day: