These men are turned on by period sex. (NSFW, obviously.)

By ROSIE WATERLAND

I once very briefly dated a guy who asked if he could go down on me when I had my period.

When I say we dated ‘very briefly’, I mean I sprinted out of his bedroom/his life as soon as he made his menstrual request. It totally threw me. One second I was with what I thought was a normal human man, the next I was mortified to be standing in a room with someone who said the idea of giving me a ‘rainbow kiss’ really turned him on.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

But, upon regaling my tale of sexual shock to various friends, I came to realise that for certain men who are that way inclined, being into ‘period sex’ is actually a thing. And I’m not talking about just throwing down a towel when you’re horny and going for gold. Some men are actually into menstrual blood as its own sexual fetish.

They like having sex with women on their period. They like going down on women on their period. They just really like anything to do with sexy periods.

I was young and pretty inexperienced when propositioned with a rainbow kiss, so I was honestly convinced that I had come across some kind of rare, disturbed sex maniac. He might as well have just offered to stick a straw in my vag. But he was actually part of a much larger club. A club of men who call themselves, and I don’t know why but I feel like I need to apologise for this but I do:

Blood Hounds. Men who get the sexy tingles over menstrual blood are called Blood Hounds.

The topic of Blood Hounds came up in the Mamamia office today, and given that I once ran away from someone who asked to taste my bloody vagina, I obviously implied that I was an expert on the subject.

“Well duh,” I said, with a hair flip and a satisfied air of sexual superiority. “Everybody knows about Blood Hounds.”

But clearly, just like me a few years ago, and judging by the shocked faces in the office this morning, not everybody does.

The Cut’s Maureen O’Connor wrote a great piece about the subject a few weeks ago. Upon realising that there are actually men out there who love period sex, she put the call out to a bunch of friends and experts to see if it actually is that common. Some of the responses she received were pretty epic:

“To her surprise, David was into it from day one, proclaiming the situation “hot” even as he emerged from sex smeared from waist to thigh in menstrual blood.”

…

“The upside is all in the smell.”

…

“He made me stay at his place for, like, the next three days to capitalise on all the period sex. Like a newly caged feral animal. He ate me out A LOT. No tampon.”

…

“One blood-averse man described women who got very horny during their periods, and their arousal aroused him. The ability to trigger cascading orgasmic freak-outs, he said, was incentive enough to perform cunnilingus on vaginas that tasted “like very rare steak” and postcoital imagery he likened to “human carnage.”

…

“He said it was sweet, like actually sugary-sweet,” she continued. “He also said every girl tasted different. Oh God, he’s done period-sex taste tests. Oh God. Oh God.”

And a quick search of Reddit brings up a whole bunch of guys who are proud Blood Hounds:

“I get excited when my girlfriend says she thinks her period is about to start. I love having bloody period sex. Seeing her menstruation covering my penis and everywhere around it turns me on so much.”

…

“It takes a brave man to swim the red sea. It takes a HERO to drink from it. I think it is incredible. Absolutely better than regular sex.”

…

“Period sex is the reason we have a sex towel, a bloody, stained sex towel. keeps the sheets from it though which is what it’s there for!”

So there you have it. Blood Hounds are a thing. Periods just happen to turn some guys on. I can’t say I’m really into it myself – particularly the oral part. But, if I had known about Blood Hounds all those years ago, I may have been able to say a polite “No thanks”, instead of running out of that poor guy’s room like he was some kind of cannibalistic monster whose penis had teeth.

Different folks, different strokes, I guess.

Oh, and by the way, when a guy goes down a girl during her period, it’s called a ‘Dolmio Grin’.

That just felt like an appropriate little nugget of info to end on.

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