Fu Yuanhui, the beloved Chinese swimmer, is winning enormous praise for shattering taboos when she spoke publicly about having her period at the Olympics, this after the Chinese swimming team missed a medal opportunity in the 4x100-meter medley relay on Saturday night in Rio.

This video shows Fu keeled over in pain poolside as her teammates give their interviews after the race, in which they placed fourth. “It’s because I just got my period yesterday, so I’m still a bit weak and really tired,” Fu clarified for the interviewer. “But this isn’t an excuse for not swimming well.”

The video has gone viral, with responses online alternating between glorifying Fu for her “heroism,” and grade-school-level menstrual puns (“red waves,” “crimson tides” and so on). Most worrisome is that some people seem surprised that women are allowed to get in a pool when they’re on the rag.

Menstruation is one of the last taboos left in sport, as evidenced by the reactions every time a female athlete references the existence of her own period. And many recently have: British tennis player Heather Watson caused a minor frenzy when she alluded to her period back in January, 2015, when she lost at the Australian Open. That prompted retired tennis star Annabel Croft to laud her for opening up the conversation.

“It was one of those things that were all hushed up,” Croft recalled to the Guardian about her own bad period striking during competition. “I remember being on court feeling dizzy, disorientated, tearful, then coming off court, going into the locker room, and finding my period had started – and realizing, ah, that’s why I was all over the place.”

Some athletes have argued that the taboo around menstruation in sport means some women don’t know how to deal with the more severe symptoms during competition, especially since many painkillers are banned. Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe has agitated for more studies on the impact of the menstrual cycle on women’s performance in sport, as well as better medical support for athletes competing while on their periods.

But it would be naive to think that menstruation talk is just taboo for athletes: It’s still verboten in everyday life as well.

Women are starting to push back. This May saw the first menstrual advertisement that prominently featured blood, not the mysterious blue liquid we’ve been seeing in ads for years. The intense spot for British menstrual pad company Body-form shows women injuring themselves while running, boxing and skateboarding, before the tagline: “No blood should hold us back.”

Previously, we saw the 2014 hash-tag campaign #LiveTweetYourPeriod, which saw women opening up on Twitter about days of gorging on chocolate and writhing around at home in sweatpants. Also combatting the taboo has been an arsenal of period tracking devices, which have added ascertain pragmatism to the discussion.

But the shift hasn’t arrived without cultural resistance: In 2015, when Toronto-based artist Rupi Kaur rather  beautifully documented the daily realities of being on her period – from stained bedsheets to comforting hot water bottles – Instagram yanked her photo off the platform twice for breaching community guidelines, “as if this process is less natural than breathing,” Kaur wrote in her artist’s statement.

Artists like Kaur and athletes like Fu are merely stating the obvious: this is how women’s bodies function. Most go to work and some even win medals during their visits from Aunt Flo Here’s hoping Fu’s poolside interview and other conversations like it mean we’ll one day treat menstruation as the everyday occurrence it is, for half the population.