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| Image Courtesy : Google Images |
“Hi!
I am writing an article about menstruation awareness. Please share any personal
memories regarding it, particularly about seclusion/confinement/restrictions,
or the other names used for it. Your privacy will be protected. Thanks!”
I sent this text to about a 100 random women in my phone
book, before I wrote this piece. Most of these women are urban, educated and
seemingly liberal. Only 4 of them replied, surprisingly only those whose
families were not silent about periods but despite awareness and understanding
the issue had applied ‘minimal’ restrictions like not entering sacred spaces on
them.
The silence and shame associated with talking about it
to even a fellow woman is quite evident. Such taboos are passed on
from one generation of women to another conveniently because women/girls are
socialized into a state of ‘learned helplessness’ as suggested by Lenore Walker
though in the context of domestic violence victims/survivors, where the
victims/survivors begin to think of themselves, their anatomy and their
sexuality as subordinate and dirty.
In fact body shaming, sexual shaming is sometimes more
covert but aggressive in urban spaces. I can say this from personal experience
that ironically the talk about periods began much earlier for most rural girls
in my home state Himachal Pradesh than it does for most of our little girls in
cities even now.
Little girls there know that every few days women in
their homes and families are secluded because they are dirty and must remain
separated from the rest of the family for those few days.
Periods in some local Pahari dialects are referred to as “Zudke” ,literally meaning
‘clothes’, so it is not even referred to as anything related to the female
anatomy, but to the clothes or rags the women traditionally used to soak the
flow and how they had to wash everything clean once the dirty period was over.
Even the popular Hindi words – Maasik,
Maheena, and Mahavaari refer to its monthly occurrence, indicating no
connection directly to the female body.
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| Image Courtesy: Google Images |
Little girls by default in hilly villages become the
carriers of food and messages to and fro between the ‘Obra’/’Khudh’ (cow/cattle
shed) and the house as their mothers, aunts, female cousins and older sisters are
confined/secluded during their ‘unclean’ period. They mustn’t touch the ‘dirty
woman’ they are told, if they do they would have to bathe again, so they are
instructed to leave the eatables at a distance and speak from a distance if
they have to. It is believed and enforced by deep cultural conditioning that
contamination from menstruating women can bring the worst curses from local
deities and even lead to drying up of crops or secret diseases.
The irony is that they are confined to a corner of the
cattle sheds traditionally and yet is believed that if a menstruating girl/woman
touches a cow, the cow will become infertile – leading these girls furthermore to
regard their own bodily functions as curse and impurity and be restricted to a
corner even in that confined space.
The culture not only associates a routine female body
function as unclean and impure but imposes seclusion on women in connivance
with ‘god men’ and local deities, as women and families are often scared with
curses and diseases so that they adhere silently to the seclusion and do not
speak up against this humiliation month after month.
It is also important to understand the generic
architecture of homes in the hills to realize how traumatic and humiliating
this seclusion can be for most women especially young girls.
Traditionally the homes were wooden structures with two floors,
while the upper floor was family quarters, the ground floor roomed the cattle
and the sheep, so women were confined there during their periods. With changing
times cattle sheds are now constructed as a single hut slightly away from the
main house and the seclusion thus becomes even more evident and in some cases
unsafe too. The door is locked from outside and in case of an emergency even
her loudest cries may not reach the house.
To add to this turmoil is the fact that toilets if there
are any are also constructed closer to the main house and the woman is often
denied access to it during this time. If she uses cloth, she must wash and dry
it to reuse in complete secrecy and if she uses napkins then these must be
disposed secretly.
Social and economic upward mobility and some work by
social initiatives and NGOs have probably increased awareness about menstrual
hygiene and girls are increasingly using modern sanitary products but the
discrimination at ground level hasn’t changed much. Women in some families might
not be sent to cowsheds but even in their semi-urban or urban homes are
confined to one room, have to sleep on the floor, can’t go to the kitchen or
prayer room, can’t touch some eatables like pickles and can’t touch other
family members etc.
While women slog equally in fields and kitchens all year
through, only men participate in most religious rituals in villages and cook
the sacred feasts and only they are allowed to offer the yields to a deity.
Lots of rural girls drop out from school still around puberty due to lack of
support and awareness. Hundreds succumb to infections due to unhygienic methods
of managing menstruation. The fear and shame associated with a menstrual stain
is so overwhelming that they give up their opportunity of an education for it.
The religious notions of purity and pollution are rules
that deny women basic human rights of caring about their health and bodies. All
women, regardless of their caste are considered unclean during menstruation. Sometimes
they are not allowed to even take a bath especially for first few days of their
menstrual period as it is believed that they can contaminate the water source
permanently.
The argument often propounded in the favor of seclusion
is that the confinement frees the woman of all her household duties during
those days and she can rest. Even if a logical benefit of doubt is granted to
that logic, what kind of rest does a woman experience if she is psychologically
stressed by separating her from her children and family and the physical
comforts of her kitchen and bedroom are denied to her?
Untouchability based on caste and religion was long back
ended legally by our constitution, but this untoucahability of a more personal
and intimate kind is still practiced in many homes and families, and the worse
is it is taken for granted too, both by the perpetrators and the victims.
There is no open discourse about it within families, TV
channels still get changed whenever there is a sanitary napkin advertisement
playing and women though are not tied with physical ropes to restrain their
movements and daily routine, the stronger but invisible ties bind them securely
to the margins, make them silently experience the “shame” and discrimination
associated with menstruation.
Silence about it strengthens the shame and the shame
shrouding it strengthens the silence. Generations of women suffer in shame and
in silence.
Its time our girls are freed of this burden and can love
their body and menstruation as a privilege and not a curse.
“This blogathon is supported by the Maya App, used by 6.5 million women worldwide to take charge of their periods and health.”
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