This is to test the news maxim: IF IT BLEEDS IT LEADS.
Jokes aside, I was astonished to learn that May 28 is Menstrual Hygiene Day:
May 28th is Menstrual Hygiene Day. Period.
To start the conversation about menstruation and raise awareness about the importance of MHM, we have initiated Menstrual Hygiene Day, which will be celebrated this May 28th for the very first time. With over 100 international and local partner organisations, Menstrual Hygiene Day is becoming a unique platform to strengthen advocacy, action, and knowledge sharing around the issue – globally and locally. The first Menstrual Hygiene Day will be celebrated with exhibitions, community events, and the global launch of “Monthlies”, a brand-new documentary as well as “The Flow” menstrual app.
You too can help to start the conversation about menstruation by telling your friends and family about Menstrual Hygiene Day, by sharing this article on social media, or by joining us and our partners at an MH Day event near you. For all the women and girls in your life, help make menstruation matter!
Like WASH United on Facebook and follow @WASHUnited on Twitter.
Join the conversation on Twitter using #MenstruationMatters.
There is something horrifically ugly about Indo/Asian/European patriarchy, also African patriarchy, and their misbegotten beliefs about women and their sexuality.
For instance, Africa:
Menstrual hygiene remains a taboo subject in Zimbabwean society. It is therefore a sad day when the issue of menstruation becomes a public concern. It shows the level of poverty and dehumanization Zimbabweans have undergone over the years. On July 16, 2014 Newsday published an article titled "Sanitary Wear: Poor Girls Resort To Dung." The article highlighted that due to expenses that come with sanitary wear in Zimbabwe, many girls have failed to keep menstruation a private matter after soiling their clothes because they have no means to buy the most basic sanitary wear such as cotton wool and pads. Not only is proper sanitary wear effective in preventing leakages of blood while menstruating, but it also prevents the odors that accompany menstruation and prevents infections.
India and Nepal:
Some girls stop going to school. Others are sterilized -- their ovaries removed. Still others are confined to homes, isolated from the community. Worldwide, the most basic human rights of women and girls with disabilities are curtailed because of poor management of the most natural human phenomenon: menstruation.
Patriarchal religious beliefs add to the stupidity:
Judaism: ... Physical danger and disgust were used as mechanisms to keep compliance to these laws among the Jews in the Middle Ages (Steinberg, 1997). When a woman was menstruating, she was seen as a physical and spiritual danger to all men. Nahmanides states that her breath is harmful, and her gaze is detrimental. A woman was instructed not to walk between two men, because, if she did so at the end of her period, she would cause strife between them, and if she passed between them at the beginning of her period, she would cause one of them to die. This shows that the “danger” of the menstrual woman is not simply the blood, but even the atmosphere around her. Additionally, a woman is instructed to be careful when cutting her toenails during her menses, for fear that her toenail clippings would spread infection to anyone who stepped on them ...
Christianity: ... Western civilization, predominantly Christian, has a history of menstrual taboos. In early Western cultures, the menstruating woman was believed to be dangerous, and social restrictions were placed upon her. In fact, the British Medical Journal, in 1878, claimed that a menstruating woman would cause bacon to putrefy....
Islam: In Muslim cultures, “impure” (i.e., menstruating) women are to be avoided by men ... These laws are derived from the Qur'an (2:222), which reads, “They question thee (O Muhammad) concerning menstruation. Say it is an illness so let women alone at such times and go not into them til they are cleansed. And when they have purified themselves, then go unto them as Allah hath enjoined upon you.”
Islam does not consider a menstruating woman to possess any kind of “contagious uncleanness” ... The Islamic law treats menstruation as impure for religious functions only ...
Hinduism: Hinduism views the menstruating woman as “impure” (Chawla, 1992), or “polluted” ... In fact, menstruation is referred to in some places as a “curse” ... The impurity lasts only during the menses, and ends immediately thereafter. During their menstruation, women must leave the main house, and live in a small hut outside the village....
Buddhism seems inclined to give menstruating women a pass -- EXCEPT WHERE THEY HAVE BEEN INFLUENCED BY THOSE DAMNED HINDUS!
In regard to the Americas, largely North America, you have to read my First Americans day post:
First Americans: The Women
Footnote: the enlightened Sikhs:
Mensuration is a natural process. It effect is on personal hygiene. It has nothing to do with sipirituality. Earlier days, the products to stay clean were not available to women, that is not the case now.
If for this reason the women are called unclean then men too are unclean; they carry their ** in them.
Sikhi is clear: Ek noor se sub jag upajaya, kaon bhalai kaon mande.
Women are our future, they are not to be discriminated in the society.