Screenshot from an animation by Koit, on a simple view of menstruation and the menstrual cycle
as told from the perspective of the egg.
Menstrual Hygiene Day, celebrated on May 28, has come and gone, but the monthly cycle of menstruation continues for the world's women and girls.
#menstruationmatters is dedicated to spreading the word about a subject that is often taboo, yet affects the health and well-being of women worldwide.
We have no problem using the word "moon" or "month" or "Monday," but when menses are mentioned—all from the same root—even in modern Western societies, most women opt to talk about having their "period" if they discuss it at all.
Taboos governing women's reproductive cycles, and ideas about pollution, are enforced by culture, religion, and tradition.
Erika L. Sánchez recently wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazerra, Menstruation stigma is a form of misogyny, discussed below:
When I first got my period, I was in the bathroom of a supermarket. An awkward 12-year-old, I looked down at my underwear and was horrified and confused. Though I knew that I was menstruating, I didn’t know why or how. I just knew that it was considered disgusting, felt I had done something terribly wrong and kept it a secret until I was forced, out of necessity, to confide in my mother. Looking back, I realize how awful it was to be so embarrassed about a natural process. Menarche shouldn’t have to be a traumatic or shameful event.
But it’s what society, through negative messages about women’s cycles and grossed-out responses to any mention of menses, tells us to feel. Instagram recently censored artist Rupi Kaur for posting a picture of herself in bed with a period stain. According to Kaur, the photo-sharing company deleted the photo — twice — because it didn’t follow the site’s community standards. Ironically, the photo was part of an art project challenging the social stigma around periods.
I agree with Sánchez. I would add that worse than stigma are the very real financial and social penalties women pay for simply being female—an illustration of how the personal is political.
Cloth sanitary napkin
Cultural anthropologists, women's historians, and female journalists in recent years have dedicated time and scholarship to examining menstruation and the role it has played in religion and culture around the world, along with the products women have used traditionally and in modern times to manage menstrual flow. There are several books I recommend for readers who are interested in learning more about this universal (for women) topic, which still is ofttimes avoided, in the classroom and in general society.
One of the most recent academic studies is by Chris Bobel, associate professor and chair of women's studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation:
New Blood offers a fresh interdisciplinary look at feminism-in-flux. For over three decades, menstrual activists have questioned the safety and necessity of feminine care products while contesting menstruation as a deeply entrenched taboo. Chris Bobel shows how a little-known yet enduring force in the feminist health, environmental, and consumer rights movements lays bare tensions between second- and third-wave feminisms and reveals a complicated story of continuity and change within the women's movement.
Through her critical ethnographic lens, Bobel focuses on debates central to feminist thought (including the utility of the category "gender") and challenges to building an inclusive feminist movement. Filled with personal narratives, playful visuals, and original humor, New Blood reveals middle-aged progressives communing in Red Tents, urban punks and artists "culture jamming" commercial menstrual products in their zines and sketch comedy, queer anarchists practicing DIY health care, African American health educators espousing "holistic womb health," and hopeful mothers refusing to pass on the shame to their pubescent daughters. With verve and conviction, Bobel illuminates today's feminism-on-the-ground--indisputably vibrant, contentious, and ever-dynamic.
Karen Houppert has been writing about gender politics for years, for the
Village Voice and
The Nation (among others). She is the author of
The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation:
The Curse examines the culture of concealment that surrounds menstruation and the devastating impact such secrecy has on women's physical and psychological health. Karen Houppert combines reporting on the potential safety problems of sanitary products--such as dioxin-laced tampons--with an analysis of the way ads, movies, young-adult novels, and women's magazines foster a "menstrual etiquette" that leaves women more likely to tell their male colleagues about an affair than brazenly carry an unopened tampon down the hall to the bathroom. From the very beginning, industry-generated instructional films sketch out the parameters of acceptable behavior and teach young girls that bleeding is naughty, irrepressible evidence of sexuality. In the process, confident girls learn to be self-conscious teens.
And the secrecy has even broader implications. Houppert argues that industry ad campaigns have effectively stymied consumer debate, research, and safety monitoring of the sanitary-protection industry. By telling girls and women how to think and talk about menstruation, the mostly male-dominated media have set a tone that shapes women's experiences for them, defining what they are allowed to feel about their periods, their bodies, and their sexuality.
A more light-hearted pop culture approach can be found in
Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim:
In this hip, hilarious and truly eye-opening cultural history, menstruation is talked about as never before. Flow spans its fascinating, occasionally wacky and sometimes downright scary story: from mikvahs (ritual cleansing baths) to menopause, hysteria to hysterectomies—not to mention the Pill, cramps, the history of underwear, and the movie about puberty they showed you in 5th grade.
Flow answers such questions as: What’s the point of getting a period? What did women do before pads and tampons? What about new drugs that promise to end periods—a hot idea or not? Sex during your period: gross or a turn-on? And what’s normal, anyway? With color reproductions of (campy) historical ads and early (excruciating) femcare devices, it also provides a fascinating (and mind-boggling) gallery of this complex, personal and uniquely female process.
As irreverent as it is informative, Flow gives an everyday occurrence its true props – and eradicates the stigma placed on it for centuries.
Not all cultures have negative traditions about menarche and menstruation. One of the films I show my students in cultural anthropology,
Where the Spirit Lives, depicts the ceremony performed for a young First Nations woman, Ashtoh-Komi's best friend, who has her first "moon" and becomes a woman of the tribe, receiving an adult name.
In the next part of the film, Ashtoh-Komi, re-named "Amelia," was taken away from her tribe and family to an Indian boarding school. In the horrid school, she gets her first period, and asks her teacher what the white ritual is. She is shushed by the teacher, told to go see the nurse and that there is no ritual, that these are part of her Indian ways she has to get rid of. The teacher tells her, "You are a Christian now."
The native children in the film are referred to by their white captors as "savages." From my perspective, the indigenous culture portrayed is enlightened.
Though I am now a woman in menopause, I cannot forget a life spent with menses. First, because I was one of the women who suffered my whole bleeding life with dysmenorrhea, causing me acute pain every month, to the point where I would often miss school. There were only two solutions during my growing-up period—hot water bottles and Midol. Thankfully these days we know more about "cramps," but too few women have access to any treatment. I also suffered with extremely heavy bleeding—menorrhagia—leading to many many accidents in public, in school, and on the subway.
I was lucky. I had a modern mother who educated me about what to expect as a young girl approaching menarche, and a father who had no problem picking up monthly supplies from the pharmacy for my mom and me, so I never developed the shame associated with a monthly natural occurrence. That was not true for most of my schoolmates. I will never forget the day in the sixth grade when I went into the bathroom at PS 118 in Queens and found my girlfriend in hysterics. She thought she was dying because she was bleeding. Her parents were both educated teachers but had never discussed her body with her. In junior high school I discovered that many of my girlfriends hated having to go shopping for monthly supplies, and were acutely embarrassed to be caught doing so.
In school, if caught unaware by the onset, or if you had an "accident," you certainly couldn't raise your hand in class and ask the teacher—male or female—"Can I be excused please? I'm menstruating."
Things have changed a bit since then as most U.S. public schools have some type of health education classes that provide some type of sex education, including information on puberty and menstruation.
The first pamphlet I can remember addressing many of the issues around women, women's bodies, and our health was Our Bodies Ourselves:
In May of 1969, as the women’s movement was gaining momentum and influence in the Boston area and elsewhere around the country, 12 women ranging in age from 23 to 39 met during a women’s liberation conference at Emmanuel College. In a workshop on “Women and Their Bodies,” they shared information and personal stories and discussed their experiences with doctors.
The discussions were so provocative and fulfilling that they formed the Doctor’s Group, the forerunner to the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (which later changed to Our Bodies Ourselves), to research and discuss what they were learning about themselves, their bodies, and their health.
They decided to put their knowledge into an accessible format that could be shared and would serve as a model for women who want to learn about themselves, communicate their findings with doctors, and challenge the medical establishment to change and improve the care that women receive.
In 1970, they published a 193-page course booklet on stapled newsprint entitled “Women and Their Bodies”
It is now a
textbook published in 29 languages. One very pertinent essay about menstruation is on the website,
Your Period: How Do You Own It?:
In mainstream Western culture, menstruation is largely taboo. We may hear jokes about it on television, or we may see advertisements for menstrual products, but rarely is menstruation talked about in honest terms. When’s the last time you heard menstrual blood even mentioned? Instead, we often feel obligated to apologize when discussing menstruation.
Until recently, most menstrual product advertisements tried to be subtle, showing women staying “fresh” and “clean,” wearing white while practicing yoga or dancing on the beach. Kotex came out with an ad campaign in 2010 making fun of the genre — to which Kotex readily acknowledged contributing. (Older ads used to include a strange blue liquid representing menstrual blood.) But honesty could go only so far, as none of the three major television networks would allow the word “vagina” to be used. “Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is,” Elissa Stein, co-author (with Susan Kim) of “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation,” told The New York Times.
“You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful — it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.”
I learned some history I didn't know when I found this YouTube Video on the history of the tampon:
The over-sanitized television presentation of menstruation was mocked at The Atlantic in What If Sanitary Pad Ads Didn't Use Blue Fluid?:
Ladies, don't you hate that time of the month, when your body gently exudes an inoffensive, light-blue liquid?
The parody ad above, by the UCB comedy troupe, shows us what happens when perhaps the most famous of advertising euphemisms is shattered.
(Warning: The video is uncomfortable to watch—the substance they use has both the color and viscosity of the real thing.)
The Atlantic saw fit to put a warning label. Which goes to show there are some people who still can't deal with the sight of menstrual blood.
We have a long way to go on issues surrounding natural body functions, which are a part of sex education. There is still debate about how much should be taught and at what age, and many right-wing conservative legislators and parents resist schools playing a part in the process.
There are timing of education issues as well, explored in Are Schools Teaching Sex Ed Too Late?:
As of today, about half of the states in the U.S. require public schools to teach some form of sex education. In many places, these classes begin with information about puberty starting when kids are in fifth or sixth grade. Yet there is a growing body of evidence that puberty (for both girls and boys) in America is beginning earlier than in previous generations. Researchers are debating the phenomenon’s possible links to environmental chemicals, childhood obesity, and family stress. But regardless of cause, this trend means more and more kids are already well into puberty by the time sex education happens in school.
Dr. Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist with Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco who is studying the causes and effects of early puberty, told a reporter from Youth Radio that making the transition easier for kids means bringing puberty education into schools earlier. “I really feel like I’m on a mission now to make sure that people understand that teaching kids about puberty in fifth grade is way too late,” she said.
This school year, The Chicago Board of Education implemented a new sexual health policy that starts the conversation (beginning with the names of reproductive body parts and the difference between good/bad touching) in Kindergarten. It’s a big departure from the district’s previous sex-ed policy, in which older students were taught “abstinence as the expected norm.” Now, sex education in the district is tailored to each grade level.
NPR covered this issue in
Puberty Is Coming Earlier, But That Doesn't Mean Sex Ed Is:
Anne Peacock, who teaches puberty education at Redwood Heights Elementary in Oakland, Calif., recommends that every fifth-grade girl carry a personal pouch containing pads and a fresh pair of underwear, since periods can start at any time for girls this age.
"My personal view is that we should do some form of sexuality education from kindergarten onwards and that they are made to feel comfortable," she says.
Sex and puberty information and education is a global issue. In 2014, UNESCO promoted and distributed guidelines for
Puberty Education, discussed in an article,
UNESCO Highlights Why Puberty Education Is Important For Girls: 2 Out Of 3 Girls Don’t Know What’s Happening During Their First Period and Menstrual Hygiene Management:
Imagine you’re a 10-year-old girl living in a rural community. Your days are spent going to school, playing with friends, and, in some cases, working to help support your family. All of a sudden, you get these sharp pains in your abdomen, your back also begins to hurt, and then without warning, blood flows down from in between your legs. For many girls in developed nations, they are well aware of the change that their bodies are going through. However, if you are like millions of girls across the world, the first menstruation can be a traumatizing and confusing experience.
In an effort to combat this lack of knowledge, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) partnered with Procter and Gamble’s brand, Always, to launch a global effort to provide education for young girls. The initiative is called the UNESCO’s Good Policy & Practice in Puberty Education & Menstrual Hygiene Management. There are approximately 1.2 billion adolescent girls worldwide that need education to improve their knowledge on puberty and menstruation. And as much as two out of three girls don’t know what is happening to them during their first period, which can lead to a number of physical and emotional issues. In developing countries, the problems are exacerbated by a lack of resources and many social taboos that cause girls to be more likely to drop out of school when they reach puberty.
This recent article about
buying sanitary napkins in India illustrates the problem:
If you’re a woman in India and have bought sanitary napkins, then it is likely that these were handed to you in a black polythene bag. You might wonder why the black bag of shame cover a product that is related to women’s menstrual cycle, especially in the 21st century, but things have not really changed that much.
A YouTube channel by the name of Prank Baaz finally decided to raise the issue in a video titled “Sanitary pad is shame?” The video has a girl visiting various chemist shops in Delhi/NCR and asking for pads. She is given the product wrapped in black polythene everywhere. When she asks why she has been handed the pads in black polythene and not white or uncovered, she is laughed at by the shopkeepers and told that this is how people demand it. After the girl leaves, the shopkeepers deride her saying that the item is related to ‘sex’ and therefore must be hidden at all times. The girl is also mocked because by demanding the sanitary pad in a white packet, she is being ‘American’ aka western.
Issues of stigma and shame aren't the worst problem. There is also the problem of the costs for low-income women who are penalized in a variety of ways.
Few people think about what the SNAP program (aka food stamps) does and doesn't cover.
Read 10 Things You Can't Buy With Food Stamps, which includes:
Tampons and pads. This one often shocks people, especially women. I was 25 when I first learned that it was a reality: The women who came to the thrift store that I ran asked for rags, which they washed and used in lieu of disposable items. They then burned them or buried them, because they didn't have the laundry detergent to get them clean again. Have you ever had a day when you didn't have five on hand? What would you do if you got your period? What would you do if your 14-year-old got her period and it was a school night and you did not have any cash for another two days? I was a little older when I learned that for people who identify as genderfluid, genderqueer or trans, this can be an even more stigmatizing experience.
And there are those items that are considered to be a luxury in many countries, including the U.S., which are subject to a flat tax, which disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes.
This is becoming a cause for political action, as outlined in Women Petition Removal Of 'Tampon Tax' Because Hygiene Products Aren't A Luxury Item:
It’s a purchase no woman looks forward to making yet, across the globe, tampons are taxed as luxury items, and customers are demanding it be repealed.
The campaign was successful in Canada, as explained in this article,
Toronto woman behind campaign to kill tampon tax ‘ecstatic’ over victory:
On July 1, getting your period won’t be such a burden anymore — on the pocketbook.
And it’s all thanks to Jill Piebiak.
The 29-year-old Alberta native, who calls herself the “leader of the Canadian menstruators,” spearheaded the campaign that swiftly — in little more than four months — took down our nation’s tax on tampons and other feminine hygiene products, putting an estimated $33 million to $36 million annually back into the hands of those who menstruate each month.
After Years Of Backlash, Canada Ditches The ‘Tampon Tax’:
The Canadian government is officially scrapping the country’s so-called “tampon tax,” which has been deeply controversial over the past two decades. Starting July 1, feminine hygiene products — including tampons, pads, and menstrual cups — will no longer be subject to Canada’s five percent “Goods and Services” tax (GST).
Conservative party leaders had previously promised to address the issue in upcoming budget negotiations, but this week’s official announcement comes earlier than expected. Progressive politicians in the country are celebrating the news. “Finally, the government has listened to reason and put an end to this injustice. That is a victory for all women,” New Democratic Party (NDP) politician Irene Mathyssen, who introduced legislation to make the change, said in a statement. “The women who made this an issue, their voices have finally been heard.”
Nearly 75,000 people in Canada signed onto a petition demanding the repeal of the tampon tax. The petition’s author, Jill Piebiak, pointed out that it’s offensive for the Canadian government to designate menstrual hygiene products as a “nonessential item” or a “luxury good” — especially because plenty of other products, like cake decorations and contact lenses, are already exempt from the GST. “We all know that buying tampons, pads, moon/diva cups, or panty liners is not optional. These products are an essential part of a normal, public life for people with periods,” Piebiak wrote, concluding that “our government makes money off of our bodies.”
So what about those taxes here in the U.S.?
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, deputy director of development at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote
New York, time to shelve the tax on tampons:
It is a topic few people are comfortable talking about in mixed company: tampons and other menstrual products. But now, as a policy reform tide rises around the world, the conversation is coming to a head in Albany. Will New York be on the vanguard of this important movement or will it lag?
In recent years, how menstruation is managed in developing countries has garnered an increasing amount of attention, including at the United Nations, where there is consensus that it is an economic, public health and human rights issue. For example, in Africa one in 10 girls misses school during her period; poor menstrual hygiene is linked to skyrocketing rates of cervical cancer in India. The fact that this is now being openly discussed is progress. But scarce attention has been paid to how America’s poor fare. For those who can afford it, periods are simply a necessary nuisance — and tampons an obligatory monthly expense. But for low-income women and girls, and especially those who are homeless, lack of ability to access feminine hygiene products can compromise their health and well-being. Just imagine the sheer difficulty of spending a full day in public, attending work or school, without enough tampons on hand.
Which brings us to the #NoTaxOnTampons campaign. Just last week, the Canadian government voted to remove the country’s goods and services Tax on feminine hygiene products. Australia and the United Kingdom are under intense pressure to do the same.
In the U.S., where sales taxes are levied state by state, there exists a patchwork of carve-outs for essential health and hygiene items. Example: New Jersey and Pennsylvania do not tax tampons, but New York does.This could change as early as this month. A bill has been introduced in the state Assembly to eliminate sales tax on all feminine hygiene products; the City Council is poised to introduce a companion resolution.
To see what the law is in your state take a look at this list:
These are the U.S. states that tax women for having periods:
For those uninitiated in the country’s tax codes (lucky you!), most states tax all “tangible personal property” but make exemptions for select “necessities” (non-luxury items). Things that are considered necessities usually include groceries, food stamp purchases, medical purchases (prescriptions, prosthetics, some over-the-counter drugs), clothes (in some states), and agriculture supplies. The lists of exemptions vary from state to state.
Tampons, however, are rarely considered a necessity by state governments, and most states do not allow exemptions for them (nor do they even list them in their tax codes). Yet as every woman who has ever gotten her period knows, feminine hygiene products are not a choice; they’re a required part of being a woman. And the costs for these products can add up.
New York Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens) is attempting to get the
tax removed from tampons and toilet paper:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Toilet paper, tampons and other feminine hygiene products are subject to New York's sales taxes, a situation one state lawmaker is trying to change.
Other over-the-counter hygiene products are sales tax free, including sunscreens, laxatives, condoms, aspirin and Motrin.
But not TP or sanitary pads. Instead, those products are considered useful "to control a normal bodily function and to maintain personal cleanliness," according to the state's Department of Taxation and Finance. Like soap and lotion, tampons and pads are subject to New York sales taxes.
Given Republican attitudes towards the poor and women's issues, and conservatives' desire to cut back SNAP and any programs benefiting low-income people, there is little chance that we will see much movement on this in the near future.
I would like to see all Democrats running for office make this an issue. Expand the items that can be bought with public assistance funding, and remove the tax on necessities for women.
Our menstruation is not a luxury or a shame. It is a biological function that affects all human life, male and female. Period.