It's Only Blood_Shattering the Taboo of Menstruation Read online

  There is plenty of evidence to suggest that great significance has been attributed to menstruation in many periods and places. The menstrual blood has been seen as a force, both holy and cursed, good and evil, life-giving and destructive. In both Uganda and Kenya, most of the people I speak to know of a myth about menstrual blood and infertility – even if they do not believe it. If someone sees your menstrual blood you can become infertile. A relic from the past, they say, but that still causes concern. In Manipur in north-eastern India, an older woman explains that she was told to drink a drop of menstrual blood when celebrating her first period, in the belief that it would protect her from sickness.

  ‘Extraordinary’ is a term that the ethnologist Denise Malmberg uses in The Red Flower of Shame (1991), a book about menstruation in Swedish tradition. In the Swedish farming society of the nineteenth century, menstrual blood was something magical, linked to a force that could strike both the person who was menstruating and others. In some dialects, menstruation was even called ‘the red power’. Menstrual blood had a special status in the supernatural imagination and could be used both to cure and to bewitch, not least as a kind of ‘love potion’. Denise Malmberg also writes that there was a belief that cloth ‘in which a maiden hath menstruated’ could be used to put out fires.

  Studies of historical views on menstruation among indigenous populations in North America, Papua New Guinea, and several places in Africa offer similar conclusions about the power and status of menstrual blood. Menstrual blood has set itself apart, uncontrollable and for a long time without an apparent function, but with distinct regularity. And on top of it all with a cycle that – magically enough – coincides with the moon’s.

  The first menstruation has been acknowledged, and still is in many places, with various forms of celebrations or rites in which menstruation is regarded as a vital change.

  But shameful? Dirty? Evil? Not necessarily. The shame is not some ancient law of nature, and does not apply to everyone, everywhere. Menstruation has repeatedly been understood as a force. Menstrual blood has to various degrees been called unclean; in some cases it has even been considered dangerous. With time, it seems to have become an emblem of filth and shame – a patriarchal instrument of power that should be understood in the context of separation and hierarchy between the categories of man and woman.

  As Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex (1949): ‘Just as the penis gets its privileged value from the social context, the social context makes menstruation a malediction. One symbolizes virility and the other femininity: it is because femininity means alterity and inferiority that its revelation is met with shame.’

  * * *

  ‘Contact with it turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seeds in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees falls off, the bright surface of mirrors in which it is merely reflected is dimmed, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air.’

  Barren, dried up, dead, rusty … The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder wrote his exposition of the destructive capacity of menstruation around 77 ad in Naturalis Historia, an encyclopaedia that would be read widely on the European continent and serve as a reference work for more than a thousand years. The ‘knowledge’ lived on in scattered showers all the way into the twentieth century, in for example Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, where there are modern examples of the belief that the one who menstruates can make flowers and fruit trees wither.

  In the book The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation (1988), the authors also recount historical examples of notions that menstrual blood can ruin hunting, fishing, water, harvests – the conditions of life, simply put – from areas that now belong to Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Sudan, and India. In Sweden too, there have been beliefs that menstrual blood should not be mixed with sources of water.

  The one who menstruates is seen as a threat that must be controlled and regulated. If a man comes into contact with menstrual blood, it may for example ‘cause persistent vomiting, “kill” his blood so that it turns black, corrupt his vital juices so that his skin darkens and hangs in folds as his flesh wastes, permanently dull his wits, and eventually lead to a slow decline and death,’ according to a sociological study from 1940s Papua New Guinea, cited in The Curse.

  In both the Bible and the Quran, there are references to the uncleanliness of menstruation, in words with undeniably negative connotations. For example, in Leviticus in the Old Testament it is stated: ‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean.’ In the second surah of the Quran: ‘They ask you about menstruation. Say: “It is an impurity. So, keep away from women during menstruation; and do not have intimacy with them until they are cleansed.”’

  Within Hinduism, menstruation is linked to the god Indra’s beheading of a Brahmin (a revered/holy person), a sin that fell on the women. Bodily fluids such as sweat, blood, and tears are all seen as a form of pollution. As long as they remain in place, that is, inside the body, they do not pose a threat. But as soon as they emerge, their signification changes. They blur our boundaries.

  The misogynist theme connected with menstrual blood runs through Hinduism as well as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, although there may have been other causes for the notions of uncleanliness and taboo.

  In the 1920s, a couple of American researchers tried to take the destructive capacity of menstrual blood to a whole new level by studying what they called ‘menotoxin’ – a toxic substance in the menses that turned out to be nothing but a fantasy, in the sulphuric spirit of Pliny. All the way into the 1950s, other keen researchers continued to search for the poison in menstrual blood and connected it to ideas about the body being cleansed during menstruation.

  The understanding of menstruation as an unclean threat, which can be nothing but shameful to carry, runs through science as well as religion – and is later also reiterated by commercial interests.

  * * *

  In Sweden in the early twentieth century, at the same time as the hunt for toxic menstrual blood proceeded in American research labs, the menstrual cycle was used as a reason for why women could not work as doctors or judges. Women were simply too unreliable as a result of the hormones – a way of reasoning that was employed far earlier and unfortunately also later (when it was beneficial for men).

  Menstruation was understood as a deviation from the male body ideal, writes the historian of ideas Karin Johannisson in the book The Dark Continent (1994). The menstrual cycle made the woman unpredictable, a victim of imbalance and chaos. Menstruation itself was more or less treated like a disease, to be cured with quiet and rest.

  The menstrual magic from Swedish farming society seems to have lost its power and become a weakness. Not just as disease, but also as sign of a lack of control. When cleanliness and disciplined hygiene were elevated as strong ideals at the turn of the previous century, the red blood stain undoubtedly became a ‘mark of shame’, writes Denise Malmberg in The Red Flower of Shame (1991).

  Even then, advertisements for menstrual hygiene products focused on invisibility, being able to bleed unnoticed and without it showing. Menstrual blood continued to be ‘dangerous’, but now mostly for the woman herself, whose blood stains confirmed an idea about the unreliability, chaos – and abnormality – of not being a man.

  In the 1970s, the American feminist Gloria Steinem built on the reasoning around gendered menstrual shame in the epic text If Men Could Menstruate (1978). If men could menstruate, thinks Gloria Steinem, menstruation would become an enviable, manly event to brag about, a proof that only real men can go into battle (‘You have to give blood to take blood’), hold positions of political power, and become priests or gods (‘He gave this blood for our sins’) – a perspect
ive that the organisation WaterAid launched in their campaign If Men Had Periods in 2015, in which heavy bleeding and PMS were seen as signs of strength.

  * * *

  Menstrual shame may be abstract, a personal experience that is difficult to measure, taken for granted so often that it risks disappearing in a global normalisation process with deep historical roots. But the consequences of living with it are very real.

  ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’, reads the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A quarter of those human beings – born free and equal – menstruate. Somewhere around two billion people. During a lifetime, it amounts to around 3,000 days of bleeding, for each and every one of us who menstruates. All of those days will not necessarily be marked by shame; but it is there, more or less tangible, for many of us.

  It is a shame that affects the right to health, education, and work; the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment; and the right not to be discriminated against because of one’s gender. It affects the ability to participate in public life, to step outside the door and hold one’s head high.

  ‘It’s as if it shows – no matter what I do,’ says the Ugandan menstrual activist Charlotte Akello. When the menstrual blood and everything that reveals its existence must be hidden from the rest of the world, the one who menstruates is not free.

  3

  LOST DAYS

  The road to the Ugandan town Jinja is lined with green sugar cane plantations. Yellow trucks drive the densely-packed harvest toward the sugar factories. Smoke slowly billows upward from narrow chimneys. Before we enter town, billboards take over the view: Nile Soap, Nile Cooking Oil, Nile Special. The latter is a beer that is made in Jinja, where everything seems to take its name from the mighty river with its source here in Lake Victoria. It is the Nile that, with the help of the power station Nalubaale, has made Jinja a town of intense production: palm oil, steel, beer, and sugar. In Jinja there is a future, money to be made.

  Around the sugar production, a number of small settlements have sprouted. Annie Kisaakye explains that those who work in the fields and the factories live on land that belongs to the sugar companies, and that their children go to school there. She has been to several of the schools to talk about how menstruation works and other things connected to puberty. She has spoken about Easy Pads, the cloth pads produced by Irise International, an organisation that works on issues to do with menstruation and gender equality.

  ‘I knew nothing myself when I got my first period. I was 12 or 13 years old and didn’t dare tell my mother because I was afraid she’d think that I had been with a boy, and get mad. I was so scared! But it just kept coming – the blood, that is – so after three days I had to ask her what it was.’

  She does not remember what her mother told her. As little as possible, she thinks. But Annie Kisaakye does remember that she had got her hands on a piece of fabric to catch the blood, before she even knew what kind of blood it was. The fabric came from some old piece of clothing, a T-shirt perhaps, and she can still visualise it: black with an orange-coloured pattern. But as soon as she could afford to, she bought disposable pads.

  ‘Those rags aren’t comfortable.’

  It has only been a few months since Annie Kisaakye left Uganda’s capital Kampala for a job at Irise International in Jinja, having previously worked in marketing in the hotel industry. She misses the capital, but likes the job. Earlier during the day, she tried to convince parents visiting their children’s boarding school, a few dozen kilometres east of Jinja, to buy cloth pads from Irise for their daughters. Like the disposable pads, they have wings that can be attached to the panties and a material designed to soak up the blood.

  The gain is easily calculated. The cloth pads are expensive, though they cost far less than disposable pads in the long run. We are on our way back from the boarding school to Jinja now, with shoulders and thighs pressed together in one of the minibuses that are the most common means of public transport here.

  Irise International’s office faces a grassy courtyard in central Jinja. The office is a small room, in which one of the walls, made of glass, functions as a door and the only window. On the glass wall are posters outlining the organisation’s three pillars: ‘education, breaking taboos and sanitary products’. The reader is encouraged to help ‘ensure that no girl is ever held back by her period’.

  Annie Kisaakye – who has already worked all of Sunday with me in tow – hurries home while I sit down opposite Emily Wilson. She is wearing a T-shirt and turned up jeans, leaning relaxed into her chair. Emily Wilson is a researcher in women’s health and development. She is in charge of Irise International and is one of the people who founded the organisation, the mission of which is to work for ‘the rights of marginalised women and girls in East Africa’ by focusing on menstruation.

  ‘In Uganda, we found that around 50 per cent of girls are missing school several days every month because of their periods. And we know that that’s fairly consistent with other good data from the rest of East Africa,’ she says.

  I begin to calculate an approximate absence total, but instead write a note reminding myself to figure out later how many lost days it amounts to per school year.

  When Emily Wilson says ‘we know’, she means that there is sufficient qualitative research for her to be able to express herself with confidence. She is thorough, does not seem to care for numbers that ‘suggest’ or ‘indicate’. She offers several examples of research that supports what she says about absences.

  Together with another researcher, she has written a report in which they argue that the unmet menstrual needs of women and girls put them at a ‘huge disadvantage to men’, which contributes to their social, economic, and political subordination in the constant interplay between gender and power. In the long run, by being denied access to education and work, women and girls are prevented from becoming equal citizens. They are held back.

  In the films that the organisation has created to spread their message, there is a straight line of relation between menstruation and poverty: girls stay home from school because of their periods, they fall behind, they perform badly, their grades decline, it becomes difficult to find work, and they end up in poverty.

  ‘The main problem is that girls and women aren’t prioritised and that they aren’t supposed to be heard. A holistic view is needed, with more knowledge about menstruation and combatting of stigmatisation.’

  Her next sentence, ‘It’s not enough to just give out pads so as to tick the menstrual hygiene box,’ offers a glimpse of the criticism she aims at others: the politicians and organisations who make things easy for themselves by riding on the back of multinational corporations who do not mind giving away pads by the kilo to lay claim to the market. These are populist measures with short-term results, according to Emily Wilson.

  * * *

  I plough through reports about absences from Ethiopia, Uganda, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Zambia, Ghana, and several other countries. And it is certainly possible to establish that the complex of problems related to menstruation affects education, not just through stress and difficulty concentrating, as Saudah and Phiona in Kampala spoke of earlier.

  The statistics on the proportion who stay home while on their period vary, from 20 per cent in studies from Ghana, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone to roughly 30 per cent in Nepal, South Africa, and Afghanistan, 40 per cent in Senegal, and 50 per cent in Kenya. In parts of India, the number is as high as 70 per cent, while in other parts of the country it sinks to 20 per cent. Sometimes it is only for a day, often two or three, in some cases even longer.

  For those with disabilities, the level of menstruation-related absences tends to be far above the average. In Nepal, school toilets that accommodate a wheelchair are rare, to say the least, Amrita Gyawali explains when we meet at a conference about women’s health in Copenhagen. She works for the Nepalese organisation Karuna Foundation, the mission of which
is to improve the situation for those living with disabilities. Amrita Gyawali has a manual wheelchair and a fringe that keeps falling into her eyes. Over and over again, she brushes it behind her ear.

  ‘If you menstruate, you have to wear the same menstrual protection the entire school day. It’s just as difficult in public restrooms. In Kathmandu, I can’t access a single one.’

  This makes another human rights convention highly relevant: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Discrimination on the grounds of disability is an attack on the inherent dignity and worth of every human being.

  Amrita Gyawali saw to her education at home and only made it to the school in Kathmandu to take her exams. When she was younger, a disability effectively meant that you were shut out from school; but this is no longer a categorical rule. The situation has improved.

  At the same time, inaccessible toilets remain a fixed feature on the journey from school into public life and the workplace.

  ‘The majority simply stay at home when they are on their period,’ Amrita Gyawali says.

  I cannot find any Swedish studies about school days lost because of menstruation – not from a single perspective. There are, on the other hand, American studies which show that menstrual pain is the most common cause of short, recurring periods of absence among teenage girls – not least among those who suffer from endometriosis, a chronic condition that can lead to disabling pain during menstruation.

  Did I stay home from school when I was on my period? In the 1980s and 1990s in Falun, Sweden. Perhaps a few times when the pain was at its worst. Rarely did I hear anyone mention menstruation as a cause of absence, even though there were probably those who could not go to school. On a couple of occasions in high school, I – mumbling – used menstruation as a made-up excuse to escape gym class. Some did it more often, and for others it was no excuse at all, but a reality.