My Jethima (my much older Aunt) and I shared a special bond. She pampered me and let me eat jam which I loved but could only have limited occasional amount at my own home which my mother ran in a tight budget. Jethima or Jimma as I called her was special to me for many other things too. She would let me read "n" number of story books. I could sing and dance at home. Dirty her drawing room. She did not think I was particularly naughty. I was, but it always helped when others (very few) did not think so. However, that one day, when she came out of the bathroom, after I had used it, she did not look pleased. She called me to her room and whispered in a hard voice, "Are you menstruating? I saw some clots in the bathroom floor. Was that yours?" I was 13. I said, "No." She probed further. I had never seen her being steely like that. It broke my heart as I said "...but Jimma I would then need pads, right? And I would have to throw them too and you could have seen me doing that then, isnt it?" She saw the point and got back to her normal self (probably my baffled face also helped) and said, "It is not about me, my dear. It is your dada (my cousin). He knows nothing about it. How will he? And he would be really scared if he sees blood on the floor of the bathroom! It must be the crows...." she left the room before she finished her sentence. Now this brother (cousin) of mine whom she wanted to protect was about 12/14 years older to me. I loved him. He loved me. And in this one moment, my aunt not only created a distance between her and me, she also created a distance between my cousin and me. I felt, I was not welcome in my puberty as unconditionally as I was in my childhood. I had things to hide. And my brother who was a decade older than me did not even have to share the burden of the knowledge. He actually needed to be protected from the knowledge. It seemed he needed protection from me. On some days, at least.
This is my second post on the subject of menstruation. The first post detailed the discrimination/prejudice I faced being a menstruating girl/woman (http://ladybugfieldnotes.blogspot.in/2012/07/making-mountain-out-of-mundane.html). I would like to weigh the silence around it and how serious it can get for women and girls.
A year ago when students of Jamia University in Delhi started pasting sanitary pads with slogans written on them, it started quite a debate in several walls in Facebook. In one such walls I read a comment from an irritated middle aged man. He said, he knew menstruation is a reality and there were many such realities in the world, why did one have to paste it on people's face? "Shit is a reality too"...he said, "now you would say we should talk about it all the time too!" Well! We do talk about shit. Don't we? Its not only us Indians who love to speak about constipation on the breakfast table but I also see shit being discussed seriously in the conferences on malnutrition and infant mortality. What consistency? How many times? What do you do before and after? What to take for it? What to do against too much of it? It is discussed along with pictures like the one here or worse!
I have not seen people batting an eyelash! Not making a face! No giggling! I would be considered a freak if I do, because, shit (it) is serious! Is menstruation serious?
If any guest came home and wanted to visit the backside balcony for a smoke or just to sit in the sun, we had to rush to hide the clothes if it was that time of the month. We only got sanitary pads when we had to travel during periods.When seven years later our younger sister had her periods, she only used sanitary pads. I was literally jealous of her and thought, could I have acted as disgusted as her by the period blood? May be I would have also got sanitary pads then! Always! From the very beginning! I know better now. We could not afford sanitary pads back then. But the whole thing of getting up even middle of the night and sitting and washing sanitary clothes to put them out to dry and then hide them quickly when anyone in sight, still gives me a tired back! I knew friends who were cursed by their mothers when they had periods. I knew class mates who could not dry their clothes in sun. As I now work on menstrual hygiene projects, I know how dangerous it can be. I know how many girls suffer from thick white discharge due to infections associated to bad menstrual hygiene and the price they are paying for it. How it is linked to this "created" shame around it. The silence around it. And to top it all, even now, in today's times, I see an actor of national fame defending her period blood because her ex-boyfriend proclaimed she was trying to bewitch him with it! What the #@&%! And what was more amazing was that there were takers for the theory that she could. Millions of them. And that is exactly why we need to talk about menstruation!
This is my second post on the subject of menstruation. The first post detailed the discrimination/prejudice I faced being a menstruating girl/woman (http://ladybugfieldnotes.blogspot.in/2012/07/making-mountain-out-of-mundane.html). I would like to weigh the silence around it and how serious it can get for women and girls.
A year ago when students of Jamia University in Delhi started pasting sanitary pads with slogans written on them, it started quite a debate in several walls in Facebook. In one such walls I read a comment from an irritated middle aged man. He said, he knew menstruation is a reality and there were many such realities in the world, why did one have to paste it on people's face? "Shit is a reality too"...he said, "now you would say we should talk about it all the time too!" Well! We do talk about shit. Don't we? Its not only us Indians who love to speak about constipation on the breakfast table but I also see shit being discussed seriously in the conferences on malnutrition and infant mortality. What consistency? How many times? What do you do before and after? What to take for it? What to do against too much of it? It is discussed along with pictures like the one here or worse!I have not seen people batting an eyelash! Not making a face! No giggling! I would be considered a freak if I do, because, shit (it) is serious! Is menstruation serious?
Have you heard of dysmennorrhea? Menstrual cramps, also known as dysmenorrhea (not diarrhea but another rrhea) or period pains, are painful sensations felt in the lower abdomen that can occur both before and after a woman's menstrual period. The pain ranges from dull and annoying to severe and extreme. Some recent research says the pain can be as bad as the pain associated to heart attacks (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/period-pain-is-officially-as-bad-as-a-heart-attack-so-why-have-doctors-ignored-it-the-answer-is-a6883831.html).Dr. Imogen Shaw, a GP specializing in women's health, explains; "In general, there isn't much research done into women's health. The lack of understanding around menstrual health means that some women can have serious problems dismissed as period pain or other "lady pains", says GPs.
A week ago when I kept a straight face and bore period cramps to sit through long lectures/discussions in a conference, I wished every man and woman was sympathetic to the pain I faced, including myself, who is always apologetic about having my periods on an odd day. That is, on the day when I have a big conference to attend. Or on the day when I have to travel 6 hours non-stop by car to areas with no toilet. Or on the day when I am slated to travel to villages with only men in the car. I am the one who bears the inconvenience. The pain. The dampness. That strange feeling of passing that occasional clot. And I am the one who is apologetic about asking for a toilet. About not being able to sit right till the end of the day in a session. About a spot that appears on my trouser. About how I make everyone around me uncomfortable, when I say, "I am not feeling well............. its my first day of my period." I joke soon, "It's my "bleed the Niagara" day!" I think I will be much less apologetic about a diarrhea episode which in all probability will be caused by my gluttony around street food. We are conditioned to feel apologetic about letting others know about our discomfort around menstruation. If any of my men colleagues (past and present) are reading this, think if you have ever heard from me that a tour needs to be fixed on some other day because I might have my periods on that day? Have you heard it from other female colleagues? That is how silent we are. As I die of my cramps and discomfort and think of the next toilet I can get, I look like the photo below:as fresh as flowers (grrrrr....)
A week ago when I kept a straight face and bore period cramps to sit through long lectures/discussions in a conference, I wished every man and woman was sympathetic to the pain I faced, including myself, who is always apologetic about having my periods on an odd day. That is, on the day when I have a big conference to attend. Or on the day when I have to travel 6 hours non-stop by car to areas with no toilet. Or on the day when I am slated to travel to villages with only men in the car. I am the one who bears the inconvenience. The pain. The dampness. That strange feeling of passing that occasional clot. And I am the one who is apologetic about asking for a toilet. About not being able to sit right till the end of the day in a session. About a spot that appears on my trouser. About how I make everyone around me uncomfortable, when I say, "I am not feeling well............. its my first day of my period." I joke soon, "It's my "bleed the Niagara" day!" I think I will be much less apologetic about a diarrhea episode which in all probability will be caused by my gluttony around street food. We are conditioned to feel apologetic about letting others know about our discomfort around menstruation. If any of my men colleagues (past and present) are reading this, think if you have ever heard from me that a tour needs to be fixed on some other day because I might have my periods on that day? Have you heard it from other female colleagues? That is how silent we are. As I die of my cramps and discomfort and think of the next toilet I can get, I look like the photo below:as fresh as flowers (grrrrr....)
While we are on the topic of pain, do you think women get attention when in pain? I have seen more men throwing their hands up in the air when in pain and flagellating to get attention, however research shows women get attention in an average 16 minutes later than men when in pain, because women are thought to be creatures who "exaggerate". Oh yes! that is the perception even after the labor pain that women go through to deliver babies.
The other big problem that we have faced was around was use of clothes for menstrual management. I fought with my mother to get proper detergent bars for washing them and not the left over small pieces of bathing soaps. However, we were not supposed to talk about them in front of others. I once threatened her that I would say it aloud what I was asking for, if she did not stop complaining about me to my favorite uncle, Sujit Kaku. It worked! ;)
We were lucky to have running water in the house. We had a designated area in the backside balcony to dry the clothes and I loved that area as it really dried the clothes well but I loved it even more when I could get new clothes to change.
Two years ago, when my son and me opened his standard 8th science book and it talked about changes in the body due to puberty, he thought, his classmates would be too embarrassed reading them. I asked, "Not you?" He said, "I already know all these". I said, "May be they know too. May be their mothers (and fathers) have talked to them." He looked at me in all seriousness and said, "I don't think so, Ma." I was proven wrong that year. I hope, he is proven wrong in the long run and more and more of us talk about menstruation, women's health, the associated discomfort and pain. You can not afford to not to talk about it. Your silence is making life difficult for many.
P.S: The menstrual hygiene posters and the Diarrhea poster were downloaded from Google. The second menstrual hygiene poster was part of BRAC, Bangladesh's IEC material.
There was a survey done by the makers of a women’s health app called Clue, in partnership with the International Women’s Health Coalition. Here are a few: on the rag (a term that always made me look at student rag weeks in a different light), the curse, shark week, having the painters in, Aunt Flo, and of course the infinitely useful “time of the month”. Who else remembers their PE teacher asking if anyone was skipping a shower that week? Some other findings from the 90,000 responses Clue received: 95% of Algerians feel comfortable talking to female family members about periods; 86% of Russian women and girls would hate to talk to a male classmate about them. Some 93% of Pakistanis wouldn’t talk to a male family member about it, while 45% of Swedes would.
ReplyDeleteThere was a program called Yatra..On the Yatra, a menstruation tent was set up in every site that the team visited. The organisers didn’t expect that women would turn up, because menstruation in India is so taboo (after all, it’s the country where if you touch pickles while on your period, you turn them rotten). But even on public holidays, there were lines out of the door of women who were desperate to talk about periods, and to learn about them. And 73% told that their mothers or female relatives had told them nothing about it. Some young girls who were convinced they were dying of cancer when they started bleeding....
It would be nice if we were capable of talking more clearly and scientifically about our bodies. But what’s damaging the lives of millions of schoolgirls and women is not daft and coy terms for periods, but being unable to talk about them at all, or being so ashamed that they have to dry their sanitary cloths under the beds or in the damp, getting urinary infections or worse. Unesco estimates that one in 10 African girls, for example, miss at least one day of school a month, leading to a higher drop-out rate. A survey in India found nearly 25% of girls drop out of school permanently when they reach puberty, because they have no toilet at school. As long as we can talk about periods openly, and stop all the disease and degradation that comes from women’s bodily functions being thought polluting or dangerous, you can call them what you like.
I promise that I'll be open with my daughter when I discuss this. When she takes an injection, she holds my hand... Baba.. Help me.., when her tooth are extracted, she hold my hands and says 'baba it pains.. Please don't leave me'... Why not always? I'll be with her.. I promise...
It's a topic no one even wants others to know that they are reading about it... Its like watching porn to them :P The moment you talk VAGINA they (men) will forget the rest of the words you mentioned such as pain, discomfort, social taboo, discrimination etc and they will just get stuck at that one word as if they are seeing it in front of them... Sadly anything related to woman genitalia is either porn or gaali (using abusing word) to most of men even in today's world.
ReplyDeleteThat's sad! It needs to change. The men like the one who commented above will bring change I hope.
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