by Kate Lister
By far the most common belief was that menstrual blood is unpleasant or dangerous, and this was recorded in thirty of the forty-four cultures studied. And although this research is now over forty years old and the menstrual hut is mercifully on the way out, menstruation continues to be viewed as ‘unpleasant’ by many today. I myself have often found menstruation to be an unpleasant experience. There are those who sail through a ‘visit from Auntie Flo’ (1954), enduring little more than a twinge in the abdomen. And then there are people like me, who firmly believe their uterus is re-enacting the Battle of the Somme.
For those of you who have never experienced severe PMS, allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s fucking ugly. Your body bloats, your tits hurt and you sweat uncontrollably. Your crevices start to feel like a swamp and your head is pounding all the time. You feel like you have a cold – shivering, aching, nauseous – and have the hair-trigger emotions of someone who has not slept for days. But we’re not done yet. The intense cramping across your lower abdomen feels like the worst diarrhoea you’ve ever had – in fact, you’ll also get diarrhoea, to help with the crying fits. As your internal organs contract and tear themselves to blooded bits so you can lay an egg, blasts of searing pain rip through you. Sometimes they’re so bad, you double over and can’t breathe until it’s passed, and the dull, constant ache returns. Nothing will satisfy the food monster that has been unleashed in your belly. It’s braying for sugar and carbs like a fat yak. Some foods make you feel sick. Some smells turn your stomach and make you retch. You don’t know what you want to eat, but you want to eat a lot of it. You bleed so much that all ‘intimate feminine hygiene products’ fail you – it’s like trying to control a lava flow with an oven mitt. You worry people can smell your period. You are terrified to sit on anything or stand up for a week in case you’ve bled through. And as you’re sitting, a crying, sweaty, wobbly, spotty, smelly mess, some bastard asks ‘Time of the month, love?’ And then you have to eat his head.
It’s not much fun, I grant you, but this doesn’t explain the out-and-out revulsion even the word PERIOD can elicit from some people. It doesn’t justify having to sleep in a shed.
Disgust at menstruation may be a common phenomenon, but it is not a universal one. The Vaishnava Bauls of Bengal believe that menstrual blood is a potent and powerful fluid. A girl’s first period is a cause for community celebration and her menstrual blood is mixed with cow’s milk, camphor, coconut milk and sugar, and then drunk by family and friends. Tara, a Baul woman interviewed in 2002, recalled the effect drinking her menstrual blood had on those who partook of the ceremony: ‘Powers of memory and concentration were enhanced, their skin acquired a brilliant glow, their voices grew melodious, and their entire beings were infused with happiness, serenity, and love.’8 Perhaps you don’t fancy using a tampon as a teabag, but the belief menstrual blood has healing properties is not without historical precedence.
The Ebers Papyrus (c.1550 BC) includes a number of remedies to stop the breasts from sagging, including one where the menstrual blood of a girl who had just started to menstruate was smeared across the breasts and stomach.9 Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) claimed menstrual blood could cure leprosy: ‘If a person becomes leprous from lust or intemperance … He should make a bath … and mix in menstrual blood, as much as he can get, and get into the bath.’10 The Jiajing Emperor (1507–1567) was the twelfth emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty. Every day he would drink a concoction called ‘red lead’, made from the menstrual blood of virgins that he believed would prolong his life. The girls were aged between eleven and fourteen and were treated so cruelly that in 1542 they attempted to assassinate the emperor. Though he was badly injured, the emperor survived, and his attackers, along with their families, were sentenced to death by slow slicing. The emperor continued to drink red lead for the rest of his life.11 Twat.
However, most cultures and religions stigmatise menstruation as something impure. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, all place sanctions on menstruating women and view menstrual blood as unclean.12 Leviticus 20:18 reads: ‘if a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly period, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them are to be cut off from their people.’13 The Quran 2:222 says: ‘They ask you about menstruation. Say, “It is an impurity, so keep away from women during it and do not approach them until they are cleansed.”’14
Galen’s theory of the four humours – blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm – dominated the Western medical understanding of menstruation until the eighteenth century. The Galenic ‘plethora theory’ taught that menstruation was caused by an excess or ‘plethora’ of the blood in the body.15 It logically followed that menstruation was the body’s way of redressing such an imbalance, as women were naturally weaker than men and in need of regular bleeding. Galen also taught that menstruation was important to conception and provided nourishment to the foetus.16
Female with anatomical view of abdomen, from Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, Isagoge Breves Prelucide Ac Uberime In Anatomiam Humani Corporis, 1522.
Early Chinese medicine also viewed menstruation as the result of an imbalance in the body. Blood and yin energy were understood to be the ruling aspects in women and monthly bleeding threatened to cause disharmony. As early as AD 651, doctors like Sun Simiao (孫思邈) linked menstruation with poor physical and psychological health.17 Therefore, Chinese doctors viewed menstrual health as key to female health overall. In his Comprehensive Good Formulas for Women (1237), Chen Ziming (陳自明) wrote, ‘when providing medical treatment to women, the first necessity is to regulate the menses, therefore we begin with this’.18
Woodcut illustration from an edition of 1591 (nineteenth year of the Wanli reign period of the Ming dynasty), showing the acu-moxa locations commonly employed in treating irregular menstruation (yuejing bu tiao).
Foundational texts of Indian Ayurvedic medicine such as the Sushruta Samhita, composed sometime between 600 BC and the first century AD, taught that menstruation was a form of bodily purification. However, an imbalance of the three dosha energies could lead to ‘bad’ menstruation that could make women very ill indeed. Such an imbalance could result in blood that smelled ‘like a putrid corpse or fetid pus, or which is clotted, or is thin, or emits the smell of urine or fecal matter’.19 In order to assist the purification, the Sushruta Samhita advises that:
A woman in her menses should lie down on a mattress made of Kusha blades (during the first three days), should take her food from her own blended palms or from earthen saucers, or from trays made of leaves. She should live on a course of Habishya diet and forswear during the time, even the sight of her husband. After this period, on the fourth day she should take a ceremonial ablution, put on a new (untorn) garment and ornaments and then visit her husband after having uttered the words of necessary benediction.20
Doctors in the West were still debating whether or not a menstruating woman could pollute food as late as 1878, when the British Medical Journal ran a series of letters discussing whether a woman would spoil ham if she touched it while ‘the painters were in’ (1964).21 By the nineteenth century, doctors prided themselves on being rational men of science, but their understanding of menstruation was still shaped by narratives of pollution and madness.
Dr William Rowley, professor of medicine at Oxford University and member of the Royal College of Physicians, eagerly wrote of the hysteria that amenorrhea could bring about in women. ‘The tongue falters, trembles, and incoherent things are spoken; the voice changes; some roar, scream or shriek immoderately; others sigh deeply, weep or moan plaintively.’22 Heavy bleeding was also considered to be dangerous and required purging, opiates and physical restriction. Dr Charles Manfield also believed menstruation and madness were inextricably linked. ‘That peculiar states of the uterus have frequently a share in producing madness, appears from the fact that between the years 1784 and 1794 eighty patients were admitted to B
ethlem hospital, whose disorders followed shortly after the menstrual state.’23 In 1848, Dr Althaus agreed and wrote that ‘hysterical attacks almost always occur after a sudden suppression of the menstrual flow’.24
1936 advertisement in the Sears catalogue.
Vaginal examination in vertical position, from J. P. Maygrier, Nouvelles Démonstrations D’accouchemens: Avec Des Planches En Taille-Douce, Accompagnés D’un Texte Raisonné Propre À En Faciliter L’explication, 1822.
The same arguments, taken to extreme conclusions, served the cause of aggressive anti-feminists such as James McGrigor Allan, who addressed the Anthropological Society of London in 1869 to explain why women should not be granted the vote:
Although the duration of the menstrual period differs greatly according to race, temperament and health, it will be within the mark to state that women are unwell, from this cause, on the average two days in the month, or say one month in the year. At such times, women are unfit for any great mental or physical labour. They suffer under a languor and depression which disqualify them for thought or action, and render it extremely doubtful how far they can be considered responsible beings whilst this crisis lasts. Much of the inconsequent conduct of women, their petulance, caprice and irritability, may be traced directly to this cause … In intellectual labour, man has surpassed, does now, and always will surpass woman, for the obvious reason that nature does not periodically interrupt his thought and application.25
It was not until the early twentieth century that science began to fully understand menstruation. It is no coincidence that menstrual taboos began to be dispelled as more and more women entered the medical profession. The pioneering work of Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi (whose 1876 essay ‘The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation’ won the Boylston Prize at Harvard University), and her intellectual heirs Clelia Duel Mosher and Leta Stetter Hollingworth, finally proved the idea of ‘menstrual incapacity’ was wrong.26
Disposable sanitary towels were available by the late nineteenth century and the first tampons were invented in 1929 by Dr Earle Haas. Until this point, women would use wads of cloth called ‘clouts’, or simply bleed into their clothes.27 The practicalities of dealing with a period improved dramatically, but ancient attitudes that viewed menstruation as debilitating and dirty proved stubbornly persistent.
In 1946, Walt Disney released the educational film The Story of Menstruation, which was shown to high school students across the United States. The film includes the first documented use of the word ‘vagina’ on screen and was an attempt to educate young women about their bodies. The narrator, Gloria Blondell, tries to debunk a number of menstrual myths, such as not bathing or exercising while menstruating, and explains the role of neurobiology, hormones and reproductive organs in menstruation. The film also advises young women to ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself’, to ‘keep smiling’ and ‘keep looking smart’.28
Unfortunately, millions of women still suffer with more than cramps each month. ‘Period poverty’ means that women the world over cannot afford tampons or towels and are still using bundles of cloth. Research has shown that women living in urban slums, refugee camps and rural communities in particular struggle to access basic menstrual sanitary wear.29 Every month, millions of schoolgirls miss school because of their periods. Ninety-five per cent of schoolgirls in Malawi cannot afford pads or tampons, and report using rags and string to catch the blood. As this often falls out of their underwear, more than half of these girls stayed at home during their period.30 And research carried out by Plan International UK in 2017 showed that one in ten British fourteen-to twenty-one-year-olds have struggled to afford sanitary products, which has resulted in thousands of girls missing school every month.31
Historical narratives around menstruation have rarely been neutral. Menstrual blood has been thought to contain magical and destructive properties; it has been seen as revolting, purifying and sacred. Menstruation has been linked to madness, irrationality and ill health for thousands of years and in thousands of cultures. While medical texts argued that menstruation weakens the body, references to madness, violence, irrationality and superstitious associations with the moon suggest a power in menstruation. In patriarchal societies, menstruation was evidence that women were not equal to men, that biology had determined a different role for them. But more than this, it was used to reinforce prejudices that women were not rational creatures and required constant supervision. We may think we have moved past all this now, that we have a purely scientific understanding of menstruation and have done away with such superstitions. But until we can talk about the ‘red-headed aunt from Redbank’ (1948) openly and without embarrassment or discomfort, we can’t claim to be there yet. Period.
Kotex advert from 1920.
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1 Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), book 7, p. 549.
2 Kate Hodal, ‘Nepal’s Bleeding Shame: Menstruating Women Banished to Cattle Sheds’, Guardian, 2018
3 Verity Bowman, ‘Woman in Nepal Dies After Being Exiled to Outdoor Hut During Her Period’, Guardian, 2018
4 Rita E. Montgomery, ‘A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation, Menstrual Taboos, and Related Social Variables’, Ethos, 2.2 (1974), 137–70, p. 152
5 Ibid.
6 Janet Hoskins, ‘The Menstrual Hut and the Witch’s Lair in Two Eastern Indonesian Societies’, Ethnology, 41.4 (2002), p. 317
7 Montgomery, ‘A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation’, p. 143.
8 Kristin Hanssen, ‘Ingesting Menstrual Blood: Notions of Health and Bodily Fluids in Bengal’, Ethnology, 41.4 (2002), 365–79, p. 369
9 J. F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), p. 197.
10 Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard Von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing, ed. by Priscilla Throop (Rochester: Healing Arts Press, 1998), p. 61.
11 Lily Xiao Hong Lee and Sue Wiles, Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II: Tang Through Ming 618–44 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 59–60.
12 Aru Bhartiya, ‘Menstruation, Religion and Society’, International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 2013, 523–7
13 ‘Bible Gateway Passage: Leviticus 20:18 – New International Version’, Bible Gateway, 2018
14 ‘Surah Al-Baqarah [2:222–232]’, Surah Al-Baqarah [2:222–232], 2018
15 Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge: University Press, 1993), pp. 21–6; Nancy Tuana, ‘The Weaker Seed: The Sexist Bias of Reproduction Theory’, in Feminism and Science, ed. by Nancy Tuana (Bloomingdale: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 147–71.
16 Galen, ‘Ancient Medicine/Medicina Antiqua: Galen: Commentary On: Hippocrates: On The Nature Of Man: De Natura Hominis’, Ucl.Ac.Uk, 2018
17 Simiao Sun and Sabine Wilms, Bèi Jí Qiān Jīn Yào Fāng (Portland: The Chinese Medicine Database, 2008).
18 Yi-Li Wu, ‘The Menstruating Womb: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Body and Gender in H. Chun’s Precious Mirror of Eastern Medicine (1613)’, Asian Medicine, 11.1–2 (2016), 21–60
19 Kaviraj Kunjalal Bhishagratna, An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita Based on Original Sanskrit Text (Calcutta, 1911), p. 1
23.
20 Ibid. p. 127.
21 ‘Letters, Notes, and Answers to Correspondents’, British Medical Journal, 1 (1878), p. 325.
22 William Rowley, A Treatise on Female Nervous Diseases, Madness, Suicide, &c. (London: T. Hookham, 1798), p. 54.
23 Charles Manfield Clarke, Observations on the Diseases of Females which are Attended by Discharges (Philadelphia: H. C. Carey, 1824), p. 25.
24 Julius Althanus, On Epilepsy, Hysteria and Ataxy: Three Lectures (London: Churchill & Sons, 1866), p. 48.
25 J. McGrigor Allan, ‘On the Real Differences in the Minds of Men and Women’, The Anthropological Review 7 (1869), pp. 196–219.
26 See Carla Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2009).
27 Lara Freidenfelds, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
28 The Story of Menstruation (Hollywood: Disney, 1946).
29 Crystal VanLeeuwen and Belen Torondel, ‘Improving Menstrual Hygiene Management in Emergency Contexts: Literature Review of Current Perspectives’, International Journal Of Women’s Health, 10 (2018), pp. 169–86
30 ‘School Menstrual Hygiene Management In Malawi’, Assets.Publishing.Service.Gov.Uk, 2018
31 ‘1 In 10 Girls Have Been Unable to Afford Sanitary Wear’, Plan International UK, 2018
