Menstrual Taboos Ft. Sexist Social Hardships #7

Society and Menstrual Taboos

Menstrual suppression

Menstrual suppression

With the recent FDA approval of menstrual suppression medications, researchers have begun to shift their focus to the attitudes of American women toward their periods. One study in particular found that 59% of the women they surveyed reported an interest in not menstruating every month. Of these, 1/3 said they were interested in not menstruating at all anymore.

Anthropologists Lock and Nguyen (2010), have noted that the heavy medicalization of the reproductive life-stages of women in the West, mimic power structures that are deemed, in other cultural practices, to function as a form of "social control".Medicalization of the stages of women's lives, such as birth and menstruation, has enlivened a feminist perspective that investigates the social implications of biomedicine's practice. "Cultural analysis of reproduction…attempts to show how women…exhibit resistance and create dominant alternative meanings about the body and reproduction to those dominant among the medical profession."

Activism

Menstrual activism (otherwise known as radical menstruation, menstrual anarchy, or menarchy) is a movement that addresses menstrual taboos.Overcoming this taboo is a point of contention amongst feminists. The primary argument behind this movement is that if menstruation is normal, there is no reason why the topic should be avoided: "After a while it becomes psychologically disorienting for women to look out at a world where their reality doesn't exist."

Menstruation can be conceptualized as a stigmatized condition that both reflects and reinforces women’s perceived lower status in relation to men.Feminist scholars extend this theory to explain negative attitudes towards women's bodily functions. Such stigmatization occurs when menstrual blood is viewed as one of the "abominations" of the body and reflects a gendered identity among women, which leads to consequences for women's psychological and sexual well-being.

Feminists such as Chella Quint have spoken against the use of shaming in advertising for feminine hygiene products.She created a zine, Adventures in Menstruating, to "help alter the visibility of menstruation, so that it's at least normal to talk about it. Because, right now, it's not".Other menstrual activists include Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, who published My Little Red Book; filmmaker and academic Giovanna Chesler, who created the documentary Period: The End of Menstruation; and artist Ingrid Berthon-Moine, who exhibited a video and series of photographs at the Venice Biennale.

Menstruation activism also starts to emerge in China in recent years. Starting from the breakout of COVID-19 in China, the grassroots movement provided free sanitary pads to diverse groups of women in China and aimed to remove the stigma of menstruation. Starting from donating menstrual products to Wuhan female frontline health workers in February 2021,the activism features the wider discussion brought by the Weibo (Chinese Twitter-like social media platform) hashtag package-free sanitary pads" in September 2021 and reveals the unspeakable pain of period poverty to the public. Following the campaign by the advocacy group Stand By Her on social media,university students set up "Sanitary pad help boxes" and provide free sanitary pads for potential female users over 250 campuses in China.

Medicine

Blood from female menstruation has been used in medicines. In Chinese Daoist alchemy, menstrual blood from females who had not had sexual intercourse was used to make a substance to prolong an individual's life, called red lead (Chinese: 红铅; pinyin: hóng qiān).The substance was taken by the Ming dynasty Jiajing Emperor and the abuses inflicted on the palace women to ensure the blood's purity led to the Renyin palace rebellion.

Menstrual synchrony

Menstrual synchrony is an alleged process whereby women who begin living together in close proximity experience their menstrual cycle onsets (the onset of menstruation or menses) becoming more synchronized together in time than when previously living apart.A 2013 review concluded that menstrual synchrony likely does not exist.

Menstruation products

Menstrual products are part of menstrual culture, as they are prominent in shops, through advertising and through disposal methods (such as sanitary bins and bags). Throughout the twentieth-century applicator tampons like Tampax (Always) and pads such as Kotex were increasingly popular in the Global North.

Menstrual pads

There are environmental costs of using menstruation products containing plastic and chemicals. As an alternative, companies are manufacturing reusable period panties, cloth menstrual pads, menstrual cups, biodegradable sanitary napkins and other eco-friendly products.Not all cultures use menstrual products, opting instead for natural materials or homemade options.

Part 7 of 8

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