INTERESTING PASSAGES FROM: A history of menstruation.
What we do know is that periods were less regular in pre-modern times than today, due to the fact that many women would have been malnourished. Menstrual regularity was also impacted by the fact that most women spent a larger part of their reproductive life either pregnant or breastfeeding, compared to today.
It’s likely that most advice was passed on through female friends and family members when a woman was young, and wasn’t put to paper. But what was printed told a different story. “What we see in print is a collection of misogynistic ideas about menstruation,” says Fissell. “I think we have to read it as a deep-rooted fear of the female reproductive body. It was a product of ignorance, where men knew very little about the female body and so told stories that had very little grounding in reality.”
As such, advice was often questionable. Pre-modern commentators warned how a woman on her period should not look in a mirror because it might crack, or that she if she walked on grass, it would die.
Blood stories of Indiv. women or more traditional podcast?
- Embarrassing stories
- Personal connection w menstruation
- Taboo things?
different episodes
1. history of menstruation
2. womens stories
The curse -> link
In many societies, the menstruating woman is believed to emit a mana, or threatening supernatural power.
From one aspect the woman who may not be approached is inviolable, holy; from another aspect she is polluted, unclean. She is what the romans called sacra, sacred and accursed.
The tales of dangers to men from women's blood, were tales told by primordial matriarchs to scare little boys into obedience and respect for women.
We believe, from the available evidence, that the taboos as taboos were probably enforced by men, who connected this mysterious phenomenon with cycles of the moon, the seasons, the rhythm of the tides, the disappearance of the sun in the nightly darkness and who feared such cosmic power in the apparent control of a member of their own species.
A few years ago, Khanal’s family destroyed their chhau goth, where she had spent a couple of years during her early teens. However, she is still banished from her home during her periods, now to a small room attached to the outside of her home. And this is something she feels will not change any time soon.
“If something bad happens in the village, people will blame me and my defiance to not stay in a chhau goth,” said Khanal.