Menstruating Women Is Not Dirty
Periods. Yes I said that. "Why am I not supposed to visit a temple during my period?”“Will the pickle actually spoil if I touched it during menstruation?”“Why are we told not to touch anyone, or to sit in a separate room and eat from a separate plate when we get our period?"It is not once or twice that we may come across these questions. It is damn everytime. So, let’s talk about it finally.
Period. I remember few people from varied backgrounds telling me stories about being made to stay in isolated rooms with plates of food being left outside their door during ‘that time of the month’ because they were considered impure for that duration of the month. “Menstruating women are expected to remain in seclusion until the period is over”. But why?Often, the explanation given in today’s time for this is that menstruating women are impure, unclean or dirty and hence need to be kept aside. “Menstruating women should not get inside any temples or be a part of religious ceremonies”. But why?
This is one taboo which perhaps hurts the sentiments of most women and young girls. The thought keeps popping up – “Am I so dirty during my period that even God would want me to stay away?”Sadly, no one, including the elite women who practice this, had thus far been able to give any explanation for this restriction, which was not negative.
Well, if God disapproves of this fluid then he should disapprove of all body fluids that exist in the human body. So when saints are doing poojas and sweating copiously in front of the holy fire, shouldn’t they also occasionally get burnt to a crisp by divine cosmic forces!
“Menstrual blood is impure, bad blood” All kinds of blood, even that in men, has originated from menstrual blood for obvious reasons. Even today, anything that is red in color is used in ceremonies as apparently indicative of the ancient ritual of using menstrual blood. Menstruating doesn’t cause pickles to spoil, temples to collapse or food nor is it contagious, though it would be rather nice to infect the male population with this so called ‘malediction’ for a month or two, just to sit back and view what I am sure would be a highly entertaining view.
At the very worst, menstruating is uncomfortable, sometimes painful and one of the most natural functions of the human body. But we ourselves stash our sanitary napkins in secret places, and we are often embarrassed when one falls out of our purse by accident and sort of tip-toe around the whole issue instead of being proud of our miraculous bodies that go on optimistically agitating out eggs, month after month for decades.
I know some of you that carry the XY chromosomes in your gene may have found this theme quite disturbing. But instead we must decide to stop whispering or whispering at all and yell and scream about this being a vital part of our biology that, in fact, just happens to save our entire species from extinction.
