This article on Freebleeding is really interesting

[Mignonette]

Freebleeding - why is this taboo when images of violence, sex and repression are not?

Or should we see menstruation as nothing more than a process of excretion and attach no special significance to it?

[badguider]

I've got a heavy cold just now and it is certainly seen as dirty to let your snot run down your face in public no matter how natural so why not menstrual blood?
I'm a mooncup user and strongly believe non-disposable sanpro should be more widely known both here and in countries where disposable sanpro is too expensive.

[BertieBottsJustGotMarried]

Oh don't get me wrong, I have no problem with san pro being discreet. I have a problem with it being marketed along the lines of how discreet and secret and masking it is, because it plays it up to be a bigger issue than it actually is.

[HotDAMNlifeisgood]

This reminds me of the issue some people have with public breastfeeding: another example of a normal, female, bodily function being seen as deviant, weird, taboo. Whereas all sorts of properly deviant stuff done to women is completely normalised.

I agree with all the posters above that letting blood stain your clothes/furnishings is gross/impractical. I think the point being made, though, is not that women should bleed everywhere, but that women bleeding at all = normal, whereas women being gorily raped and dismembered 1000s of times on TV = not normal at all. But you wouldn't think it, given society's reaction to the one, and to the other.

[duchesse]

Can I just say how happy it makes me to know that there are still feminist teenagers? I don't buy into the freebleeding malarkey for all the reasons already mentioned, but I can totally see that it might suit the teenage rebellious personality especially if they don't do much cleaning or care about boring staid things like houses and furniture.

[Grennie]

Interestingly, about 150 years ago in the UK, working class girls and women did just let menstrual blood run down their legs. Even if they could get them, pads were resisted as open bleeding was a sign of fertility and used to attract a boyfriend.

[Grennie]

liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/the-shame-of-menstruation/

This article explains the history of free bleeding in the UK

[Grennie]

liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/the-shame-of-menstruation/

[BertieBottsJustGotMarried]

That's true HotDamn. And actually even in a "life simulation" game like The Sims which includes having to have sex to make babies, pregnancy, childbirth including "waters breaking" which makes a puddle on the floor, weeing themselves and leaving a puddle on the floor (OK, it's blue) and quite a gory death if the sim catches fire including pained screams, female sims don't have periods (and also cannot breastfeed) unless you download fan-made mods for it.

And, OK, to be fair, other things you have to download fan-made mods for are teenage pregnancy, smoking, "contraceptive failure", gory deaths such as axe throwing/guns, and I think there is a rape mod somewhere on the internet, and I have never bothered to download the period mod because it looks tedious, but it's still considered taboo/unpalatable enough to leave it out of the game entirely, despite the other things being included. It's a certificate 12 so no moral argument about frightening small children.

[ouryve]

If I cut my finger, I put a plastr on to stop it from bleeding all over the place.
If I have a streaming cold, I blow my nose and use a tissue so I feel more comfortable and don't get snot all over the place.
Allowing menstrual blood to stream down my legs would feel horrible and make a mess. So, I prevent that from happening, too.

Personally, I'm not overly fond of violent imagery.

[Grennie]

I wear pads and am not going to stop doing that. But menstrual blood is treated as more disgusting and dirty than blood from say a nosebleed.

[scaevola]

I agree with every word about the need to counter any association of shame with menstuation.

But I am completely against "freebleeding" on hygiene grounds - HIV and no doubt other bloodbourne viruses are found in menstrual blood.

[nervousgulp]

The last time I saw sanpro in a film, it was a tampon shoved up a small boy's nose to stop a nose bleed.

[PleaseJustLeaveYourBrotherAlon]

How strange that it used to be acceptable.. When you consider how much more expensive and difficult it would have been to get clothes in the first place (and how infrequently you could wash your clothes if you didn't have ready access or something in to)

I agree it shouldn't be shameful and if I lived in the forest I could see why just letting it all flow would make sense (well maybe could attract bears ), but we wear clothes and live in a world with blood borne illness so it really isn't practical. I wouldn't sit in a puddle of blood no matter where it came out of. And I'd hope a man who thought it was OK to leak semen around for people to step in would be arrested

[AngelaDaviesHair]

I hold my hands up, i can't remember exactly where it was in Africa, but it was certainly not South Africa.

More of a very primitive, remote tribe

Please don't call people primitive. They might not have developed technology, but that doesn't mean their society is any more 'primitive' than ours.

[SwayingBranches]

Wasn't it that Tribal Wives programme where actually the women had to walk around the outside of the huts while menstruating because the men said so?

I do understand the sentiment behind it. Even making jokes about it is seen as taboo in a at, for instance, seven isn't. Like I'm a geek from Yorkshire and after the Crimson Horror episode I decided I would go around calling it the CRIMSON 'ORROR in a thick Yorkshire accent. Oh my goodness, pin drop moment! I thought it was pretty funny!

[SwayingBranches]

Like SEMEN isn't! Not seven!

[SwayingBranches]

Crimson Horror episode of Dr Who.

My phone hates me.

[Mignonette]

Grennie

That is really interesting and I had never come across that before. I have heard that the release of menstrual blood was seen as having similarities with old ideas of blood letting or releasing that which would harm should it be hindered in any way so maybe that came into play too? Menstrual blood has been some in some societies as having not exactly demonic but less holy connotations; I cannot recall where I read this so if anybody has a reference?

The only film I can recall that showed Menstruation was 'Carrie' and when I read the book aged about ten I recall the lines about how Menstruation seemed to trigger some instinctive revulsion in women. I know King could only be writing from his own male point of view but i do recognise something of that in myself. Not that I go about throwing sanitary protection and bullying girls in showers but I am very reluctant to discuss menstruation IRL with anybody. I have this irrational squeamishness that I just do not get.

[LauraBridges]

It is taboo in many cultures. Look at wiki on the Jewish ritual bath and rules which is quite sexy in a way - not allowed sex at certain times, allowed it when you are most fertile etc etc. but very controlling of men and women.

I have never had problems with menstrual blood at all. No hang ups. Interestingly I never had a boyfriend or husband either who had any lack of desire for sex when I'm menstruating either but some people have taboos. However most of us would not want to drip blood. I once made a mess on a rather nice City office chair in a meeting one lunch time. I think no one saw. I certainly did not volunteer it were caused by me and ask for towels. I just pushed the chair in and left.

I was going to post what someone else already put above. I read an article this week about a charity keen to give sanitary towels to African girls as the lack of them is a reason why in that country so very many girls don't attend school - that factor alone. It's a vital issue for those girls to have access to pads.

[Grennie]

I think many of us do have that squeamishness. We are brought up to see menstrual blood as different from other blood, as dirty.

I am amazed that what seems like a common practice of bleeding openly in the UK, has disappeared from folk memory. It really wasn't that long ago.

Apparently there is a story in the Bible where a woman is sitting on a bale of hay hiding something underneath. The Romans come in and want to search, but she lies and says she can not move as she is bleeding into the hay. It is presented in the Bible matter of factly, and as a clever trick.

[Mignonette]

I have nursed women so mentally unwell they are not capable of managing their menstrual periods.

Many other patients and staff were very distressed by seeing free bleeding and wanted the people concerned placed in low stimulus environments or other such separated areas of the ward.

I have recommended it when a person was not able to maintain the wearing of clothing and was menstruating. With visitors on the ward and it being mixed sex, we had to act.

Funnily enough I have never had an issue with washing a menstruating women, applying her sanitary protection and disposing of it. It is just the general 'period' talk that has me squirming - the more casual the situation, the worse i feel. Staring this thread is good therapy!

[Mignonette]

Buffy

I remember that. I found that less ugh inducing than other chat about menstruation funnily enough.

[NeverKnowinglyUnderstood]

this is interesting
I have started using washable sanitary protection recently.
when talking about it in real life people have been aghast that I rinse them out in the sink in the bathroom and that they dry round the house like all the other washing. Just like their mere presence is offensive/disturbing.

I don't think I could do free bleeding but I have NO embarrasment about hanging up the san pro whilst it is drying. they hung on a line inbetween our tent and the tent next door whilst on holiday in italy this summer.

we need to be much more matter of fact about it. we have come so far since we were all sent off to the red tent for the days when we were bleeding!