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?

[Mignonette]

Some viruses are hard to transmit via anything other than blood though such as Hepatitis C. yes, you'd need open access to your own bloodstream via a cut but that isn't that far fetched. It is not ideal to touch any bodily fluids with abrasions etc or if your immune system is compromised but either way, some viruses are adapted to live especially happy in blood.

Many disease and nfective organisms are blood borne. That is why they are called BBV's - blood born viruses.

[TeiTetua]

Thinking about "What's the betting this Mrs Cooper made it up?" I went and took a look at her biography:
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wcooper.htm

She was a pretty impressive individual! If she had a story to tell, I'd trust her.

And she apparently wasn't shy about below-the-belt issues, when women's dignity was involved:
Selina for example, objected to the system of providing toilets without doors. In 1891 Selina became involved in a trade union dispute where attempts were made to force employers to provide decent toilet facilities.

[Mignonette]

And of course Hep A and B are incredibly easily caught through all body fluids including heavily diluted viral loads in seas and oceans (Hep A). So yes, you'd be right in saying vomitus, urine and faeces along with saliva are just as risky there.

[Alisvolatpropiis]

This thread is so interesting!

Like most others I wouldn't free bleed myself.

Historically women didn't really have monthly periods as such, due to either back to back pregnancy or poor diet. So it wouldn't have been the very frequent issue it is now.

[NiceTabard]

Later posts re historical situations are fascinating!!!

I always wondered how women got by re periods with few resources and everything being hand-washed and so on and so on.

Am learning now

[NiceTabard]

Well sure Mignonette but my point was that people react much more adversely to menstrual blood than to people gobbing all over the shop. Both risk of contagious, dangerous disease.

I also think that people react more negatively to the idea of menstrual blood than blood from elsewhere ie a cut.

I was trying to get across that I think this is because people are using the idea that it is infectious blood to get around the real reasons that they are feeling particularly squeamish.

[NiceTabard]

Oh x-posts!

[Mignonette]

Nice I agree totally with the spitting issue -absolutely disgusting and very minimised nowadays as a health and hygiene hazard. Won't be the case when TB is no longer responsive to any drug.

Yes I see now what you meant and totally agree that Menstrual blood is seen as more unpleasant than blood from anywhere else.

Apologies if I appeared to be a bit off.

[RufusTheReindeer]

I don't know if any one has seen but there is a thread in AIBU about period "smears" being left on a toilet seat

[WoTmania]

On a personal note Freebleeding is not for me. I have v. heavy periods and muchos overflowing of mooncups and it just isn't comfortable to have a slightly soggy gusset that then goes sticky and slightly crusty if I can't change my knickers soon enough.
However, I agree that menstruation generally is a taboo subject when it shouldn't be. Parallels have been drawn with having a streaming/snotty cold for example and when you have a cold you keep your nose clean but there is no pressure to hide the fact that you have the cold. Likewise I hate the prudishness surrounding menstrual blood - it's natural and normal. It infuriates me that people get squeamish and 'icky' about talk of bleeding, reusable pads, mooncups etc.

[DuskAndShiver]

I think this is just one example of how hard it is for us to imagine just how gross normal living environments used to be.
I think the reality is that, partly because everywhere was so dirty, and partly because of generally fewer periods, menstrual blood was simply unnoticed. Not exactly accepted. just not noticed.
With a chemise, a petticoat, and a full skirt, I don't think there would (for many) have been much on the floors. And what there was - invisible among the straw, animal shit, general rubbish.
Incredible.

One day we will look back on the noise pollution of our day and be the same. "Seriously? Was that really acceptable? And it didn't matter how much it annoyed or disturbed everyone else?"

[NiceTabard]

Mignonette no worries we both think the same on that score clearly!

Agree with Dust re. I think we have no idea just how stinky and dirty things were in ye olden days.

(Ye Olden Days = I know FA about history and so am being vague I don't even watch costume dramas FFS!)

[Grennie]

I think you are right Dusk. Everything you read basically says that people stank at the time, bathed and changed clothes very infrequently, and rich people just used perfumes to try and cover up the stench.

For working class women living in pretty dirty conditions with mud and poo about, blood stains probably would have gone pretty unnoticed. Which is pretty gross to consider.

[WoTmania]

I would guess that another thing to bear in mind is ' natural' child spacing etc. women were usually either pregnant or in a phase of lactational ammenorea and so didn't have the frequency of periods many if us do. When mine first came back after DD (19mo) they were quite light, for me, until she began spacing feeds out a but more at 2ish

[NiceTabard]

Isn't it also probably the case that the whole mega stink situation was for a period of time between when cities started and the victorians came along and built sewers etc (a positive amongst a host of negatives!!!).

I suspect when living in villages and stuff it was all managed pretty well. Access to rivers etc.

I reckon it was a hideous early-city thing for a couple of hundred years and then people got the hang of stuff.

[Grennie]

There are accounts of rural women bleeding in the fields.

[NiceTabard]

Good for the crops probably.



If you're outdoors and you can wash off a bit and it's just straw and mud on the floor and stuff, I don't think a bit of menstrual blood would have caused a commotion. Any more than a bit of snot or a kid wetting itself or whatever.

[GarlicReturns]

Women in service, in workhouses, in prisons, in convents, and women labourers were not at liberty to just get pregnant all the time. I should think there were more of them than fecund baby-makers. You don't hear of that many super-sized families before Victoria.

Industrialisation made it possible for more of the poor to have lots of children (in England; don't know about elsewhere.) This was only because they could continue to work the machines right up until birth, then go straight back and join the baby pool. Middle-class wives at this period, too, had dozens of babies, but at least they didn't have to go straight back to a toxic environment.

[NiceTabard]

I thought "the poor" had lots of children before industrialisation?

What with no contraception and stuff?

[NiceTabard]

I thought it was increased money, education and access to birth control that reduced family size, rather than anything else? And birth rates reduced with industrialisation.?

Dozens of babies? That seems extreme

[ChrisTheSheep]

I've fed the plants with the diluted contents of my Mooncup, Tabard: they did love it! I felt a bit odd for doing it, but hey: I wasn't using the blood for anything. The plants may as well have had the benefit

[NiceTabard]

Sure it is packed full of nutrients and things - it was going to house a baby after all! So rich and good stuff.

Go for it I say

[GarlicReturns]

No, the poor were malnourished on the whole, and sub-fertile in consequence. There were also very high rates of perinatal infant mortality. Mouths to feed were a life-and-death issue; an extra child and the loss of some months' field work by the woman would have been very serious considerations. It's most likely that rural workers would have planned to conceive - if they wanted to - in the Spring, so the woman could work through the summer and be off when there was little work, in winter. If abstinence didn't work, they'd have resorted to herbal concoctions and long sticks to avoid unwanted births.

No way they'd have been pregnant or baby-wearing all the time. Look at the paintings.

[ChrisTheSheep]

One of them put on a massive growth spurt the very next day: quite impressive.

[GarlicReturns]

YY, Tabard & Chris! I have a box of dried blood & bone in the shed. Hope it's not yours