Why is menstruation so dirty?

[IceBeing]

I got so much interesting information from my last thread I thought I would try again!

I mean I know the answer is 'the patriarchy' but....

why do I feel so repelled by all things menstrual? I am pretty sure I'm not alone...but while I would have no issue whatsoever with someone seeing a blood stain on my arm (from a cut or something) I would actually die from shame if anyone saw my menstrual blood.

How do I stop my DD from being infected with the idea that menstruation is dirty?

How do I cure myself?

I have managed to cure myself of the idea that armpit hair is dirty...and leg hair...but this seems an order of magnitude harder!

I can't bear that half the population have to live with the idea that part of their biological make up, the part that means the fucking species reproduces, is disgusting.

That's what repels me.

What's odd to me is the double standard.

I mean, honestly, jizz tastes revolting. Everyone knows that. I have never heard of a woman who said 'actually, yanno, I quite like it'. Ever. Even women who are quite fond of penises and enjoy blow jobs, don't actually say it's a nice taste.

(Sorry for the TMI, though redundant on this thread really!)

I wouldn't say I think it's disgusting, it's just what it is, it's just there, but it isn't pleasant either.

It does smell, it's sticky and clotty, and a pain to get out of my pubes. It stains the sheets/clothes if you leak. It's not something to be ashamed of, but it's not something to be mythologised as 'womanhood' incarnate either. It's just stuff.

I don't freak out at a blob appearing in the bath. I don't hide tampons or towels. Dirty ones get dumped in bathroom bin (no lid) which DP usually empties. He does most of the laundry and sorts out my period pants for me.

There is a middle ground between disgust and worship of 'feminine juices'. It's nothing special either way.

Aside from Greer, though, I don't think anyone's seriously suggesting 'worship of feminine juices'!

I'd need to read the book that's cited, by the woman who thinks until the 19th c women in Europe just bled into their clothing, but I find it really hard to believe. Even if you were happy to bleed into your linen shift you'd be in danger of it seeping through into your more expensive and harder to launder woolen petticoats as well as the actual skirt.
It seems much more likely they just never talked or wrote about the rags/whatever else they used.

I don't think menstruation is disgusting exactly HullyGully it's just not something I want other people to see/smell/be aware of on me, any more than I want them to be aware of my farts or my faeces or my phlegm. It's just not terribly appealing really.

I thought what Greer actually said was more along the lines of 'If you think you're liberated, taste your own menstrual blood. If the thought disgusts you, you've got a long way to go.'

crossed posts loveareading and I completely agree with you. I just don't see menstrual blood as a thing to get worked up over either way, and especially not from a feminist perspective.

I wonder about that too, countess - I wonder if it might be one of those things that gets reported by men or by women from a different social class in a sort of 'eugh, I bet they do such-and-such' way? Because you do get that, and then it can be transmuted into fact quite easily when it's repeated.

Mmm. Still not moving from my stance on Greer. I'm not disgusted, just think she's being daft there.

I can't buy the book but I'm printing out an article by Sara Read to read later and it seems to go on about menstrual clouts so I'm not yet sure why she's being cited as saying women didn't use them - perhaps all will become clear when I've read it.

StubbornStains, I can imagine the millworkers thing being done as a protest - 'all right, if you won't give us breaks to go and change our cloths, we'll just bleed down our legs'.

I didn't think I'd actually be able to find a source for what I'd read, but it popped right up! (you have to scroll down)

www.mum.org/whatwore.htm

"When studying the Suffragist movement and Selina Cooper [an Englishwoman who lived from 1864 - 1946], I came across a very interesting story about Mrs Cooper. When working in the cotton mills circa 1900, she was horrified to discover that the mill women used no sanitary towels [menstrual pads], the floor of the work room was spread with straw to absorb menstrual fluids. Mrs Cooper also mentions the smell. When Mrs Cooper made sanitary pads for some of the women there was an outcry from some of the girls' mothers as they were worried that their daughters would not find husbands as the smell and flow attracted them, both being considered signs of fertility."

It's not unknown for GG to make deliberately provocative statements . But I think her contribution to- not only kicking over taboos, but setting fire to them and jumping up and down on their smouldering remnants- is invaluable.

Yes, I agree what she does is valuable. But I don't have to like how she does it!

It's not wildly feminist to define how other women are failing to be liberated enough, I think. I'd be much more interested if she were talking about why some men would be shocked at the idea of oral sex with a woman who's bleeding, but would be equally shocked if she didn't fancy giving them a blowjob.

So when did men stop being attracted to fertile, menstruating women and start to find them unappealing? Or are they still attracted, but women are busy rushing around putting floral-scented pads in their pants and assuming that men think it is smelly and dirty?
It is all very confusing.

What I find interesting about the above extract- about the mill workers- is that apparently the "smell and flow" were not, in that context, considered to be bad things. Perhaps we're projecting our own elevated sense of hygiene and disgust onto what we assume past attitudes to be? If you have a look at the link, there are some anecdotes about societies where women still apparently bleed into their clothes, and it's no biggie.

Obviously, across the millennia and across the globe, there could have been many many differing attitudes to menstrual blood.

I'm probably oversharing again jeanne and cakes, but I don't recall ever having had a lover who was put off by the fact that I was bleeding. If anything, it has normally been me who hasn't been up for sex on heavy flow days- it all feels a bit sensitive down there and I have more of an urge to retreat into my cave- but on light days, anything has gone .

me neither stubborn. I think I just decided myself after children that I didn't feel sexy if I was bleeding heavily (probably because it was coupled with bloating and pain as much as anything else) and so I haven't had sex while bleeding in years. But that's been driven by me rather than by my partner.

I believe moss and grass was used by poor women.

Yeah, but you both probably date reasonably nice men.

What's the niceness of the men got to do with it? (genuinely confused).

I've had two. Both arseholes.

Hmmm....I don't know about nice, but perhaps more "alternative"....I've also never had anyone comment on my unshaven armpits and fanjo, but I should imagine that most posters in FWR (that shag men) shag nice, aware men?! Maybe we should start a thread in AIBU for comparison?

On a purely practical level - blood stains. So back in the days when I still had periods I would tend not to have sex when I had my period in much the same way as I probably wouldn't eat a bowl of tomato soup in bed.

Ah Countess, maybe this is another handy arsehole test then? Quite literally a red flag!