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 think we can safely assume there were probably enough only reasonably (as opposed to perfectly) well wiped arses going about their business, day-in-day-out'

Why?

I think I'm with you on menstruating women not standing out, but I am confused by this one!

You do get used to smells, so if you live with it all the time, you would notice it less than if you were suddenly landed in the middle of it all from an averagely clean 21st century home in the western world. (By it, I mean the overall background of general smells, rather than any one in particular.)

But I agree that it does seem a lot more taboo than that. I don't really remember reading it in anything - even when you consider the majority of published writers across history have been men, you'd think some would have mentioned it at times, but even in something like Fanny Hill, the only bit I remember of there being blood is in faking virginity loss, rather than periods. (Not that I've read it at all recently, so I could be misremembering.) Admittedly most of my knowledge of Latin literature is from translations at school, but Catullus had some dodgy stuff, and I don't remember him mentioning it either. This may all be down to my lack of reading and knowledge of relevant areas, but I remember reading Fear of Flying, where she bleeds on the floor towards the end of the book, and that's about the only bit of the book I remember - it stuck with me because reading stuff about periods is so unusual, apart from books like Judy Blume, where it's partly to educate 20th century girls and make them feel it's normal. Mostly, it's rarely mentioned at all.

Plenty of countries still manage without modern loo paper - it's not actually essential to keeping yourself clean.

I dunno Jeanne, maybe I'm way off the mark. But I just don't see how 15th, 16th, 17th, etc Century people could possibly have managed to keep themselves squeaky clean down there, in the manner we do now.

jeanne Philippa Gregory's books are stuffed full of medieval/ Tudor women interrogating each other about each others' "courses", or lack thereof.....I know she's not very highbrow, but she evokes the perfect storm of gossip and whispering on that subject amongst the servants and ladies in waiting to characters such as Anne Boleyn extremely well.

I believe tanneries traditionally had a very distinctive smell (I think they used dogshit as part of the processing, didn't they

They did indeed and called it "pure" I'm sure this is mentioned in Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor which deals with Victorian London so not that long ago.

I thought that too, stubborn - I'm surprised Wolf Hall would take about letting corsets out as a sign, before missed 'courses'!

But Philippa Gregory wasn't contemporary to then, was she - more 20th century. So I am not sure that proves much about taboos, other than it is less taboo from the latter half of the 20th century. Less taboo, but not entirely gone.

Stubbornstains I agree re Gregory. There's a bit in The Other Boleyn Girl where Mary Boleyn is bleeding after giving birth to Henry's child and is told to stuff some sheep's wool up there and get back in his bed. Possibly historically tenuous but viscerally evocative.

fei - I'm not suggesting everyone was a walking Timotei ad, all I'm getting at is, clearly at some times in history, some people were pretty clean. And they still seem to have the same taboos, so far as I know. I dunno, is it way too simple to think like that? Maybe it is.

stubborn - YY, and while I know she's not that highbrow, there is shitloads in medieval lit where people talk a lot about periods and midwives and so on, so I think people did.

Your name is amusing me in the context of this thread btw.

No no no E- but what I mean is that she reveals a world of intimate communication between women that is closer, in her opinion, to what would have happened than what is written down in the history books. Even in her books, though, all this speculation and sharing around menstruation is never referred to in front of the men.

My user name is extremely apt for so, so many threads on different topics .

But, I do think men talked about periods earlier on. Dunno about Tudor. Medieval men did, though, in a medical way.

Philippa Gregory wasn't contemporary to then, but neither is Hilary Mantel.

I haven't read WH yet (and am not in the UK, so haven't seen it either), but I would be very surprised if HM shied away from talking about 'courses'.

If anything, it's a TV-spin that has been put on it, and the conclusion is that modern audiences are still too squeamish to hear talk of periods on TV...?! Depressing, if so.

Someone checked the book upthread.

Missed courses is only a sign if someone is regular and even now with better understanding of nutrition and medical care loads of people aren't.

Oh, yes, that's true.

I do have an impression that from the early modern period, people do start getting a bit more ... refined? Less earthy. Possibly because they all have to think about religion and whether they're Catholic or Protestant, rather than it just being part of life, and more in the background. I don't know. And I'm not a mediaevalist at all, so haven't really read any mediaeval literature, other than the odd bit of Chaucer.

But equally I could be totally wrong.

The liturgy for churching changes, I know that. And that's got quite a lot to do with similar issues, I think.

Gah, posted to soon. But yes, was going to agree, though I don't really know as I'm not an early modernist.

HM does mention courses - at the time when H8 doesn't say it on screen (the queen has missed her... England is ours!) - TC is thinking he has heard about missed courses from one of the ladies., and that Anne is in a happy mood.

You don't need to cure yourself! I think we're kidding ourselves if we don't think it can be a bit smelly or gunky, especially in our culture where we expect ourselves/house/toilet to smell like purified flowers. Just learn to enjoy it if you can as a sign of your womanhood. I've always looked forward to mine and been quite open about it with my DP and DD. It's no mystery to me or them and that's the key to owning it.

Just read the very end of the thread. I was watching 10 000 BC where there were a group of people living the life of mesolithic hunter gatherers without any modern items at all. I wondered how the women soaked up their monthlies then. They didn't cover it and I was a bit disappointed, because they covered just about everything else!!! I wonder if way back then they used a fur slip they cleaned out every day. What do modern hunter gatherer tribes do?

(The bodice thing was re the first pregnancy; the courses thing came later)

Just came across #PadsAgainstSexism and thought it might be of interest to those on this thread: uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/blogs/icymi/-padsagainstsexism--german-teenager-spreads-feminist-message-with-sanitary-towels----130438771.html