How have menstrual “taboos” been depicted in the ethnographic record and what theoretical issues have affected their representation?

Jasmine Angel Woods: P 1447039 Assignment 1Research Methods in Anthropology: ANTHM0004

How have menstrual “taboos” been depicted in the

ethnographic record and what theoretical issues have

affected their representation?Word Count: 4293

The topic of menstruation has been widely discussed within the

field of anthropology. This prominence is likely due to its

universality. It is a uniting attribute for biological women

most of whom will, regardless of external factors such as

race, religion or class, menstruate at some point in their

lives (Rosewarne. 2012). In addition to this there are

numerous symbolic values and cultural practices which surround

the process, which often place it at the centre of a “taboo”

or as the source of symbolic pollution (Buckley and Gottlieb.

1988) which marks it as an intriguing subject. This essay

looks at why menstruation is treated this way and the ways in

which this has been presented in anthropological writings and

how this has changed though history through a feminist lens,

to determine how this presentation is affected by gender.

The menstrual taboo has been considered as an absolute, a

culturally unifying concept through which menstruating women

are kept under control by the men that fear them due to

connotations with hygiene, pollution and the “wild” powers of

nature. The female body, while representative of the woman

also represents something other than herself (Beauvoir. 1953,

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Ortner. 1972, Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). Ortner argues it

is women’s capacity to give birth that brings them closer to

this wild power, while men represent the dominant realm of

“culture”. As culture must overcome nature, so she considers

that in every society, women are inferior to men, citing as an

example a 1930’s study of a matrilineal American Indian

society. Here she considers that the women are still regarded

as inferiors despite holding positions of authority, as they

are not allowed to touch men while they are menstruating

(Smith. 1997). Other restricting practices are seen among the

Enga, Kaulong, and Sengseng cultures of New Guinea who believe

that sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman will drain

and weaken a man (Montgomery, 1974), the Igbo people who

prevent menstruating women from attending the village court in

case her blood attracts evil spirits that would influence the

ruling (Umeora and Egwuatu, 2008) and among the Kutia Kondh

women of tribal India, who are believed to be raw and impure

while menstruating; they are thus isolated during their

periods and forbidden to hang up their clothing where children

may touch it (Biswal. 2008).

In these instances, the taboo is seen as ascribing negative

connotations to menstruation and it could be viewed that by

confining women to certain tasks and areas and restricting

their access to other people they are under continued

subjugation from their male oppressors, which is how a great

deal of early literature on the subject represented it. It is

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true that in many Western cultures menstruation is still

stigmatised, with a lack of positive representation in the

media, the politics surrounding “the irrationality and

disorder associated with PMS” (Stevenson. 2014) and the multi-

million dollar “Fem Care” industry dedicated to keeping

menstruation hidden and effectively removed from women’s lives

so that they can function in normal society (Rosenwarne. 2012,

Stevenson. 2014). In a modern context, most of the taboos

surrounding the onset of menarche revolve around its status as

an unhygienic occasion rather than a developmental one

(Frederick. 2009), while the more symbolic implications of

pollution have been seen as indicative of a primitive culture

(Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). However, this ignores accounts

of societies in which women are seen as wielding power, rather

than polluting. (Smith. 1997) Young, for example, suggested

that menstrual taboos functioned to bring powerful woman down

to the same status as men (Young. 1956, cited by Dixon. 1993),

in other words that they were too powerful during the menses

and had to be grounded in some way.

The term “taboo” itself, however, is problematic, as its past

use in describing the practices surrounding menstruation in a

negative, suppressive light could be seen to relate more to

the androcentric nature of early studies, with men viewing any

restrictions on female behaviour as automatically limiting.

Moreover the practices themselves were often taken out of any

ritualistic context in order to discern a link with female

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sexuality (Rasmussen. 1991). Even the word “taboo” itself has

its roots in a neutral Polynesian term that means simply “to

be marked” (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988) and is translated in

American Indian to mean, “spiritual, consecrated, wonderful,

incomprehensible; said also of women at the menstrual period,”

(Long. 1978). Yet it has now come to be associated with

anything which is, “always seen as symbolically dangerous or

otherwise defiling” (Delaney 1976:4, cited by Pinkston.2010).

More recent, female driven research has suggested an alternate

interpretation of this taboo, arguing that restrictions on

women during the time of the menarche are used by them in

order to consolidate relationships, maintain positions of

power and engage in voluntary seclusion from male members of

the society (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988, Rasmussen. 1991).

Yet even to suggest this, more positive inversion of the taboo

suggests that the occasion is still seen as liminal and

strange, that some action must be taken during this period

whether positively influenced by women or not and I would

argue that it is this continued depiction of menstruation as

an abnormal event that is contributing to the way in which

modern, Western society views it today (Rasmussen. 1991,

Frederick. 2009).

If menstruation can be considered a universal constant and the

practices surrounding it can be perceived in both a positive

and a negative light, why is it that the occasion is still

considered taboo at all? It could be argued that this stems

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from the onset of menarche itself: the event that marks the

transition from childhood into womanhood. Although both

genders will develop secondary sexual characters as they go

through puberty, only girls will partake in this specific

event which signals the end of youth. For example in Tongan

society, a boy’s passage to adulthood is marked by his

circumcision, tattooing and first attendance of Holy

Communion, but these are all human-made constructs which

define his maturity, at any given time between the ages of

twelve and sixteen. On the other hand a girl, from her first

day of menstruation, is told she must now begin a relationship

of avoidance with her brothers, observe certain restrictions

(or tapu) on cooking, working or washing whilst menstruating

and is lectured on the importance of duty, obligation and

respect (Morton.1996). In other words, the boy’s passage to

adulthood is marked by ceremony that comes from an outside

source and can therefore be carefully controlled, while the

girl’s uncontrollable onset of menarche is marked by a new

obedience and distance to her male peers. Initiation rites

for boys, moreover, are often performed in groups which can be

attributed both to the lack of a defining sign of puberty but

it has also been suggested that this teaches the boys to

endure the pain, from rites such as circumcision, in front of

an audience. Girls, on the other hand, are instructed

individually on the virtues of passivity (Delaney, Lupton and

Toth. 1988). This idea of a lack of control is also seen

among the Native American Tohono O’odham tribe, who believed

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that if a girl did not tell an elder she had begun

menstruation, terrible things would happen to her family.

Examples include people being struck by lightning, blinded or

consumed by fire; a girl is considered dangerous at the onset

of menarche (Dixon. 1993) and without informed knowledge of

the event, uncontrollable things would begin to happen around

her. In this tribe, control is also exercised by the women

themselves, who abstain from scratching themselves with their

fingernails. It is believed doing so during menstruation will

result in hair loss or scars, as women are filled with so much

negative energy at this time, they are in danger of polluting

themselves (Dixon. 1993). In addition, wood or bone

scratchers are used as they allow a woman to focus fully on

the body, making spontaneous actions deliberate and

intentional (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988), again an attempt to

control the uncontrollable.

This follows the theories laid out by Mary Douglas in 1966 and

Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock in 1987, in which the

body is a model representing a bounded system. When the

system is threatened by an unbounded occurrence, such as that

of menstruation, mechanisms are put in place for its control

and preservation (Backe. 2014). Here, the body is seen as,

“simultaneously a physical and symbolic artefact, as both

naturally and culturally produced, and as securely anchored in

a particular historical moment,” (Scheper-Huges and Lock

1987:7). The way in which the body is understood is

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representative of the society and therefore any bodies which

do not adhere to that culture’s systems or structure may be

seen as a threat to that society (Backe. 2014), suggesting

that the issue is less one on gender and simply one of

strangeness.

Because the onset of menstruation cannot be accurately

predicted, especially in primitive societies, and it marks a

transitional shift in a girl’s life, it can be considered a

liminal event. It occupies a boundary or threshold between

childhood and adulthood; it is understandable that people

would seek to find a way to control and dominate the event,

whether in a way that is positive towards menstruating women

or not. This is coupled with the fact that the blood itself

may appear to be supernatural in origin to those without the

necessary medical knowledge. Menstrual blood is not perceived

in the same way as “normal” blood because it doesn’t appear

under the same circumstances, like from a cut or wound

(Pinkston. 2010). Menstrual blood is seen as being

particularly polluting because of this and rather than

signalling a loss of life, as with regular wounds, signals its

possibility (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). Menstruation can be

seen as a sacred mystery, that which is sacred then becomes

taboo and whatever becomes taboo becomes set apart and after

that an object of fear and revulsion (Long. 1978). Another

symbolic anomaly attributed to menstruation is the fact that

women are often left out of the routine activities in which

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blood is spilled, such as hunting or butchery, leaving

menstruation as the only activity in which they regularly

spill blood (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). Again we see how

the internal structure of the society might impact on the way

in which the act of menstruation itself is viewed.

Throughout history, a variety of theories were postulated

about why women shed blood. Aristotle thought that women were

too cold to transform their excess blood into semen as men

did, Epedeocles thought women evacuated blood because their

flesh was less dense than that of men, while Galen believed

women menstruated because they were idle (Hill. 2013). In

each of these cases we see an attempt being made to

rationalise the irrational occurrence (by a man) in a way

which is essentially demeaning to women, as they are

biologically inferior to men, so they must menstruate. This

general theme is something which has continued to occur

throughout the centuries and even to this day. Other

primitive explanations for menstrual bleeding include that

given by the Maria Gond of India, who thought the vagina was

once a mouth with teeth, but because the teeth were removed

the mouth would always bleed and the Arunta of Australia who

thought demons scratched the vagina walls with their

fingernails to make them bleed (Montgomery. 1974). In both of

these examples we see an unexplainable, but ordinary

biological event transformed into something extraordinary.

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It is worth mentioning that blood alone, regardless of its

source, may be considered dangerous, evil or unclean by a

society (Smith. 1997). Among the Kel Ewey people, for

example, all bodily fluids are considered dangerous and

therefore must be treated with care. In this society the

stomach is believed to be the home of spirits and as

menstruation is associated with stomach ailments, it is

therefore associated with the antisocial practices of

witchcraft and sorcery (Rasmussen. 1991). This taboo has less

to do with gender and more to do with the general religious

practices of the society. In modern Chinese practice, all

bodily refuse is seen as unclean because it has been rejected

by the body, but menstrual blood is the worst as it is

associated with the death of an unborn foetus (Pinkston.

2010). A man is able to absorb this polluting essence if he

has sex with a menstruating woman, which results in him

getting sores on his penis, a disease called “crushing red” or

even dying. (Pinkston. 2010).

Because of menstrual discharge’s liminal status, it is often

used in rituals, which may present the blood as either

positive or negative. In Taiwanese societies the word

“poison” is used interchangeably with that of menstrual blood

and while this is a negative ascription, women gain some

agency as she can threaten a man’s life with it (Pinkston.

2010). A similar idea is found amongst the Mae Enga, among

whom a woman can poison a man if she adds her menstrual blood

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to his food. (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). Scientific studies

in the 1920s appeared to confirm these beliefs as facts, when

the ‘menotoxin’ debate came to light. Menstruating women were

believed to prevent bread from rising, cause flowers to wilt

and were considered unable to pickle meat successfully (King.

2013). Experiments by Shick in 1919 and Macht in 1924 both

claimed that plants could be destroyed if touched by a

menstruating woman, although an attempt to replicate Macht’s

experiment ten years later appeared to show that non-

menstruating women gave off more of these so-called toxins

than menstruating women did (Frederick. 2009, King. 2013).

Both experiments cited the work of Pliny, who considered a

menstruating woman able to blight a field of crops if she

walked through it and this not only reflects the beliefs of

societies considered primitive by those in the West, it is

still being referenced in some Orthodox Jewish Publications

(King. 2013). There are also some examples of women using

these “powers” in a positive way, however. The Anishinaabe

people believed that a menstruating woman could cure common

ailments, such as warts, just by a touch: an indication of her

holding positive powers during her period (Dixon. 1993).

Religion is an important contributing factor in whether or not

menstruating women are viewed as being unclean by their peers.

In Judaism, the menstrual period is governed by a set of laws

known as Niddah, a word which in itself means expulsion,

isolation and a state of uncleanliness. Menstruating women

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are therefore thought to contaminate the men of the family and

must be separated from them. Failure to uphold these rules

would result in excommunication from your family and therefore

from God (Pinkston. 2010). Here the polluting effect of

menstruation is compounded with the fear of God. A woman must

also cleanse herself after menstruation has ceased by taking a

ritual bath, known as mikveh. She is ordered to cut her nails

before the bath so that the purifying water has no obstruction

to her body and carefully burn the nails afterwards in case a

man treads on them and becomes contaminated (Kennaway. 1957).

The polluting effect of the menstrual cycle also prevents

women from holding positions of power within the Catholic

Church (Phipps. 1980). This is linked with the belief within

Christian philosophy that women are not only inferior, but

inherently evil due to their part in the downfall of man from

God’s grace, more specifically due to her copulation with the

snake in Persian tradition. This provides a justification for

female oppression as part of her punishment and the fear of

being made unclean by a menstruating woman mirrors the more

general fear of the opposite gender seen in Christianity

(Beauvoir. 1953, Letherby. 2003). In Kel Ewey society,

menstruation and religion are more complexly linked since a

woman cannot pray until she has had her first menses and

achieved adulthood, but they cannot actually pray during

menstruation (Rasmussen. 1991). Accounts from contemporary

Taiwan state that a menstruating woman should not come before

the gods as it shows a lack of respect as the gods can see

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that which is hidden, in this case the menstrual blood.

Moreover they will pollute the sacred space so that anyone

else who comes there will be prevented from contacting the

gods (Pinkston. 2010).

In Ancient Babylonia, Ishtar the Moon Goddess was thought to

be menstruating during the full moon. This was when “sabuttu”

was observed, during which everyone, not just the women, were

obliged to rest. This sabuttu became the Sabbath of Judaism

and Christianity, in other words a day in which various

patriarchal religious observations take place is directly

linked to menstruation (Long. 1978). As menstruation follows

the cycles of the moon, it is therefore linked to vitality,

spirit, fertility and birth: the powers of nature (Long.

1978). The links between the lunar cycle and the menstrual

one, lunacy (madness) and the perceived actions of women

during PMS are clear. As Simone de Beauvoir put it, ‘the

moon…is thought to have her dangerous caprices. Woman is a

part of that fearsome machinery which turns the planets and

the sun in their courses, she is the prey of cosmic energies,”

(Beauvoir. 1953).

It is almost understandable that the taboo of menstruation is

still being perpetuated when so many of the ideas influencing

and permeating it are ancient. Here again we see the idea

that women are inextricably linked to a power which is wild

and uncontrollable. The idea of the pollution stemming from

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this has permeated ethnographic writings of menstruation and

is often cited as the reason behind the seclusion of women

during the time of the menses. The idea of menstrual

seclusion, particularly in special huts or shelters, has been

used as an indicator of low female status; that by making her

stay in a separate place proves she is not as good or pure as

the rest of the group and must be avoided. However, this

ignores the fact that women may choose to spend time there

voluntarily. For example, the Huaulu people of East Indonesia

have menstrual huts in which the women must stay if they are

bleeding. Men are not allowed to touch or look at these huts,

which must be constructed and repaired by women. Boys, on the

other hand, may spend time with their mothers in the huts

until they reach puberty (Pinkston. 2010). This is

interesting as it displays the value placed on children and

women to be the same, until the boy becomes a man and may

become polluted by the women around him. Interestingly, some

women will lie about their monthly cycle so that they can

spend extra time in the huts. They are also allowed to walk

in the forest and converse with other women at this time,

although they must not touch any man-made items at this time,

for example they cannot use the men’s hunting paths in the

forest (Pinkston. 2010). Although menstruating women are seen

as dangerous at this time, it would appear that the women of

the village use this to their advantage in order to have time

away from chores and men, and spend time with their female

friends and children, in other words they have achieved agency

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through a restriction which would traditionally have been

declared a male-dominating action. Whether the intent of the

menstrual huts was to restrict women is fairly moot if they

themselves can make the choice to spend extra time there.

Similarly Yurok women have claimed that their isolation frees

them from the sexual, social and mundane distractions of their

everyday lives and allows them time to meditate and accumulate

spiritual energy (Buckley. 1988 cited by Dixon. 1993). The

women of Mogmog Island spoke of enjoying time away from men in

their ipul, or women’s house, and spend their time talking or

weaving. In contrast, Dogon women spend their menses in a

hut, but have no relief from their normal agricultural wok

(Guterman, Mehta and Gibbs. 2007). The Saramake women of

Sumeria find the process of exclusion in menstrual huts

irritating but while some have abandoned this practice, other

in the area maintain it, in order to make what they feel is a

contribution to the welfare of the society (Buckley and

Gottlieb. 1988).

In other words, pollution beliefs can bring women together in

solidarity, rather than simply oppressing them (Rosaldo.

1974). However this must be seen as dependent on the culture

in which the seclusion is observed, as many accounts of

menstrual taboos have viewed the taboo in isolation form other

ritual restrictions and come to the conclusion that they must

centre around female sexuality (Rasmussen. 1991). The

importance of the gender of the researcher and subject cannot

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be understated. Early studies ignored women as having any

agency and focused on masculine, “fear, envy and ambivalence,”

(Rasmussesn. 1991). For example, in 1957 Kennaway reports on

“extreme indifference,” regarding menstruation in Bolivia and

Peru, in which the women simply let the blood run down their

legs and carry on working as normal, with no social

restrictions placed upon them. While the researchers were

keen to ask the natives themselves what happened to the women

during menstruation, their interpreter was keen for them not

to ask, as it offended him to do so. Eventually he was

persuaded to ask the natives, but at no point were any of the

women in question asked (Kennaway. 1957). It may seem to the

male interpreter that women do nothing about it, but that does

not mean that they didn’t have any number of small, personal

or gynocentric rituals that had escaped his notice. Young and

Bacdayan (1965) reported a link between menstrual taboos and

social rigidity, determining that the taboos were a signifier

of male dominance over women. (Rasmussen. 1991) However by

asking why the taboos existed rather than what the meanings

behind them were, they failed to look at the ritual context in

which they were placed (Rasmussen. 1991). Similarly they

attempted to “scale” taboos according to how severe they were

(Young and Bacdayan. 1965) which was only ever going to be of

limited value given the liminal nature of menstruation itself

and the varied nuances of the taboos surrounding it.

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While it is clear that, “many early works underrepresented

women's views of their own reproductive processes,”

(Rasmussen. 1991) an analysis of the male experience is also

necessary. Thanks to the perception of women as being the

“other” sex, while men are the dominant one, their activities

have, historically, been under critiqued. Men are often

reluctant to talk about emotional or topics that they perceive

to be feminine, thanks to pervasive social attitudes that

dictate what it means to be masculine. But an exclusive focus

on the female experience of menstruation will only go so far

in looking at how we can begin to break down the social taboos

that still surround menstruation (Letherby. 2003). In other

words, what is needed is less a feminist approach towards

historical, ethnographies of the female experience, but an

anthropology of gender that seeks to break down the cultural

stigmas that still plague our societies’ perceptions of this

universal event.

It is clear from the case studies and discussion above that

the menstrual taboo may take many forms, including the

seclusion of women in menstrual huts and placing restrictions

on women from coming into contact with men or items in male

possession. Historically these restrictions have been seen by

some to contribute to women’s subjugation, later feminist

studies sought to examine the reasons behind these actions and

more recent studies have suggested that the menstrual taboo

can be viewed as positive, empowering and female-controlled.

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Each of the societies and taboos in question must be examined

carefully for ritual context. Many women have gained agency

from spending time away from men while many, mostly male

authored accounts, have focused on the negative aspects of

these taboos to mirror their own deeply held beliefs about

male superiority. Additionally, it is not always the case

that menstruation is observed at all, or that it has any

negative attributions. Research shows many examples of women

using their own menses as a source of power, both for good or

perceived evil. Whether positive or negative however, I would

refute Buckley and Gottlieb’s suggestion that, “the menstrual

taboo does not exist,” (Buckley and Gottlieb. 1988). The fact

that menstruation culture is still being examined proves that

it does. The reasons behind this must be examined. Whether

stemming from religion, pseudo-science, habit or historical

writings, menstruation is still considered an unhygienic,

“other” process even in Western societies today. The

continuation of this taboo is contributing to the subjugation

of women through the FemCare industry, a perpetuation of shame

and uncleanliness and above all the need to keep the event

hidden, to the extent that many young girls are entirely

unaware of a process which occurs to nearly all of the female

population. Although it is true that many early, androcentric

reports on menstruation may have helped contribute to the way

in which we view menstruation as being treated as taboo in

primitive societies, I would argue that a larger problem is

the treatment of a common event as something uncommon and

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uncontrollable today. While ascriptions of power and

pollution may be used in order to give women agency, the real

issue is that they need to change something negative into

something positive in order to give themselves equal status

with men in the first place. In order to achieve true

balance and equal status between the men and woman,

menstruation needs to be treated as an event, neither positive

nor negative, and certainly not taboo or other, but part of

the neutral, transitional phase that takes girls from

childhood to womanhood.

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Documents

How have menstrual “taboos” been depicted in the ethnographic record and what theoretical issues have affected their representation?