Menstruation is natural.
Menstruation, while a natural and healthy bodily experience seen as signaling one’s transition into puberty, as well as an integral part of female identity, is stigmatized and identified as a “taboo topic” that can be shame-inducing. Concealment, secrecy, and shame reinforce menstruation as a topic that is largely “off limits.”
Restricting the conversation restricts access.
Branding menstruation as taboo not only creates emotional and psychological discomfort for menstruators when navigating close relationships and concealment norms, they also place them in situations that can be physically harmful and even dangerous. Evidence suggests menstruators feel social pressure to conceal their periods in a range of interactions. This is called a “concealment imperative.” This highlights the degree to which menstruators are socialized to self-police their concealment practices. The internalization of this need to conceal is a form of social control that reinforces patriarchy and oppresses menstruators.
The study of menstruation is not inherently the study of women. Rather, menstruation is the study of a biological experience that occurs in some bodies. Anyone who communicates about menstruation, whether it be in one’s family system or in an academic chapter about menstrual taboos, is engaging in a communicative act that conveys their moral commitments.
Menstrual stigma affects everyone.
Menstrual stigma is a human issue. The concealment imperative has long-standing consequences for menstruators’ social relationships, health, and relationships with their own bodies and socialization into this imperative starts early in life. Menstrual taboos, and the shaming that accompanies them, are rooted in patriarchal notions of the menstruating body (which is typically conceptualized as a woman’s body, although not all menstruators are women and not all women menstruate) as inferior.
Help end period poverty and end the menstrual stigma.
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