Women Hesitate To Even Utter Menstruation Or Periods In Public, Why?

It's not an unusual occurrence where we encounter women referring to their periods as “crimson tides”, “chums” or simply as “those days”, but do you ever wonder why women face hesitation to say menstruation or periods in public? When it's just a completely natural occurrence that half the population of this world goes through.

Saying periods in public feels nothing less than saying Voldemort out loud in the great hall of Hogwarts, with people staring at you as if you committed a horrendous crime just by uttering a basic word. Ever since I got my period I always wondered, how can just a few alphabets together trigger such a weird reaction by whoever hears it? And why are most of my friends talking about their period cycle in whispers when all our textbooks tell us that menstruation is just a natural occurrence and almost every healthy woman on earth goes through it?

A flawed perception that makes women face hesitation to say menstruation or periods in public

As I grew up I started to realise that not only the menstruation cycle but even the word menstruation or period is stigmatised to a level like none other, it is all because the patriarchal society takes pride in making women suffer in various ways, may it be through creating myths about periods such as it being unholy and restricting them from doing any spiritual practices to harm them mentally or by surrounding the word periods or menstruation with the taboo of it being shameful to prevent them from talking about it openly and to make them suffer in silence.

Every time someone comes out with the courage to ask why is this termed shameful, they are labelled as a rebel. Someone who needs to be shunned by the acolytes of patriarchy who always fail to give a valid answer to the questions of people who speak against their baseless beliefs.

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What makes this even more hurtful is that it's mostly women suffering from internalised misogyny who carry forward the taboo about periods being shameful like a legacy and force it upon the new generation and temper with their perception of what menstruation is. Young girls often tend to believe whatever they hear about periods from their elders and hence turn out like them and feel that talking about menstruation is shameful. Even buying a pair of sanitary napkins from a drugstore by the end of the street feels like a crime just because it is termed as something that needs to be kept away and hidden from the sight of men.

Every time I tried to talk openly about periods there was always someone to interrupt me and ask me to speak about it in a lower tone to prevent the boys or men from hearing, as if it's something they are completely unaware of, this only leads to wrong ideas about periods in the minds of young boys and men because after all, no amount of caution can prevent the other half population of the world from knowing about such a common natural phenomenon.

Not only boys and men but also many young girls and women live their whole life with misconceptions about periods because of being told not to talk about it with anyone. All these misconceptions can be easily prevented and cleared by just openly talking about them.

If women and young girls start to understand that menstruation is not shameful and a completely natural occurrence, they can talk about it openly and hence get solutions to their problems regarding it, as well as prevent their minds from getting infected by baseless myths and stereotypes, which is the need of the hour. The idea needs to be clear in the mind of young girls and women who are hesitant to speak about menstruation or periods in public, that periods are nothing to be ashamed of and completely natural.

Views expressed by the author are their own