Women and we men need to talk about menstruation

Conversation about menstruation, despite  the very ably made film Padman, has not yet started in the right earnest. I am not sure how many parents have talked to their children around the dining table (if they have one) or in the chauka, the cooking place, about why biological processes are dirty or polluting per se. 

We go to toilet every day to clean up our system, we take a bath, and we cut our nails, hairs, and clean our nose. Do we talk about these the same way as we talk about menstruation? 

Why do girls have to talk about their biological features in hush-hush tones? Even educated women hesitate in talking about periods and inconvenience that might be caused by it openly among male peers. 

Is this because men are ill informed, ill-prepared and ill-guided about the way one should understand and appreciate mutual biological differences? 

Is it that the culture is the culprit and we have allowed certain debilitating elements of our culture to prevail and persist? 

Why doesn’t our curiosity about menstruation’s ramifications generate conversation in a scientific manner.

All cultures have redeeming and empowering features just as they have discriminating and disempowering features. 

Purdah, isolation of women during menstruation periods, female foeticide and other tendencies in our culture preventing autonomy as well as agency of women are perhaps interconnected. 

Self-imposed silence by even educated women on such issues at the workplace or at home also needs to be broken.

Some years ago, I was teaching a class of a course CINE at IIMA on inertia and how many of us suppress our desire to make a difference by learning to be helpless. 

A girl student very hesitatingly mentioned that the women washrooms did not have sanitary napkin dispensing machines. Sometimes, girls forget to bring the pads with them when needed and they have to rush to the dormitory to fetch them and miss part of the class in the process, she said. 

So I asked what should be done. She answered, the dispensers should be installed. That seems obvious, isn’t it? 

But it has not happened so far. Obviously the curiosity of the system, often run by men, did not trigger a question: how do lady staff and students manage such situations when periods start suddenly? 

I asked her to write to the administration, and in a few weeks these machines were installed. Inertia of decades gave way in a few weeks because of the curiosity of one student. Why did such an obvious thing not happen for so long?

The boys are curious as to what happens when women have periods, but they don’t get full information. Young girls are curious but don’t get proper scientific answers devoid of taboos and stigma. 

A simple biological phenomenon becomes a source of embarrassment for girls and a vain curiosity for boys. Neither understands the emotional oscillations that a girl may go through.

Curiosity can be a driver of a compassionate society and creative collaborations. We need to harness the curiosity of boys and girls about their respective biologies through science-based metaphorical communications. 

Menstruation can trigger a dialogue about motherhood, natural cycles, lunar cycles and so on. Biological systems reproduce to keep nature fertile and autopoeitic.

Maybe the film Padman, which is based on the life of a grassroots innovator honoured by the Honey Bee Network and National Innovation Foundation, will channelise the curiosity of young boys and girls in constructive and cooperative direction. 

Maybe it will also trigger a conversation about how curiosity triggers creative innovation. 

May the ensuing conversation lead the curiosity of our society to a  transformation of gender relations.