The focus on female bodily functions has never been more critical or as intense than it is now. The Sabarimala judgment has sparked a clash between culture and nature, an amplification of a battle cry that began when women started questioning why they were barred from some places of worship. In 2016, a PIL was filed challenging the temple entry ban. That same year, women were allowed into Shani Shingnapur temple’s sanctum sanctorum, in Maharashtra.
But equality will remain elusive as long as menstruation is considered taboo and linked to the idea of purity, or rather, the lack of it. Menstrual period is part of the female reproductive cycle when the body sheds the uterine lining if an egg is not fertilised. It is a rather mundane occurrence that is shrouded in a culture of shame.
In her essay, ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture’, American anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner argues that a woman’s secondary status to man stems from the fact that the female physiology with its procreative functions is seen as closer to nature. The male body, on the other hand, is free from such restrictions. The dominant patriarchal view accords ‘nature’ far less value than ‘culture’ as the latter is associated with the creation of ideas and technology. For most women, menstruation can be uncomfortable and painful, and as Ms. Ortner points out, involves tasks of cleansing and waste disposal. “In many cultures it interrupts a woman’s routine, putting her in a stigmatised state involving various restrictions on her activities and social contacts,” she writes. So when Union Minister Smriti Irani questioned whether a woman would carry a “napkin seeped with menstrual blood into a friend’s house,” she was reinforcing ideas of purity that took root in society thousands of years ago. “Would you think it is respectful to do the same when you walk into the house of God? I have the right to pray, but no right to desecrate,” she said at the time.
Most religions subscribe to this view. The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament talks about purity and desecration in this context: “When a woman has a discharge consisting of blood from her body, for seven days she will be unclean due to menstruation, and anyone who touches her will be unclean until evening.”
And when U.S. President Donald Trump said in 2015 that journalist Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” after she questioned his misogyny, he was reinforcing a stereotype that women everywhere are now challenging.
Desecration, impurity and defilement are powerful, negative words for a biological function that predates the evolution of culture. Increasingly, the legal system in India has been trying to address this imbalance, but the law alone cannot shatter a myth that has been built upon and aggrandised with every generation.
The writer is with The Hindu’s Bengaluru bureau