So apparently the idea for a suicide prevention hotline came about in 1935 when a priest was tasked with doing the funeral of an adolescent girl who had died by suicide after getting her first period. Because menstruation wasn’t openly discussed at the time, she thought she’d contracted an STD and took her life. The hush-hush attitude about menstruation still persists to this day – witness Florida trying to limit discussion of menstruation to after sixth grade (well after a not-insignificant percentage of girls have already reached menarche), or this commercial from India, in which a girl is shamed for her period and a boy is shamed for asking about it.
What is the reason for enforced (or culturally-expected) silence on menstruation? By my estimates about half of the population (excluding those too old, too young, etc.) menstruate. And in the particular case of the girl who died by suicide over it, what possible justification would have existed that compelled her mother to not explain to her that at some point blood was going to come from her vagina and it’s OK and natural? Did the clergy, politicians, pediatricians, etc. of the day encourage parents to keep silent about this because reasons?
I don’t think there was an enforced or culturally expected silence from parents - I think that when mothers don’t discuss it with girls , it’s because those particular mothers are uncomfortable for whatever reason but it probably had/has a lot to with the connection of menstruation to sex. My entire menstruation/sex education consisted of this set of books (that I still remember the name of 50- something years later) It wasn’t quite silence but there also wasn’t any conversation or opportunity to ask questions.
I think it’s definitely the link between menstruation and sex, coupled with the religious notion that women are generally “unclean.” If a woman is only good for reproduction, then menstruation is woman at her most useless. There’s long been a culture of shame around women’s bodies in general.
Fortunately I knew all about it before I started my period, at age 9. Unfortunately I was with my grandparents on vacation at the time, and for reasons I will never understand my grandmother made me tell my grandfather. I could have died.
As a male, I’ve often picked up clues that it’s a taboo subject (though not everywhere or with everyone).
One of the first clues was somewhere around maybe 7th grade, when our class was divided into all the boys and all the girls, and we went off to watch a film. We boys saw a film about careers with the National Forestry Service.
It certainly seemed like some mysterious secret was afoot…
But it seems to have been a taboo issue in many different cultures for thousands of years? There must be something in the human psyche to explain this?
Paging any scientific psychologist or sociologist? Dr Freud need not apply…
I knew about periods long before I had one, but I picked it up by reading (thanks, Judy Blume!) However, mine came so late that I’d already decided there was something medically wrong with me, so I still thought I might be dying. I was fifteen.
exactly what religious notion is this? I know that in ancient times, some religions considered woman “unclean” while menstruating or after childbirth, but I certainly am not aware of any religion that just considers woman unclean as a general rule
My older sister (born 1947) told me later that at some point before she started menstruating, our mother (born 1924) came to her room, handed her a pamphlet, and whispered that she should read it, before slinking away red-faced. So yes, in this case, embarrassment with anything to do with sex or sex organs or processes. My sister said that she never had any kind of discussion with any adult about sex, either the physical side, the emotional impact, or the economics of having a baby. Just the pamphlet about what to do about menstruation. (Neither did I, for that matter, although there was a paperback book called “Facts of Life for Teenagers” that was circulating sub rosa around the summer church camp just about the time I hit puberty, which helped a little). Oh yes, another anecdote: once when I was a child, my mother apparently ran out of supplies at a crucial moment when I was the only other person in the house. She gave me a note, folded and put into an envelope, along with some money to take to the nearby drugstore to buy the necessary. She did not, of course, want to have to explain to me what I was buying or what it was for.
This would make a good side discussion for the threads around Male Inequality and Toxic Masculinity. Male disgust with menstruation started from ignorance, and still lives today when almost everyone knows what it is. And lots of women have bought into the manufactured shame and embarrassment.
Huh, in my school, the boys had a talk about wet dreams and such while the girls had a talk about menstruation.
My mother-in-law told me that no one told her anything about it, and when she first started bleeding from her vagina she thought she was dying.
I don’t think my mom talked to me about it, but she pointed out later that she has left a lot of relevant reading matter (about sex, not just menstruation) around the house. Between school and girl scouts, i had heard about menstruation before it happened to me, anyway. And when i got my first period, i told my mom, who handed me a new box of “junior tampons” and stood outside the door as i read the instructions, in case i had questions. (I didn’t, the instructions were clear.) I feel lucky to have been warned, and that my mom was ready.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, I helped myself to a tampon from my mom’s bathroom. A few hours later, she came in my room hollering and crying, with the opened box in her hand. I was totally bewildered. Turns out she was upset because I was “not a virgin anymore!”
I feel sorry for her when I remember things like that. Her upbringing must have been so backward.
I was in south Georgia during elementary school. You’d think if there was any place where the denizens and their schools would be leery of the topic, it would be down south, right? But the textbook for the Health subject explained all about menstruation, right down to the hormones and cycles.
We didn’t get sex ed until 7th grade; all 7th graders got Biology all year long as our science, and sex ed was just another chapter. They didn’t separate the girls and boys.
yes, but again, that is during her menstrual cycle only, it is not a religious belief that women are generally unclean, which is the notion I was pushing back on.
And note that the more observant strains of Judaism believe in raising large families (“be fruitful and multiply!”), so their women spend more of their lives pregnant and less of their lives menstruating than average.
You use that phrase (menstrual cycle) I do not think it means what you think it means.
(Yes, you meant “that is during menstruation only”, I hope, but that’s not what you wrote and it highlights the lack of education folks actually have about this subject.)
Every day from menarche to menopause is a day in a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Another data point: as a male, I learned about PMS at a young age, but it wasn’t until well into adulthood that I learned PMS symptoms typically start one to two weeks before menstruation (and not, say, one to two days, like the name implies).
I told my girls in a way I hoped would reduce their thinking about it maybe being shameful.
Thing is there’s not a young teen girl who isn’t embarrassed about EVERYTHING. Just how they are.
I tried.
PS. My son was around peripherally during all the talk, the shopping for supplies, dealing with somewhat cranky sisters occasionally. He says he knows more about periods than most women.
