In many classical traditions it has been well known the term of menstrual taboos that removed women from general society. Menstruation women is understood as polluted and uncleanness that must be avoided.[1] For example, in African tradition, a women, during her periods, has to be separated from the community, therefore she must place herself in special place, because contact with her would defile the men, and her presence in public places would weaken the altars, and the area would be polluted. She could go only at night to wash herself, and it was also in special places where the water is allowed to use by her. The similar treatment also happens in classical Hinduism, classical Judaism, and etc, even not extremely the same.[2] and the second is argued by Penelope Washbourn that focus on Primitive cultures.[3] Both propose that women can reach religious experiences and spiritual wholeness through their existence of being female body, such as menstruation. In fact, there are some classical treatments that honor women, indeed they treat menstruation as the power and the spiritual experience of women. Therefore, I would like to presence two arguments that elaborate about it, the first is argued by Rita M. Gross that focus on Native Australian cultures,
About Authors
Penelope Washbourn is a lecturer in the University of Manitoba in Canada. She is an expert in women’s Studies; her Ph. D is received from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her articles on women’s studies have appeared in Male and Female, The Christian Century, and Women and Religion. Also she wrote a book under the title Becoming Women (1977), where the essays that elaborate in this paper is taken from.[4]
Rita M. Gross, she completed her work on Aboriginal Australian Religion for her Ph.D., after that she went on to a distinguished career specializing in women’s studies in religion and in feminist theology, especially in the Buddhist context. She wrote many books such as; Feminism and Religion: An Introduction (Beacon, 1996), Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (SUNY, 1993), and Soaring and Settling: Buddhists Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues (Continuum, 1998). Her two books on Buddhism were awarded the “Outstanding Academic Book” Award by Choice.[5]
Common Understanding About Menstruation
Menstruation is the first major crisis in the life of a women, the onset of menstruation mark a women as mature female, that day marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. However, according to Washbourn, menstruation is experienced as anxiety, it is caused not only by cultural attitudes toward the female body or the personality type of the girl involved, but also because menstruation is essentially a dramatic physical and emotional event. Moreover, perhaps, because of the failure of our modern culture to see that it raises some fundamental and troubling questions about the meaning of a girl’s identity, so that, it causes many young girls to experience it in loneliness and with anxiety. Although it is hard for the ten or fifteen years old girl to appreciate that she is now biologically mature female and has possibility of pregnancy, yet that is also seen immediately as a liability rather than a potential joy.[6]
In addition, Gross saw that in Australian Aboriginal cultures, religiously speaking, the first occurrence of menstruation is assumed as the most significant event in a women’s ritual progression from the relatively in significant status of being a child to the religiously significant status of being a women. It lies in the significant of menstruation itself. In fact before the contact with missionaries, the parallels between the first menstruation rituals and male initiation are obvious, but since the relative simplicity of girl initiations, girls’ menstruation ceremonies have less religious significant than the more elaborate boys’ ceremonies.[7]
Reexplanation about Menstruation
In fact, in primitive culture, the onset of menstruation is an ambiguous experience to be celebrated as well as feared. It is special event that needs a ritual to mark it, one of rite of passage.[8] In this case the primitive cultures, for Washbourn, seems to be more appreciate to the first occurrence of menstruation. The celebration would emerge graceful of the life crisis of menstruation, and it would also imply in the society that we able to celebrate the value of our female body structure as potentially childbearing or procreative power. The potency of menstrual blood is the power to give birth, and it is a fortunate that we can deepen and enrich our experience of life and increase the totally of our self-expression.[9]
In other hand, to debate common misunderstanding of menstrual taboo in Aboriginal Australian cultures, Gross argue that menstrual taboos and childbirth are imposed on women by men who abhor and fear these physiological events. Women’s ritual are said to be uninteresting and insignificant, so that it is differentiated from men’s ritual. But according to Gross, there is another possible interpretation about it, that:
“by being different from men’s ceremonies and by focusing on women’s unique experience, they perform function for women that the men’s ritual perform for men. The women’s unique experience of menstruation and childbirth are ritual and religious experiences; they are symbol and metaphors through which women express and attain their adult status as sacred beings aboriginal community. So the women’s ceremonies also indicate the sacred status and potential of women as well as the men’s ceremonies, not some opposite, “profane” condition.”[10]
In addition, Gross also said that the argument that women’s ceremonies are inferior in scope, less religious significant, and uninteresting is influenced by gender bias. This oversight, according to Gross is a result of domination of male that have been usually studied Aboriginal religions from a strictly male point of view. Also male anthropologists make these men’s ritual alone as the basis of most theories about Aboriginal religion, because they found them more interesting and easier to study than the women’s rites.[11]
Today, women should not experience menstruation as anxiety and must have self confidence to celebrate the onset of menstruation in realizing what exactly happens and how potential fertility may be best used in our search of self-identity. Moreover, in realizing that our potential procreativity has to do with the creative power nature with the creative aspects of all human relationship,[12] we should experience it as the spiritual experience and the symbol of one’s role within the ultimate purpose of the universe.
Conclusion
Actually, there was appreciation for women since classical periods, but the gender bias of male anthropologist or male interpretations had omitted it. Strictly male point of view try to impose women position in the tradition, it may be also influenced by patriarchal system that need to make position of men higher than women.
[1] See Denise Carmody, Women in World Religions, 29.
[2]Rita M. Gross, “Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians”, in Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M Gross (ed.), Unspoken Worlds; Women Religious lives Third edition (Canada: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001) 301-310.
[3]Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge” in Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (ed.), Womenspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1992) 246-258.
[4] Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge”, 246
[5]Rita M. Gross, “Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians”, 301
[6] Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge”, 250.
[7] Rita M. Gross, “Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians”,303.
[8] Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge”,251
[9] Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge”, 256
[10] Rita M. Gross, “Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians”,302.
[11] Rita M. Gross, “Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians”, 302-303
[12] Penelope Washbourn, “Becoming Women: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge”, 256
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