Disabilities and periods are two grievous taboos with disabilities being linked to the past-life karma in cultures across the country, and periods being the stigma of a menstruator’s life. Oft-ignored conversations of menstruating with disability need to be talked about on the with priority.
Maharogi Sewa Samiti, a non-profit, surveyed Maharashtra to know how menstruators with a disability deal with the problems of communication, infrastructure and product usage. It showed girls, who have a combination of mental and physical challenges, were facing severe problems.
“I was told the hysterectomy would help avoid hygiene issues during menstruation,” says Farida Rizwan, a mother of a disabled girl Farheena Rizwan who lived in Byndoor, a coastal town in Udupi, Karnataka, at the time.
Farheena was just ten and a half when she attained puberty. Doctors asked her mother, Farida Rizwan, to do a hysterectomy on Farheena to stop her periods. Because Farheena is a girl with a disability – she has cerebral palsy. You see, the challenges haven’t changed; instead, get added on.
Abha Khetarpal, an activist for disability rights, focuses on girls and women with disability, and she believes adolescents who have a disability are often less-informed, less-experienced, and less comfortable accessing information and services about sexual and reproductive health. Their disability further accentuates the challenges for them.
She says that pubertal development and the subsequent onset of menses are the beginning of a significant change for many adolescents. This may even be more for a teen with a developmental disability (DD), for whom life itself is challenging, and mental and physical health is often in a delicate balance.
- People with disabilities face challenges in accessing sufficient support in health services, who aren’t equipped well to handle their dilemmas.
- Maintaining hygiene (changing materials, personal hygiene and washing) is challenging as menstrual products don’t suit the needs of people with minimum mobility. The ableist world churns about ableist products after all!
- Menstruating people with disabilities face further discrimination and stigma due to the peculiarity of Indian cultures.
In the case of infrastructure, people with different disabilities face different issues. Raghavi, an HR consultant and founder of ‘The Headway Foundation’, recalls her school days when she wouldn’t go to the toilet out of fear. “My mom joined the school as a teacher to take care of me. If any emergency, I would go home,” she says.
She has locomotor impairment caused by polio at a young age. When she joined work, she wouldn’t drink water the whole day to avoid going to the toilet, which ultimately resulted in UTIs. “I wear callipers from my hip to my foot. It’s a laborious process to adjust with that, and public bathrooms aren’t spacious enough.”
Another issue people with disabilities face is problems using the regular menstrual products, simply because the products are not made for them. They are made for able-bodied consumers. Commenting on the same are Kalaichelvi and Ashwini, both of whom lack power in lower limbs, concur that accessibility of toilets is the central issue.
“As it is difficult to go to the bathroom often to change, it would be convenient if a product which required less frequent changes was developed,” Kalaichelvi says, as even discreet disposal of soiled napkins is an issue for those who cannot walk or wear shoes.
So, given these circumstances, are we doing enough to educate ourselves about the difficulties faced by people with disabilities during their periods? No, we are not, we are so busy putting a taboo on almost every experience that doesn’t sit well with the mainstream or majoritarian experiences and culture that we have forgotten how to listen to fellow humans.