If you are a privileged person by your milieu, influenced by your caste, class, gender, religion, economic status and every other distinct category to exist; I would like for you to ask yourself this question: What does the menstrual movement stand for and against?
If you fall on the privileged corner of it all, the chances are that your reply would enlist “menstrual leaves”, tampon tax, touching the pickle, entering the temple, etc. Some might mention “period poverty” if they are more intimate with the movement.
Indeed, there is oppression in our privilege, but is this a circumspect view of the menstrual movement? Are all the stories limited to these struggles? Are these taboos universal? Is it just patriarchy?
I am an upper middle class, cishet woman. By raising these questions, I intend to introspect — possibly with you — about how we (privileged) have subsumed the menstrual movement within our privileged struggles. With the universalisation of elite menstrual struggles, the menstrual movement has sidelined the menstruation of Dalit women — existing at the nefarious intersections of caste and gender.
Menstrual Taboos and the Caste System
Most menstrual taboos that we encounter are an amalgamation of the caste system and patriarchy. The Brahmanical ideals of being “pious” and “pure” are adhered to with rituals and taboos.
For instance, Deepthi Sukumar narrates her experience with menstruation as a Dalit woman. She talks about “pickle-making” being an upper-caste activity. Because pickles are generally used for food preservation when there is excess left. But Dalits generally face food scarcity so they never really make pickles. Therefore, the “do not touch the pickle” myth is essentially an upper-caste taboo.
Similarly, while Savarna women are stripped of their rights to enter a temple during their Menstruation, Dalit women never even had that right in the first place.
The Sabarimala temple controversy raised slogans like ‘all women are untouchables’. This periodic untouchability is not akin to the perpetual untouchability that Dalit women face. These slogans merely serve to subvert the narratives of Dalit women.
In a ritual followed in Andhra Pradesh, the clothes worn by an upper-caste girl during her first menstruation are to be given to a “chakali” (lower-caste) woman. This tradition is followed to pass on the pollution brought by the first menstruation to a low-caste person, to preserve the integrity of the upper-caste household.
While brahmin women bear the burden of upholding the integrity of their household, Dalit women are perceived to be born without that worth.
Menstrual Leaves and the Caste System
The stigma around menstruation prohibiting women from entering the kitchen, working and farming is again an upper-caste narrative.
Dalit women continue to labour through their menstruation. They toil in the fields growing produce like wheat and vegetables. A manifestation of casteist hegemony that exploits them while conveniently forgetting their rut of pollution and purity.
Being deeply entrenched in poverty due to their caste, they do not have the option to demand menstrual leaves. Dalit women working in garment industries are denied leaves and forced to take pills to tackle their periods, going against their right to self-autonomy.
Their fight for menstrual leaves will come with first breaking through the shackles of their systemic oppression, before breaking the menstrual taboos.
Menstrual Waste and the Caste System
Our saga of menstruation halts once we dispose of our sanitary-napkins in the dustbin. Improper waste disposal can clog the drains and release a terrible stench. The menstrual waste eventually ends up in a dump alongside other wet or dry trash.
Sewer workers who come into contact with menstrual waste are prone to contracting harmful bacteria and falling ill. Additionally, manual scavengers may also hunt through the dump for some leftover food alongside disposed sanitary napkins.
Manual scavenging is an inhuman and life-threatening activity. And unfortunately, this “job” is relegated to the lower caste. Millions of manual scavengers are Dalits and Adivasis, with women making up 95–98% of them.
Confronting as an Intersectional Feminist
Feminists have since long carried out an inadequate discourse around menstruation. A polarised dialogue about the upper-middle class and their plight — taking over the movement because their socio-economic status gives them the voice.
It is not entirely wrong, but we need intersectional feminism. Feminism acknowledging the circumstances of people existing at the crossroads of caste, class, gender, religion, race and more. A feminist that views every struggle as a struggle in itself — but knows that some hardships are graver and deeper. A privileged feminist that represents their struggles without discounting their privilege and being oblivious of the disadvantaged.
As an intersectional feminist, I believe that Dalit voices deserve to be a distinct entity in the menstrual movement. We can begin by being their ally and not taking up their space.