A body full of shame

The Pantone Color Institute has just presented a new shade of red – period, the colour of menstrual blood.

And you can already hear the comments that it’s stupid, disgusting and who would even paint walls with such a colour.

It’s not just men who write this, women do too. Why is that?

I think we still don’t accept and are ashamed of our physiology. When I started the fanpage of Pani Miesiączka (Ms Period), which is currently being managed by Basia Pietruszczak, I heard similar reactions from women in particular: that it makes no sense, that it’s unthinkable, that physiology should not be a public topic. These women never wrote about themselves, “I have a problem with it”, “it affects me”. They always referred to the outrage of the (anonymous) general public, “No one’s ever going to like this”, “Everyone knows it’s repulsive”. Why do they say that? There are probably as many reasons for resistance to talking about menstruation or accepting this topic in a public space as there are women. But if you look at it from a social point of view, female physiology, even menstrual bleeding, is still considered dirty, unsightly and unwanted.

That’s how menstruation has been talked about for centuries.

And for centuries the “imperfect” female physiology has been compared with the “exemplary” male physiology. This is perfectly illustrated in the book “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez, who writes that a woman used to be treated a bit like a man turned inside out. The male body was an ideal that women could not match.

We have always been brought up and raised in such a way that the norm is the male body, and everything feminine is a departure from that norm. I think that centuries of being told that we are “half-baked” men have cast a huge shadow over the narrative of women’s bodies and how our physiology is treated by women themselves.

Fortunately, I can finally see room for a new kind of feminism, the so-called Darwinian feminism, as Dr Martie Haselton describes it, which respects our biology, strives to explore it and says that our physiology is strength, potential and our own resource.

More than half of women in Poland are ashamed of menstruation: the blood stain on their trousers is likened to tragedy, we don’t put pads on our desks at work, we sneak them into toilets so that no one notices. Every third woman doesn’t want anyone to know she’s on her period. If we get a towel dirty, we put it in the washing machine as quickly as possible, hiding it from the rest of the household. We already know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but we’re still trying to hide our menstruation and suppress it.

And I’m not free of it either! To be honest, sometimes I find it hard to grasp the boundary between shame-driven behaviour and caring for the comfort of another person who, noticing a bloody towel, might be concerned, because the first association with blood is harm, a wound or an injury. I keep wondering whether women’s behaviour results from an imprinted shame or from wanting to be polite, from not wanting to cause anyone trouble, so that no one has contact with our bodily fluids.

Even if we’re talking about menstruation openly, what we have in the back of our minds is that it might be embarrassing to someone. So are we really ashamed all the time?

If we don’t talk about our experiences, we’ll never make room for them. On the other hand, how can we talk about them if we don’t have a developed language that everyone will accept? Or maybe it’s unrealistic, so you just have to talk about menstruation regardless of resistance? I have a pretty friendly work environment as I only work with women. I don’t really know what it would be like to work in a corporation and keep a box of tampons on my desk. Plus, I work in a gynaecological osteopathy clinic, so childbirth, obstetrics, and urinary incontinence are discussed all the time. But outside my bubble, it’s completely different, and I realise that. When a woman tells me that she “can’t understand this new fashion for menstruation” and that it’s “disgusting”, I have empathy for her and even if I fail to enter into a dialogue with her, I can justify her reaction.

How do you justify it, then?

With centuries of patriarchy, with upbringing, probably by her mother, who passed down to her what she got from her own mother, with lack of reliable sex education in schools. I have a lot of understanding for these women. I think menstrual education was neglected when they were young. I get the impression that their strong reactions are not really about the subject itself, not about menstruation, but about their own sexuality and bodies. But I would like to point out that it’s not my role to force women to be “more open”, whatever that means, or to embarrass them because of their aversion to certain topics.

During our speech as Pani Miesiączka at TEDxWUM, Basia Pietruszczak said something along the lines of, “The way we talk about menstruation is a litmus test of how we approach the body, femininity, fertility and sexual education in general in a given society.” We both still subscribe to that thought.

Sometimes I wonder whether we’re not just ashamed in front of men. One day on my bike, I realised I had a stain on my pants, and the first thing I thought was whether the boy behind me saw it. If there was a girl behind me, I wouldn’t have cared.

More and more often I think that this shame is in the eye of the beholder, and I see confirmation of this in my work. Women aren’t ashamed of me, although they often say that they’re surprised by this discovery, because they’re ashamed of almost everything on a daily basis: what their body looks like, erotic fantasies, orgasms or a lack thereof. I began to wonder why, and I came to the conclusion that it is simply not their own shame – it comes from the outside. These are two completely different categories: the internal need for intimacy (e.g. when I want to be alone in the toilet) is something quite different than being humiliated by someone.

Maybe they once heard from a parent or a partner, “You’re so nervous because it’s your time of the month!”, “Premenstrual syndrome?”.

This could have been the seed that has grown into shame. We have a term for it: “period-shaming”.

How else does this manifest itself?

The most extreme example: a year ago, 14-year-old Jackline Chepngeno from Kenya killed herself because her teacher ridiculed her when she unexpectedly got her first period. She was called “dirty” in front of the whole class.

Kiran Gandhi, a female athlete and drummer, ran a marathon without a tampon to show that sanitation is a luxury for most women in the world. Of course, the blood kept running down her legs, for which she experienced a great deal of hatred. Meanwhile, no one hates on cyclists who urinate while cycling or footballers who blow their snot onto the pitch during a match.

I think the blood just seems dirty to people, as if we were leaving at least a mountain of dirty, smelly bandages in women’s bathrooms. I think this shame is related to our narration regarding dirt. After all, no one wants to be a bad smelling, “unclean” person among fragrant, clean people. And yet menstrual blood isn’t dirty. We have less bacteria in the vagina than in the mouth, but when speaking of menstruation, the phrase “the uterus cleans itself” is used, and if it “cleans itself”, it means that it’s impure. I once happened to explain to an adult woman that our menstrual blood isn’t dirty. If that were the case, we’d all have died of sepsis.

And do you recall what postpartum bleeding is called in Polish?

What?

Birth excrement. That’s what doctors call it: excrement. You’ve just given birth to a child, for some women it’s the most beautiful moment, an incredible sense of strength and power. The gates open up to bring a baby into the world, and the doctor starts talking about uterine excrement and a gaping vulva. If I heard something like that, I wouldn’t be too happy to look at postpartum blood, either. And I certainly wouldn’t reach for a mirror to see my pudendum after it being called a “gaping vulva” by the doctor. The language we hear has a huge impact on our well-being and the desire to learn our own physiology. Maybe that’s why we have such poor access to it every day.

Do men have more access to it?

Of course they do. They have a greater self-acceptance and group acceptance for those scatological jokes they tell each other, for those farts they let out without restraint. If something like this happens to a woman, God forbid during sex, it’s the end of the world, it’s disastrous and shameful. And the fact that boys and men announce to each other, “I’m off for a number two!”? How many women do you know who would say that in a group of friends? Or how often do you see women blowing their snot all over the pavement? Men still do it! The women in my office aren’t ashamed to undress, but you can’t imagine how much they keep apologising for their stomachs rumbling. When I massage them and we hear them bubbling they immediately say, “I’m so sorry!” Can you imagine a man apologising for something like that?

What do you say to these women then?

“Don’t apologise! That’s great, it means the stomach is relaxed and the intestines are working. It’s very good, that’s what the point of this was!” But women apologise for yawning or stretching. One of the things I teach them at meetings is how to take a deep breath. Women don’t know how to stretch, groan or moan properly, because all of this is considered rude and unladylike. I’m sure it’s not just girls who’ve been told that yawning is very rude, absolutely forbidden to do in school, because it means that you are bored in class. But this is a physiological, completely normal reaction. We have to increase oxygen intake, such regulation is needed by our nervous system. Stretching or yawning is a normal reflex for every human and animal.

It’s unladylike to be relaxed and to have a gurgling stomach, and everything that leaves our bodies is so unsightly that we should be ashamed of it.

Unfortunately, our Catholic upbringing has done a lot of harm here. I believe that our attitude towards the body depends a lot on the faith in which we grew up. Look at the Danes: they go out naked on the beach, and they don’t have perfect bodies – like all of us. How come they’re so relaxed about their looks? Germans and Czechs are similar – they’re very laid-back when it comes to the body, menstruation and physiology. But we aren’t. We hide everything, we do things in secret, we apologise.

This shame we’ve been taught since we were kids is all about disciplining women.

Of course. We discipline ourselves! And we don’t like the fact that we lose control over our bodiesduring menstruation, that it slips out of our grasp, that certain things aren’t going our way. Because you can’t plan a trip or wear a white dress and because everything hurts. And then there’s the shame that accompanies us, and there’s no telling how to disarm it.

This shame has its consequences: it stops young girls from going to the doctor, for example, with heavy periods.

That’s not all! We have patients who are in their, let’s say, thirties, who haven’t had sexual intercourse and are ashamed to go to a gynaecologist – precisely because of this. Because they’ve been ridiculed by a doctor before. They went to see them, for example, about an irregular menstrual period, and the gynaecologist, realising that the patient hasn’t had sexual intercourse, commented, “How old are you? What are you waiting for?” .

If I hadn’t started working with women from such different backgrounds, I wouldn’t know how restrained we all are by shame, no matter what kind of sexual expression we have, what we look like, whether we have children or not. I’ve always been in a feminist bubble, and I thought the problem was slut-shaming, aimed at sexually active women. And then I started meeting people who said, “I’m waiting to have sex until I'm married, I’m 32 years old.” And I hear about exactly the same kind of shaming from them. So whether you’re sexually active or not, someone will always shame you. There’s no pleasing the people who judge us.

And they judge us for everything. Don’t breastfeed, and you’ll hear you’re a bad mother. Do, and you’ll hear you’re doing it too long or not long enough. Have milk stains on your blouse when you breastfeed, and you’ll hear you are unkempt.

It’s not just milk stains women are shamed for, it’s also stains under the armpits. Some time ago, gossip portals circulated photos of a presenter who raised her hand on TV and her sweat was visible on her blouse. A close-up was taken, and she got a lot of hate from people saying she was ill-kempt, didn’t wash, didn’t use effective enough deodorants, that it was unsightly. Once again, the shaming eye was the eye of the beholder. I’d like to see Jack Nicholson, for example, being shamed for having sweat stains on his T-shirt.

In a man, it’s perceived as something masculine.

Yes, testosterone, sex and arousal. A woman has to watch herself every step of the way. And she’s ashamed of absolutely everything, like the fact she has dimples in her buttocks or fat rolls under her bra strap. It doesn’t even go away in situations where shame becomes a major holdback.

For instance?

During childbirth. Women are ashamed of making loud noises because we are literally and figuratively constantly being silenced. We hear that a woman should not be too loud or she should not laugh loudly, so this scream during childbirth is often the first time a woman actually hears the power of her own voice.

When I run pelvic floor workshops, we talk about noises during childbirth and sex and I sometimes imitate different sounds for women. I say, “Look at the noises women in porn films make with their throats clenched. Or women giving birth in films. It doesn’t sound like a real moan from the depths of your stomach.” We often don’t even talk at the actual volume of our voices because we don’t relax our stomachs or throats, so we’re not used to hearing our loud, sharp, strong voices.

Women don’t make noises, they’re ashamed, so sometimes I train with my clients before they give birth the moaning needed to “push” the baby out with their voices and breath.

They often say after giving birth, “Wow, that was amazing, I finally learned to scream,” but then they jokingly add, “I thought my husband would divorce me after it all, but it all worked out in the end.” I understand it’s a joke, but what’s the idea behind it? Would a guy ever think, “Oh dear, if I’m too loud, she’ll divorce me”?

What else are women ashamed of during childbirth?

That they’re going to poop. It’s perfectly normal, but when a midwife and a partner are with them, they’re often embarrassed. For centuries, men weren’t allowed to be present at the birth, they didn’t see the dilatation, blood, sweat or physiology. All they would see was a clean, washed baby. Midwives do a fantastic job, telling women to relax and explaining to them that if they didn’t want to come into contact with body fluids, they would work at a florist’s. I will admit that I love this simultaneous admiration and respect for female physiology in childbirth that midwives have, along with a loose and “non-disgusting” approach to it.

And what are we ashamed of during the postpartum period?

Of our bellies! And being “unkempt”. But our bellies most of all, even many months later. There are still a lot of women who don’t know that after giving birth, their bellies won’t get flat right away, and no one has prepared them for a postpartum belly. Sometimes it’ll take weeks, sometimes months, sometimes it’ll never be the same again. They’re ashamed of this belly because what they don’t want to hear the most in the world is, “Oh, you’re pregnant again”, “Let the lady go first, she’s pregnant”. Very few of these postpartum bellies are seen in the media, they aren’t shown in photos, women don’t like to photograph them. That’s why I often tell them to Google the phrase “postpartum body” and get used to the photos they see.

So, what can we do about the shame? If we are ashamed of so many things, each of us perhaps of different things, can it be disarmed at all?

It’s encouraging that I can see change; I’m already hearing from women aged 30 or 40 that they want to raise their children in a completely different way. They want them to be free of this shame imprinted on them by their surroundings, free from being embarrassed. So nakedness is appearing more freely in the home (something that they themselves haven’t often experienced in the family home) and women are refraining from commenting on their bodies in front of the children. They tell me, “I was ready to stand in front of the mirror and say, ‘Oh my gosh, is this what I look like?!’ but I couldn’t, not in front of my daughter! I know she looks at me and listens to what I say.” These eyes and ears of a child, who sees and hears everything, make women talk about themselves in better terms. They often remember their own mothers, who they always heard saying, “I’m ugly, I’m too fat”. They don’t want to give their daughters memories like that. But also, what’s very important, mothers are teaching their children to be assertive and are instilling in them a sense of self-esteem. A person with a high self-esteem is difficult to embarrass or humiliate.

Mothers are preparing their daughters for menstruation?

Not just their daughters, they also talk to their sons. When a two-year-old walks into the bathroom, when they’re changing their pad, they say, “It’s blood, but it doesn’t hurt, nothing happened, it’s not an ‘ouchie’, I didn’t hurt myself.”

It’s wonderful to listen to stories in which mothers prepare little girls for menstruation and blood. I heard about a girl who is only a few years old who says that when she “gets blood”, she’s going to be a lady and she was asking if she can buy herself pink pads, and of course she’s looking forward to it. I really think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I can already hear wonderful things from clients about young, 20-, 25-year-old boys, really! Looks like they’re going to grow up to be smart, cool men. Your period? It’s just part of nature. Sex during menstruation, even oral sex? Sure. Did you get blood on the sheets? Don’t worry about it, we’ll wash it. They cover half of the costs of birth control and gynaecologist’s consultations without asking. There are already men like that. And they certainly won’t embarrass women.

Monika Tutak-Goll talks to Kamila Raczyńska-Chomyn

Graphics: Marta Frej

• Kamila Raczyńska-Chomyn - sex educator, doula, pelvic floor muscle training instructor and author of the “Good Body” project.

The interview published on wysokieobcasy.pl, 17 October 2020