The men in menstruation

Now that we’re talking about periods, we should stop positioning men as the saviours

July 21, 2018 04:08 pm | Updated 04:08 pm IST

A still from Pad Man.

A still from Pad Man.

Conversations around menstruation have finally entered mainstream cinema and punched holes in the culture of silence around the subject. But while this moment offers a chance to have nuanced discussions on class, gender and sex, these dialogues are often wrung out to fit into a predictable frame that oversimplifies a complex problem.

A number of films tackle the stigma around periods, but they frequently reduce discussions to only the feeling of shame. Take First Period for instance: the short film directed by Mozez Singh is the tale of a young boy named Ayush who gets his first period (in a world where men menstruate) and follows his journey as everyone around helps him shed his embarrassment. But in Singh’s universe, talking about periods is both normalised and welcome. “This happens,” “Everybody has their first day,” Ayush is told, and he eventually learns to be comfortable with it.

The premise, the possibility of roles reversing in a limited and gender binary universe, reminds me of journalist Gloria Steinem’s essay ‘If Men Could Menstruate’. But hers was delicious satire, shedding light on how power relations dictate social perceptions of biological experiences. “[M]enstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event,” she writes. Dismantling the notions of purity and pollution that surround periods, she says: “[People would use it as] proof that only men could… be priests, ministers… or rabbis (‘Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean’).”

A still from First Period.

A still from First Period.

But in Singh’s world, Ayush’s shame is rendered baseless because he is able to continue normally with life, much like the women in sanitary napkin commercials, and because the spectrum of gender dynamics is completely done away with. And First Period ’s universe is populated only with men. Menstrual shame is deeply rooted in religion and culture, and subtracting women creates a strange gap that allows no meaningful commentary on gendered experiences. You are left wondering why Ayush is ashamed.

Reason to be home

Worse, the didactic film seems to suggest that irrational embarrassment keeps girls at home, and that they are unnecessarily indulged. Ayush’s family’s response to his unwillingness to go to school is “Full drama!” Another retorts: “ Achha kiya bhej diya. Aadat agar pehle din bigad jaye na, to baad mein mushkil ho jaati hai . (Good you sent him. If he is indulged now, it will get more difficult later on).”

“Girls are typically absent for 20% of the school year due to menstruation,” says a statistic at the end. But the reasons for this are numerous as Kamini Prakash explains. Prakash is Technical Officer — Equality and Non-Discrimination, Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), and says, “The lack of infrastructure in schools, unsympathetic teachers, and social taboo (sometimes girls are not allowed to go to school)” are all factors. Menstrual cramps is another very common reason why girls stay home during their periods.

R. Balki’s Pad Man , the Bollywood biopic on Arunachalam Muruganantham, the man who launched affordable pads for rural India, has similar sanctimonious moments. As Lakshmikant, Akshay Kumar ends up placing the menstrual stigma on women’s shoulders. One scene has Kumar exasperated by young girls running away mortified when he brandishes a packet of sanitary pads. He says, “ Jinki bhalai ke liye yeh kar raha hoon, wohi aise sharmaenge to kya karoon ? (If the people I’m doing this for get embarrassed, what am I to do?)”

In Pad Man , women serve only to further Lakshmikant’s story, either running away from him, or running to him for employment when he wants to start producing more pads.

In an attempt to make menstrual discourse more accessible to men, narratives repeatedly place them at the centre of the discussion. “Till men don’t become a part of this conversation, it doesn’t become a universal conversation: it remains a conversation of whispers and of shame between women,” says First Period ’s director, explaining the rationale behind this. The writer, Ishani Banerji adds, “Had it been boys menstruating, the world would have been utopian and perfect.”

But by keeping women away from the focal point, these films become alienating. “Doesn’t an ideal world have women then,” asks Nidhi Goyal, the founder of the NGO, Rising Flame.

Brother in need

Pivoting the tale on a masculine viewpoint tends to also position men as saviours. In Xahid Khan’s Alert — Condition: Red (2017), a girl gets her first period on the street, and leans against a scooter, unsure what to do until its owner arrives. When he learns that she has stained her dress, he asks a woman to help the girl while he goes to buy pads for her. The message seems unproblematic, until it becomes garbed in rhetoric that coaxes masculinity, calling the man’s actions a “brother’s responsibility.” To tie it up, the man seems to get ‘rewarded’ when the woman asks him out for a cup of coffee at the end. In Pad Man , Kumar as Lakshmikant asks “ Ek aurat ki hifaazat mein naakaamyab insaan apne ko mard kaise kah sakta hai ? (How can someone who fails to protect a woman call himself a man?)”

The only girl

Inversely, the women in these settings are portrayed as being responsible for both the beginning and the end of the stigma around periods. After Ayush’s story unfolds on screen, a montage of a child getting ready, seemingly identical to the opening sequence, introduces us to the only girl in First Period . Now representing reality, the film ends with a freeze frame as the girl stares wide-eyed into the camera, realising she just got her first period. The first in a series of (uncited) statistics follows: “70% of mothers consider menstruating dirty and polluting.” This is a deeply problematic image, unwittingly placing on the mother the entire blame for the silence and taboo surrounding periods. Juxtaposed with this is the ‘ideal’ world of men being open and accepting of menstruation.

In sharp contrast to these narrow perspectives is Amit Virmani’s documentary Menstrual Man (2013), which follows the real Muruganantham. He’s self-aware and his work addresses the intersection between class and gender issues. “Sanitary pads can’t [be] discussed by a marketing team or an advertising team,” Muruganantham says, pointing out how advertisements of women in tight jeans being comfortable using pads are disjointed from the rural woman’s reality. Large segments of his documentary are dedicated to the real lives of women involved in Muruganantham’s business model — their voices fleshing out the narrative and shedding light on their experiences beyond menstrual shame.

The films are well-intentioned, but they must delve beyond the idea of the stigma, and beyond simplified images. “You are dealing with a lived experience,” says Shreya Ila Anasuya, Managing Editor of Skin Stories , an online publication. “[Statistics] frame the problem in particular ways when the problem may just be wider.” The discussion has begun with these films, but it cannot end here.

The Mumbai-based freelance journalist is obsessed with cinema and gender rights.

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