Now here’s a story of cis privilege. Girls in Nepal are banished when they are menstruating; they have to sleep outside in skimpy sheds without walls. What about during monsoon season? Well they get wet, of course.
Where do these ideas come from?
Ancient Hindu scriptures say women are highly infectious during their periods, that “all her body is so weak that viruses come out of her mouth and her limbs,” says Mukunda Aryal, who has studied Hindu culture for 40 years.
In Hinduism, there was once a king of the gods, who reigned above others. This god, called Indra, committed a horrible sin. And to atone for it, he created menstruation.
You what? He committed a sin, and to atone for it, he created menstruation? What the hell is the logic of that? Let alone the fairness? He created a sin, so girls and women have to have obnoxious cramping in their lower abdomens every month, and have a lot of gross clumpy blood (that is, endometrial tissue) to deal with? In what sense is it atonement to create an unpleasant inconvenient uncomfortable situation for other people?
The NPR reporters, Jane Greenhalgh and Michaeleen Doucleff, visit one menstrual shed.
It’s about a ten minute walk. It’s starting to get dark, and she doesn’t have a flashlight. “I’m scared mostly of snakes and of men,” she says through translator, Pragya Lamsal of WaterAid. Kamala has heard stories of girls being sexually assaulted when they’re alone in their sheds.
Her shed is shocking. It looks more like a cage — with wooden bars crisscrossed over the top and sides. It’s monsoon season and the rain is torrential. Kamala has a piece of plastic to drape across the top of her shed but she still got drenched.
Kamala was 11 when she first started her period and she remembers being terrified when she first slept outside. The shed is small, barely big enough for her to lie down and sometimes she shares it with 2 or 3 or more girls and so for most of the night they squat.
“I don’t feel good about practicing this,” Kamala says.
The Supreme Court of Nepal outlawed the practice in 2005 so it’s illegal to force women into these sheds, but many villagers in the remote west continue to do it.
Oh well, it’s only girls and women.
Comments
27 responses to “But she still got drenched”
Oops… you mentioned menstruation. Better add a trigger warning…
Yes, you’re right. This is why we need to keep women’s issues and women’s rights front and centre. Women are still mistreated on account of their gender in every country in the world. In the West we have it better than these girls because we’ve fought our battles as women to improve our lot.
Is there a local women’s group opposing this practice? We hear so little about feminism in countries like this but they (we) exist everywhere. It would be good to support them in some way in dealing with this.
“And to atone for it, he created menstruation.”
In the genre of patriarchal religious fuckery, you have to give it points for boldness.
I am wondering, is it the concept of privilege you are rejecting or just the concept of cis privilege specifically?
Or are you rejecting the whole idea of intersectionnality? If so, do you reject the idea that white women benefit from white privilege compared to, at minimum, black women and, to some extent, black men (just as black men, though facing oppression, can also benefit from male privilege with regard to white women)? (or do you agree with the first but not the other?)
Sorry to bug you with that, I am trying to get your theoretical view on this.Feel free to ignore me if you think I should just figure this one out by myself.
Propater, how are these people benefiting from their status as girls? I can see how you could say they are benefiting from being, say, able-bodied or not disfigured, but how in any way could their status as girls be privileged?
@Emily
When we talk about cis privilege, we do not talk about their status as women but about their status as cis persons. Now, in the middle of such a shitty situation, cis privilege does not feel like much at all, but, from what I understand of it, privilege is supposed to be relative and contextual. The question would be, in this case, how would a trans women fare? Would she be killed on the spot? Then the women forced to the shed do, indeed, enjoy some modicum of privilege (not much, as this probably put their lives in danger) or would she be left alone as she is not menstruating, then the trans women would be the one benefitting from privilege (just as trans men can sidestep some of the shit thrown at women and claim some of male privilege, if the manage to “pass”, that is)
I am under the impression that the notion of privilege does not mean no shit gets thrown at you, just that there is some shit that is thrown at another class of people that you can afford to ignore. But I realize there are differing views on the subject and am interested in Ophelia’s perspective on the subject.
oh look, somebody just asking a question.
You know, it must cheer those girls and women enormously to think “well, at least I’m not being killed for being trans”.
Or not?
@learie
That is not the point. Ophelia said in another post that theory is important and that the theroetic understanding of gender should not devolve into some cutesy identity marker like unicornsexual or some such.
Obviously there are problems with what some call “tumblr feminism” where useful concepts get butchered beyond recognition to be used as cudgels in tribal status oneupmanship. On the other hand, it is sometimes difficult to recognize where the logic goes astray exactly and how to reject arguments of the tribal kind without renouncing the concepts entirely. That is why I was hoping for some perspective from Ophelia as she seems like the only resource I know rejecting that part of the “feminist movement” (though I guess we could debate whether this is indeed feminism) without being an MRA or rejecting movement feminism as a block.
So this is not linked to this object level story but more a meta level question prompted by the mention of “cis privilege” at the start of this post (which I fail to understand the purpose or the relation to the story being discussed, hence the question since not understanding smth is frequently an opportunity to gain fresh perspective.)
Once again, though help is always apreciated, you are free to ignore my request for enlightenment.
Were Indra really king of the gods, he’d be so pure and perfect, he’d never be capable of sinning in the first place.
What a shitty and simplistic theological plot device to demean and diminish women.
I sinned of my own volition, and so decided to atone for that sin by giving all my neighbors terminal cancer.
That’s quite the understanding of atonement.
‘…“all her body is so weak that viruses come out of her mouth and her limbs,” says Mukunda Aryal, who has studied Hindu culture for 40 years.’
And ‘Hindu culture,’ qua Hinduism, has any clue what a virus is? The BJP may be determined to claim that ancient Hindus had airplanes and telescopes, but ‘Ayurvedic’ virology?
Ah no, it’s not part of the feminist movement at all. It’s part of a certain branch of trans activism, which is virulently hostile to feminism and women.
That (shallow, slogan-y, sadly popular) trans activism is hostile to feminism, but Intersectionality is a big part of the current feminist movement. Though I’m starting to see some backlash. Anyway I think that’s what propater is asking about(?)
Anyway I’ve lately been trying to figure out where I stand on all of it. Already lost one friend, who claimed my Facebook post–which linked to a Marxist’s article critical of the criticism of Suffragette–was “part of a pattern” of me linking to “right wingers”(!)
“Intersectionality” looks great on paper, but it seems to lend itself to just what propater said:
Marxists are right wing? It’s a crazy old fucked up world!
Oh look, Republican heads exploding all over the place…
propater: not the point you want to discuss.
I remember when it first dawned on me that the religion in which I was brought up hated me because I was a woman. “She shall bring forth her children in pain” because Eve tempted Adam to eat the apple. It must be even more demoralising to realise you get the sh*t end of the social stick for something a woman wasn’t even involved in.
I used to think that religions like Hinduism and Buddhism did not have misogyny deeply embedded into them, because they were about enlightenment, not exercising power over others. Hahahaha!
re: intersectionality. I’m confused about how something as simple as “hey, white people, stop being racist” has become a quagmire of gobbledeygook and finger-pointing.
This insane um… menstruphobia, is of course also part of our proud Judaeo-Christian heritage.
But the concept of cis privilege is a part of feminist dialogue. See Julia Serano’s (author of “Whipping Girl”) writings as a great example of something that discusses the concept of cis privilege in an empathetic way, as an educational tool rather than a bludgeon:
http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html
http://juliaserano.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/whipping-girl-faq-on-cissexual.html
http://juliaserano.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/cissexism-and-cis-privilege-revisited.html
http://juliaserano.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/cissexism-and-cis-privilege-revisited.html
Her own words:
She is not hostile towards women and feminists (she is fiercely critical of a branch of feminism that is in its own way virulently (misogynistically) hostile to trans women: http://www.juliaserano.com/outside.html)
This is a terrible story but why introduce it by mentioning “cis privilege” when the story is not even about trans issues. I know you’ve had a lot of problems but why have digs at trans activists just for the hell of it?
Agreed, so much. It’s an irrelevant distraction from the appalling story. Cis privilege doesn’t mean “misogyny doesn’t exist.”
(I’ve got a comment in moderation because it has lots of links, but it’s in response to the comment asserting that the idea of “cis privilege” isn’t part of feminism but an invention of trans activists who are virulently hostile to women and feminists. They are links about the trans activist and feminist Julia Serano’s perspective on cis privilege and misogyny, and the fact that they aren’t mutually exclusive since both cis and trans women are marginalised in many, often overlapping, different ways. Transphobia even tends to manifest itself as a form of misogyny: hence the overwhelming social focus on trans women rather than trans men. Serano isn’t hostile towards women and feminists, but is fiercely critical of a branch of feminism that has consistently been overwhelmingly hostile towards her.)
Myrhinne, Falcon, I suspect Ophelia was being ironic, given recent posts.
I didn’t think she meant it literally.
When we talk about cis privilege, we do not talk about their status as women but about their status as cis persons.
That’s a highly problematic statement, Firstly you can’t elide the experiences of men and women with regard to their gender status, By definition men’s experience of gender as the socially superior sex and women’s as the socially inferior one is different. The “privilege” of being forced into a particular gender role is something many women see as oppression. This is why a degree of gender dysphoria, particularly in the teen years, is very, very common for young women.
The whole concept of “cis” is bound up with a whole load of assumptions about women’s relationship to their expected gender role that is both presumptuous and largely untrue. Dumping men and women into the single grouping “cis” actually erases the complex and often negative experience of gender policing as it applies to most women – and some men.
Falcon, that’s all very well, but Julia Serano is just one person. There really are quite a lot of trans activists (mostly trans women) who use the term “cis” as a weapon against women and feminists. And Serano herself is a tad clueless even in the bit you quoted – to wit:
Guess what: it really sucks for many many girls, too, very much including cis girls. It also sucks for many cis boys.
I wanted to highlight Serano, and not some random on Tumblr or Twitter, because she’s a very influential voice and widely published – she’s probably the most well known trans feminist activist.
I don’t see how what she said is clueless at all. She’s never denied that cis girls and boys are hurt by oppressive gender roles.
She even explicitly says that she believes transphobia is often another way that misogyny manifests itself, which is why she coined the term “trans misogyny” (and is also why she’s so aggravated by trans-exclusive radical feminists who insult and exclude trans women – they can’t even recognise their own hypocrisy. I’ve pointed out before how Janice Raymond’s diatribes against trans people were able to gain so much traction, and that’s because they dovetail so nicely with patriarchal right wing politics).
This is all from that last link I posted (which also elaborates on the kinds of “privilege” that discriminate specifically against trans people – ranging from intentional misuse of pronouns all the way up to denying them access to the bathroom of their gender, denying them access to “women only spaces”, denying them access to domestic violence services, etc. I’m still boggled that a story about girls in Nepal being banished for menstruating has somehow been turned into a massive dig at trans activists over this stuff?). For example:
Falcon – it’s not about “this stuff” – the stuff you referred to. It’s about the other stuff, the stuff I referred to.
I don’t need a lecture on pronouns and restrooms every time I mention “cis privilege.” I don’t call people the wrong pronouns (unless by accident) or bar their entry to restrooms.
Also –
What do you mean “a massive dig”? What massive dig?
All this exaggeration and hypervigilance and policing is a big part of what I’ve learned to loathe about this particular brand of “activism.”
Okay, I’m sorry, I definitely didn’t mean to say that you do that personally. Sorry also about me describing this as a dig if it’s not meant to be one. I just didn’t know what the original story has to do with cis privilege (several other commenters have been confused about this too, not just me). This, and a couple of other events – I think about a sexist Jack the Ripper museum and misogynistic commenters on 4chan? – looked like they were being presented as though they’re a rebuttal to particular trans activists. It feels like a massive distraction away from the story itself.
Again with the “massive” – it was a short sarcastic sentence introducing the post. Sometimes I mention X as an intro to discussing Y. It’s just writing style.
More broadly: yes, I am interested in some of the slogans and claims of some Internet trans activists. I’m allowed to be interested in that and to write about it on my blog.
“advantages (e.g., having people take your gender identity seriously, not being forced against your will into boyhood, etc.)”
I wonder what the “etc.” refers to. Because the first of those is irrelevant for a lot of women who are declared cis, as we don’t actually have a “gender identity” we want others to take seriously, and while I’m sure the second was horrible, being forced into girlhood isn’t much fun either – not even for the 100 % gender conforming ones, and certainly not for people like me.
Were Indra really king of the gods, he’d be so pure and perfect, he’d never be capable of sinning in the first place
Gods are distinguished by power and not virtue — genocidal Yahweh included.
Menstrual ostracization is no doubt more common and more horrible for rural and poor women, but it also happens within the home among urban and well-off people. A Dalit scholar, Gopal Guru, who has made an analogy between menstrual ostracization and untouchability.