Readings for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Wisdom 1:13-16, 2:23-24; Ps. 30:2, 4-6, 11-13; 2Cor. 8:7, 9, 13-16; Mk. 5:21-43
Last month my brilliant 15-year-old granddaughter shocked students in her high school freshman class by giving a speech about menstruation. Yes, menstruation! She called her talk “Bleeding in Silence: The Hidden Epidemic of Period Poverty.” (For those interested, I’ve pasted Eva’s words to the bottom of this posting.)
Eva’s speech was about how the patriarchal system fundamentally misunderstands how women’s bodies function. And in our man’s world, it’s women who pay the price for such ignorance. For instance, it influences the cost of “feminine hygiene products” and their availability while imposing unspoken prohibitions about even mentioning menstrual periods much less openly discussing and coping with them.
Eva’s presentation began with a video of interviews of male family members during a party over her school’s Easter break. On camera, she simply asked us “What do you understand by the word ‘menstruation?” It was surprising how quickly inarticulate, seemingly embarrassed, and (let’s face it) ignorant our responses were, even by those who (like me) should know better.
A principal conclusion of Eva’s speech was that lamentably, men know very little about how female bodies work. Women, of course know much more. Moreover, this disparity has major social repercussions when overwhelmingly male state administrators in a completely patriarchal system impose legislation about what they barely understand. e.g., about abortion, contraception sex education, and easy and cheap access to those hygiene products.
For instance, relative to abortion, the legislation ignores the fact that 70-75% of fertilized eggs end up aborting spontaneously. They’re unceremoniously flushed down toilets across the world in the menstrual period immediately following fertilization. Yet, a recent decision by the Alabama Supreme Court holds that all those unknown and unrecognized embryos are somehow “children.” At least that’s the implication of the court’s determination that frozen embryos are babies. How offensive to common sense is that? How contrary to what every woman implicitly knows.
I bring all of that up on this Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time because today’s selection from the Gospel of Mark centralizes a woman with a menstrual problem. It implies criticism of ignorant patriarchal laws regulating it, while strongly affirming a particular woman’s courageous decision to transgress those restrictions in favor of her own faith and common sense.
Jesus & Menstruation
In short, today’s reading uses the issue of menstruation to show how Jesus favored women who spoke for themselves and courageously exercised their own initiative even in the face of specific patriarchal legislation forbidding such agency. It has him even curing and praising a woman who disobeys precisely misogynistic laws. He ends up prioritizing her needs over those of a young female who was a passive captive to the religious patriarchy.
To make those points, Mark the evangelist creates what might be termed a “literary sandwich” – a “story within a story.” The device focuses on two kinds of females within the Jewish faith of Jesus’ day. In fact, Mark’s gospel is liberally sprinkled with doublets like the one just described. When they appear, both stories are meant to play off one another and illuminate each other.
In today’s doublet, we find two women. One is just entering puberty at the age of 12; the other has had a menstrual problem for the entire life span of the adolescent girl. (Today we’d call her condition a kind of menorrhagia.)
So, to begin with the number 12 is centralized. It’s a literary “marker” suggesting that the narrative has something to do with the twelve tribes of Israel – and in the early church, with the apostolic leadership of “the twelve.” The connection with Israel is confirmed by the fact that the 12-year-old in the story is the daughter of a synagogue official. As a man in a patriarchal culture, he can approach Jesus directly and speak for his daughter.
The other woman in the doublet has no man to speak for her; she must approach Jesus covertly and on her own. She comes from the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum from the 12-year- old daughter of the synagogue leader.
The older woman is without honor. She is poor and penniless. Her menstrual problem has rendered her sterile, and so she’s considered technically dead by her faith community. Her condition has also excluded her from the synagogue. In the eyes of community leaders like Jairus (the petitioning father in the story) she is “unclean.” (Remember that according to Jewish law, all women were considered unclean during their monthly period. So, the woman in today’s drama is exceedingly unclean. She and all menstruating women were not to be touched.)
All that means that Jairus as a synagogue leader is in effect the oppressor of the second woman. On top of that the older woman in the story has been humiliated and exploited by the male medical profession which has been ineffective in addressing her condition. In other words, the second woman is the victim of a misogynist religious system which saw the sacrificial blood of animals as valuable and pleasing in God’s eyes, but the blood of women as repulsively unclean.
Nonetheless, it is the bleeding woman who turns out to be the hero of the story. Her confidence in Jesus is so strong that she believes a mere touch of his garment will suffice to restore her to health, and that her action won’t even be noticed.
So, she reaches out and touches the Master. Doing so was extremely bold and highly disobedient to Jewish law, since her touch would have rendered Jesus himself unclean. She refuses to believe that.
So instead of being made unclean by the woman’s touch, Jesus’ being responds by exuding healing power, apparently without his even being aware. The woman is cured. Jesus asks, “Who touched me?” The disciples object, “What do you mean? Everybody’s touching you,” they say.
Finally, the unclean woman is identified. Jesus praises her faith and (significantly!) calls her “daughter.” So, what we end up finding in this literary doublet are two Jewish “daughters” – yet another point of comparison.
While Jesus is attending to the bleeding woman, the first daughter in the story apparently dies. Jesus insists on seeing her anyhow. When he observes that she is merely asleep, the bystanders laugh him to scorn. But Jesus is right. When he speaks to her in Aramaic, the girl awakens and is hungry. Everyone is astonished, and Jesus must remind them to feed her.
Mark’s Message for Us
What does all the comparison mean? The doublet represented in today’s Gospel addresses issues that couldn’t be more female – more feminist. The message here is that bold and active women unafraid of disobeying the religious or civil patriarchy in matters that women understand better than men. “Prioritize and act like the bleeding woman” is the message of today’s Gospel.
Could today’s gospel be telling us that bold and specifically feminist faith that sides with the poor and oppressed (like the hero of today’s Gospel) will be the salvation of us all who are moribund? Are women precisely as women today’s real faith leaders, rather than the elderly, white, out-of-touch men who overwhelmingly claim to lead in every sphere even those where women know far more.
Conclusion
Today’s Gospel suggests that it’s time for men to stop telling women how to be women – to stop pronouncing on issues of female sexuality whether it be menstruation, abortion, contraception, same-sex attractions, or whether women are called by God to the priesthood. Correspondingly, it’s time for women to disobey such male pronouncements, and to exercise leadership in accord with their common sense – in accord with women’s ways of knowing. Only that will save our national community which is currently sick unto death.
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Bleeding in Silence: The Hidden Epidemic of Period Poverty
By Eva Lehnerd Reilly
Whether they know the term or not, all women are necessarily aware of the realities of “Period Poverty.” Nonetheless, the concept remains completely foreign and even incomprehensible to most men. As a result, little is done to eliminate the problems the phrase represents. The phrase “Period Poverty” is defined as the lack of access to safe and hygienic menstrual products during monthly periods and accessibility to basic sanitation services or facilities as well as menstrual hygiene education.
Additionally, period poverty has social dimensions that include the stigmas surrounding this natural female process. To explain the problem, what follows will explore international dimensions of this issue, connect the phrase with patriarchy, misogyny and human rights and make recommendations for its elimination. This essay is arguing “Period Poverty” is a world health issue thus by refusing to acknowledge it we are proving that we still live in a society that is patriarchal, misogynist, and locked in an aggressive denial of the rights of women.
An International Problem
This issue affects billions of people worldwide in ways including stigma, dependence on transnational companies producing the necessary hygienic products, and the lack of understanding and acknowledgement of the problem. Stigma is one of the largest problems surrounding period poverty. Many countries and people believe wildly untrue period-related information. According to the Korean Journal of Family Medicine, Nepal “continues to believe in dangerous, incorrect ideas, for example, using tampons causes women to lose their virginity, or handling food while menstruating causes it to spoil the food.
Social stigma on menstruation remains even in more advanced nations: in the United States, 58% of women are ashamed of having a period, and 51% of men believe that it is improper to discuss periods at work.” (Jaafar, Hafiz, et al., 2023). The fact that stigma is so present in all different circles around the world shows how grand an issue this is and how many people are affected by it.
This is also an economic issue because women are dependent on transnational companies. Global Research and Consulting Group Insights explains that: “Multiple countries in the world impose the ‘tampon tax’ on menstrual products, frequently targeted as ‘luxury goods.’ This categorization enhances the chances that economic disparities, limit access to period products, and perpetuates the view that they are not a ‘necessity.’”(Ricardo da Costa, 2023). This tax is implemented often in particularly lower-income, less developed countries but it is far from unique to developing countries. In fact, GRC found that the elimination of the “tampon tax” in California would likely reduce government revenue by 55 million dollars. This shows how women’s reliance on companies to provide basic hygiene products is problematic because the government is trying to make financial gains by providing resources that should never be charged for in the first place.
Probably the largest problem of them all is the lack of awareness and understanding surrounding period poverty and the menstrual cycle in general. A Plan International study found that one in five boys and young men think that periods should be kept a secret. Furthermore, they associate this term with words like ‘messy,’ ‘gross,’ and ‘embarrassing.’ This tells us that the taboos set in place by society are greatly affecting young people and discouraging them from learning and understanding this issue. This is leading to the rise of a new wave of sexism.
Periods and Patriarchy
The term “patriarchy” refers to social conditions ruled by fathers–or more generally by men. In
The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner determines that this comes from lessons taught in childhood. She says that the “absolute authority of a father over his children provided men with a conceptual dominance of dependency, due to the helplessness of youth.” (Lerner, 90). Relative to period poverty, this fundamental condition has led some women to joke that if male biology included menstruation, they would likely be excused from work days before and during the entire menses process, plus they would be given a week off to recover. Additionally, menstrual hygiene products would be low or no cost, not subject to taxation, and as available as toilet paper and paper hand towels in every washroom.
In our patriarchal society no such accommodations are available for more than half our nation’s population. That’s period poverty. However, this goes farther than just the patriarchy. The issue is also affected greatly by misogyny, a term meaning hatred of women. This is revealed in attitudes surrounding mood swings, jokes about periods and even dates back to religious texts calling women ‘unclean’ during this time.
Particularly, in the third Book of the Pentateuch or Torah, known as Leviticus, it states that a woman undergoing menstruation is perceived as unclean for seven days and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening (Leviticus 15:19). This is simply outrageous and goes to show how our society is so deeply rooted in these feelings of hatred towards women and disgust towards natural occurrences.
Finally, access to period products is a human right. A human right is what belongs to human beings simply because of being human; it does not have to be earned, it is an entitlement. All women, simply because of being women, have menstrual periods. They therefore have rights connected with their inevitable circumstances. These include rights to free or very low-cost feminine hygiene products, widespread availability of such products and freedom from blame, ridicule, or penalty for time off for personal care during their periods. Now that we have established this, how can we fix this?
Practical Recommendations
The Journal of Global Health Reports found that 500 million people lack access to menstrual products and hygiene facilities and since half the population is female and over half of university students are female, this issue can no longer be ignored. Men need to be part of the solution. We need to all work together to ensure a positive and supportive environment that allows menstruating people to participate in all aspects of life (e.g., going to school/work, and sport). In a Plan International study of over 300 men, 49% said their education on periods was poor or non-existent and just under one third (32%) said that talking about periods made them feel uncomfortable, increasing to 53% in the youngest respondents aged 16-18 years. This shows that many people (men in particular) are not receiving adequate education leading to misinformation and increased stigma associated with menstruation.
The takeaway is that we are in desperate need of a far greater and earlier education about periods in schools. There are three things to note surrounding this being a world health issue: 1) Poor menstrual hygiene often causes physical health risks, 2) globally, 1.7 billion people live without basic sanitation services, 3) girls with disabilities disproportionately do not have access to the facilities and resources they need for proper menstrual hygiene. The former Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF said it best: “Meeting the hygiene needs of all adolescent girls is a fundamental issue of human rights, dignity, and public health.” (Rodriguez, Global Citizen). With all that in mind, allow me to conclude my argument.
About Things That Matter 