by Rose George
64. Isabel Teotonio, “From American Vein to Canadian Vein,” Toronto Star, July 18, 2014.
65. “Contaminated Blood and Blood Products,” Parliament.uk, House of Commons, Hansard, November 24, 2016, vol. 617, debate, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-11-24/debates/9369C591-D01B-4479-B78A-E74243142B88/ContaminatedBloodAndBloodProducts (accessed April 5, 2018).
66. David Watters, testimony to the Archer Inquiry, January 19, 2012.
67. Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, “PPTA Statement on ‘How Blood-Plasma Companies Target the Poorest Americans,’” March 16, 2018.
68. Editorial, “The Big Business of Blood Plasma,” Lancet Haematology 4, no. 10 (2017): e452.
SIX: ROTTING PICKLES
1. Shanti Kadariya and Arja R. Aro, “Chhaupadi Practice in Nepal—Analysis of Ethical Aspects,” Dovepress Journal: Medicolegal and Bioethics 5 (2015): 53–58. Padi is usually translated as “woman,” but also as “being.” Nepal Fertility Care Center, Assessment Study on Chhaupadi in Nepal: Towards a Harm Reduction Strategy, March 2015, p. 3, nhsp.org.np/wp-content/uploads/formidable/7/Chhaupadi-FINAL.pdf (accessed May 2018).
2. Gopal Sharma, “Nepali Girl Suffocates to Death After Being Banished for Menstruating,” Reuters, December 20, 2016.
3. Rajneesh Bhandari and Nida Najar, “Shunned During Her Period, Nepali Woman Dies of Snakebite,” New York Times, July 9, 2017.
4. Nepal Fertility Care Center, Assessment Study on Chhaupadi in Nepal: Towards a Harm Reduction Strategy, p. 4.
5. Government of Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics/UNICEF/MICS, Nepal Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010, Final Report May 2012 (Kathmandu: 2012), 108.
6. I started my period aged thirteen. I’m now forty-eight. The average amount of menstrual blood lost is 30–40 milliliters, according to the NHS; 60–80 milliliters counts as heavy bleeding. I’ve never been pregnant so have menstruated every month for thirty-five years. As I have endometriosis, I’ll factor in many episodes of heavy bleeding. So, 420 months/periods, at an average of 50 milliliters, comes to 21,000 milliliters, or 21 liters. NHS Choices, “Heavy Periods,” www.nhs.uk/conditions/heavy-periods/.
7. Sara L. Read, “‘Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly’: Accounting for Menstruation in Early-Modern England” (PhD thesis, Loughborough University, 2010), 4, available from Loughborough University Institutional Repository at https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/6542.
8. The Clue survey was carried out in 2015 and had ninety thousand responses, https://helloclue.com/survey.html (accessed March 31, 2018).
9. D. Emera, R. Romero, and G. Wagner, “The Evolution of Menstruation: A New Model for Genetic Assimilation: Explaining Molecular Origins of Maternal Responses to Fetal Invasiveness,” Bioessays 34, no. 1 (2012): 26–35.
10. Ibid.
11. Suzanne Sadedin, “How and Why Did Women Evolve Periods?,” Forbes, May 6, 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/05/06/how-and-why-did-women-evolve-periods/#6418868c57a3 (accessed May 2018).
12. Dyani Lewis, “Explainer: Why Do Women Menstruate?,” Conversation, June 17, 2013, https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-do-women-menstruate-13744 (accessed March 31, 2018).
13. M. F. Ashley-Montagu, “Physiology and the Origins of the Menstrual Prohibitions,” Quarterly Review of Biology 15, no. 2 (1940): 211–20.
14. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book VII, Chapter 13 (15), ed. John Bostock (London: Taylor & Francis, 1855), www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D13.
15. Ibid., Book XXVIII, Chapter 23, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0978.phi001.perseus-eng1:28.23.
16. Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth, The Curse, rev. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 3.
17. Leviticus 15:19, New American Standard Version.
18. Christopher Cooper, Blood: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 5.
19. Herbert Ian Hogbin, The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1996), 88–89.
20. Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 279.
21. Wynne Maggi, Our Women Are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).
22. Virginia Smith, Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 32.
23. Ibid., 35.
24. United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator’s Office, Field Bulletin, “Chaupadi in the Far-West,” issue no. 1, April 2011, p. 3.
25. Festivals of India, www.festivalsofindia.in/rishipanchmi/rishi-panchmi.aspx.
26. United Nations Human Rights Office of the Commissioner, Nepal Conflict Report (Geneva: 2012), 3.
27. Rose George, “Celebrating Womanhood: How Better Menstrual Hygiene Management Is the Path to Better Health, Hygiene and Business,” Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, 2013, p. 6.
28. Sarah House, Thérèse Mahon, and Sue Cavill, Menstrual Hygiene Matters (London: WaterAid, 2012), 216.
29. Pazhman Pazhohish, “Afghanistan: Breaking Taboos Around Menstruation,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, September 27, 2016.
30. Catherine S. Dolan, Caitlin R. Ryus, Sue Dopson, et al., “A Blind Spot in Girls’ Education: Menarche and Its Webs of Exclusion in Ghana,” Journal of International Development 26, issue 5 (2014): 648.
31. Marie Lathers, Space Oddities: Women and Outer Space in Popular Film and Culture, 1960–2000 (New York: Continuum, 2010), 39.
32. Sally K. Ride interviewed by Rebecca Wright, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Edited Oral History Transcript, October 22, 2002, www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/RideSK/RideSK_10-22-02.htm (accessed March 31, 2018).
33. Sarah Kaplan, “What Happens When a Woman Gets Her Period in Space?” Washington Post, April 22, 2016.
34. Jack Olsen, Night of the Grizzlies (Crime Rant Classics, 2014), loc. 200, e-book.
35. Caroline P. Byrd, “Of Bears and Women: Investigating the Hypothesis That Menstruation Attracts Bears” (master’s thesis, University of Montana, 1988), Paper 7720, p. 2.
36. Ibid.
37. “Grizzly Grizzly Grizzly Grizzly” (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1981), https://ia800908.us.archive.org/2/items/grizzlygrizzlygr239unit/grizzlygrizzlygr239unit.pdf (accessed May 2018).
38. Bruce S. Cushing, “The Effects of Human Menstrual Odors, Other Scents, and Ringed Seal Vocalizations on the Polar Bear” (master’s thesis, University of Montana, 1980), Paper 7257.
39. Translation from Béla Schick’s 1920 publication on menotoxin at the marvelous online Museum of Menstruation (sadly now closed in real life), www.mum.org/menotox.htm.
40. In Orange Is the New Black, the main character, Piper, is smacking a wall in the bathroom of the prison where she is incarcerated. A guard threatens to write her a “shot,” or disciplinary note. “I’m so sorry,” says Piper. “It’s menses, it’s menses badness.” The guard says, “Ewww, just go.” He doesn’t write the shot.
41. A letter from V. R. Pickles pointed out that menotoxin was not toxic to rats (they had had a bacterial infection), nor was it particularly harmful to plants. Proof was still needed that it was related to premenstrual depression. He would be glad, he concluded, to hear from anyone interested in aspects of this problem. Lancet 303, no. 7869 (1974): 1292.
42. The son of Jiro Ono, who founded the famous sushi restaurant Sukiyabashi J
iro, told the Wall Street Journal in 2011 that there were no women working in their restaurant “because women menstruate. To be a professional means to have a steady taste in your food, but because of the menstrual cycle, women have an imbalance in their taste, and that’s why women can’t be sushi chefs.” Mary M. Lane, “Why Can’t Women Be Sushi Masters?,” Wall Street Journal blog, February 18, 2011, https://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/02/18/why-cant-women-be-sushi-masters/ (accessed April 2018).
43. Tomi-Ann Roberts, Jamie L. Goldenberg, Cathleen Power, and Tom Pyszzynski, “‘Feminine Protection’: The Effect of Menstruation on Attitudes Towards Women,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2002): 131–39.
44. Ibid., 132.
45. A YouGov poll asked 2,140 men and women in the UK about their attitudes to periods. Although nearly half the women said that they would feel embarrassed discussing periods with their dads, only 9 percent of men said they would feel uncomfortable discussing periods with their daughters. ActionAid blog, “1 in 4 Women Don’t Understand Their Menstrual Cycle,” May 23, 2017, www.actionaid.org.uk/blog/news/2017/05/24/1-in-4-uk-women-dont-understand-their-menstrual-cycle.
46. WaterAid Australia, WaterAid blog, “Leaks, Cramps and Cravings: Majority of Women Adapt Their Lifestyle Because of a Fear of ‘Period Dramas,’” May 25, 2016, www.wateraid.org/au/articles/leaks-cramps-and-cravings-majority-of-women-adapt-their-lifestyle-because-of-a-fear-of. Also Rose George, “My Gold Medal Goes to Fu Yuanhui for Talking Openly About Her Period,” Guardian, August 16, 2016.
47. Frank Bures, The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2016), 39.
48. Thwe T. Htay, “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder Clinical Presentation,” MedScape.com, https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/293257-clinical (accessed April 1, 2018).
49. Meredith Bland, “Man Asks, ‘Is PMS Real?’ Women Answer, ‘Yes, Motherf**cker, It Is,’” http://www.scarymommy.com/man-asks-is-pms-real/ (undated), (accessed May 2018).
50. Erin Beresini, “The Myth of the Falling Uterus,” Outside, March 25, 2013, www.outsideonline.com/1783996/myth-falling-uterus.
51. Travis Saunders, “Olympic Ski Jumping Competition Completed Without a Single Uterus Explosion,” PLoS blogs, February 14, 2012, http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2014/02/14/olympic-ski-jumping-competition-completed-without-a-single-uterus-explosion/ (accessed April 1, 2018).
52. “Sex Hormone-Sensitive Gene Complex Linked to Premenstrual Mood Disorder,” National Institutes of Health, news release, January 3, 2017, www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/sex-hormone-sensitive-gene-complex-linked-premenstrual-mood-disorder (accessed April 1, 2018).
53. Colin Sumpter and Belen Torondel, “A Systematic Review of the Health and Social Effects of Menstrual Hygiene Management,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 4 (2013): e62004.
54. World Bank, “Higher Education,” October 5, 2017, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/tertiaryeducation.
55. UNESCO, “Education in Pakistan,” Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Fact Sheet, October 2012, https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/EDUCATION_IN_PAKISTAN__A_FACT_SHEET.pdf.
56. Diana E. Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian, “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 29, no. 1 (2001): 13–27.
57. Kounteya Sinhal, “70% Can’t Afford Sanitary Napkins, Reveals Study,” Times of India, January 23, 2011.
58. Amy Keegan, “Zombie Statistics: To Make Progress We Need to Kill Them Off for Good,” https://washmatters.wateraid.org/blog/zombie-statistics-to-make-progress-we-need-to-kill-them-off-for-good (accessed May 2018).
59. Sarah Jewitt and Harriet Ryley, “It’s a Girl Thing: Menstruation, School Attendance, Spatial Mobility and Wider Gender Inequalities in Kenya,” Geoforum 56 (2014): 137–47.
60. House et al., Menstrual Hygiene Matters, 31.
61. UNICEF, Menstrual Hygiene in Schools in 2 Countries of Francophone West Africa: Burkina Faso and Niger Case Studies in 2013, 2013.
62. Community-Led Total Sanitation, “SHARE Policy Brief on Menstrual Hygiene Management,” February 8, 2017, p. 4.
63. Sally Piper Pillitteri, School Menstrual Hygiene Management in Malawi: More Than Toilets, SHARE/WaterAID, 2012.
64. Paul Montgomery, Julie Hennegan, Catherine Dolan, et al., “Menstruation and the Cycle of Poverty: A Cluster Quasi-Randomised Control Trial of Sanitary Pad and Puberty Education Provision in Uganda.” PLoS ONE 11, no. 12 (2016): e0166122.
SEVEN: NASTY CLOTHS
1. National Family Health Survey-4, Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2015–16, p. 6.
2. The piece in Quartz was filed under “taboo.” Isabella Steger and Soo Kyung Jung, “An Outcry over DIY Period Pads Made from Shoe Insoles Has Sparked a National Menstruation Conversation in Korea,” Quartz, June 11, 2017.
3. Vibeke Venema, “The Indian Sanitary Pad Revolutionary,” BBC News, March 4, 2014.
4. Muruga was listed under “pioneers.” Ruchira Gupta, “Arunachalam Muruganantham,” Time, April 23, 2014.
5. Jayaashree Industries, http://newinventions.in/project-overview/.
6. World Cancer Research Fund International, Cervical Cancer Statistics, www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-specific-cancers/cervical-cancer-statistics.
7. Community-Led Total Sanitation, “SHARE Policy Brief on Menstrual Hygiene Management,” 3.
8. I treat market research predictions with caution. This one, from Research and Markets, valued the industry at $23 billion in 2016 and predicts it will grow to $32 billion by 2022. “Feminine Hygiene Products Market: Global Industry Trends & Forecasts to 2022—Research and Markets,” BusinessWire.com, December 7, 2017, www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005496/en/Feminine-Hygiene-Products-Market-Global-Industry-Trends. A competing estimate from Allied Market Research predicted it would grow to $42.7 billion by 2022. “World Feminine Hygiene Products Market Is Expected to Reach $42.7 Billion by 2022,” PRNewswire.com, Allied Market Research, April 13, 2016, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/world-feminine-hygiene-products-market-is-expected-to-reach-427-billion-by-2022-575532151.html.
9. The 1560 Geneva Bible version of Isaiah 30:22 reads, “And ye shall pollute covering of the images of silver, and the riche ornament of thine images of golde, & cast them away as a menstruous cloth, and thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence.” Sara Read, “Thy Righteousness Is But a Menstrual Clout: Sanitary Practices and Prejudice in Early Modern England,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3 (2008): 14.
10. John Bunyan, The Practical Works of John Bunyan: With a Preliminary Essay on His Character and Writings, by the Rev. Alexander Philip, vol. 4 (London: G. King, 1841).
11. Read, “Thy Righteousness Is But a Menstrual Clout,” 6.
12. Patent, 1902, https://patents.google.com/patent/US737258.
13. Vern L. Bullough, “Merchandising the Sanitary Napkin: Lillian Gilbreth’s 1927 Survey,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10, no. 3 (1985): 615.
14. Lehman Brothers Collection, “Kimberly-Clark Corporation,” www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/company.html?company=kimberly_clark_corporation.
15. Read, “‘Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly’: Accounting for Menstruation in Early-Modern England.”
16. “Dr. Aveling’s Vaginal Tampon-Tube,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 956 (1879): 633.
17. Keynes, Blood Transfusion, 26.
18. “Tampon Inventor Certain His Creation Is Safe to Use,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1981.
19. Earle C. Haas,
“Catamenial Device,” Patent 1964911A, patented July 3, 1934, by the United States Patent Office.
20. www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/jmthl/i_design_tampons_ama/.
21. Tampax official history puts the date of the sale at 1936. History of Tampax, available at https://tampax.com/en-us/history-of-tampax. Small Wonder, an official history of Tambrands, Tampax’s parent company, says the deal was concluded on October 16, 1933. Ronald H. Bailey, Small Wonder: How Tambrands Began, Prospered, and Grew, published by Tambrands in 1946, available at the Museum of Menstruation, www.mum.org/smallw.htm.