Artifact 7 Sex and Gender

Reflection

For all the talk of acceptance and female empowerment, menstruation and menarche still remain taboo subjects in a country which prides itself in openness and acceptance. This is unacceptable. The push for increasing emphasis on female health and welfare should in turn result in a sizable commitment towards empowering women through positive adoption of menarche as a significant and celebratory step towards ‘womanhood’.

Artifact

The first of a woman’s menstrual cycle, commonly referred to as menarche, is held to be the first indication of a woman’s fertility both medically and culturally. While the age at which menarche occurs differs due to a myriad of biological, genetic, and environmental factors, menarche is one of the most important events in a woman’s life but women face a range of responses from delight and excitement to disgust, fear, and shame, all dependent upon their culture and its accompanying traditions.

Although America prides itself in freedoms and opportunity, menarche still remains a taboo subject in many aspects, where young girls tend to learn about menstruation and menarche in hushed whispers with a female family member (read: Mom) behind locked bathroom doors, while male family members are kept in relative darkness. Yet this quasi-taboo take on menarche is not endemic to America or even North America itself. In fact, Native Americans have had and continue to have a much more progressive and empowering take on menarche than modern day Americans do.

Compared to modern America, the Navajo tribe celebrates menarche with a ceremony called Kinaalda. The Navajo girls who undergo Kinaalda are referred to as ‘Changing Women’ and are viewed as one of the most important Navajo deities, seen to hold a position of high respect in the village hierarchy. The Navajo tradition dictates that the ‘Changing Women’ participate in a run towards the sun, a ritual which dictates that if a tribal woman undergoing menarche outruns the others she will be imbued with spiritual powers far beyond that of her peers.

Not unique to the Navajo tribe, other Native American groups have similar traditions in which women who are undergoing menarche reach similar positions of respect and hierarchical positions. The Nootka tribe in Canada’s northern territories place a woman undergoing menarche in the middle of a lake for the reason that when she does return to
the shore she has proven herself as a dedicated member of their tribe. The Apache tribe, while not as intense, celebrate menarche with an almost week-long festival in the same spiritual mentality.

While the traditional North American approach is one of celebration and warm acceptance, the modern United States take on such a biologically and culturally important event is one of secrecy and suppression. Although contemporary American society has embraced new forms of sexual education within schools, the traditional approach is far from open and comforting. Women, such as my mother, have been brought up in familial setting where they learned about their bodies, not from doctors or sexual education professionals, but from family members. While not necessarily ill-intentioned, it is a far cry from the traditional North American approach to the subject. Although significant progress has been made towards the positive education of menarche in Western societies, there is still room for serious improvements. What is needed is a conjoined effort towards erasing the stigma behind menstruation guided by a return to the traditions upon which the American continent was built on in the beginning.