“Around the globe, managing menstruation can be a debilitating, even deadly, problem – fueled by a combination of poverty, misinformation, stigma and superstition. One in ten girls in Africa misses school for the duration of her period each month. In Bangladesh, infections caused from filthy, contaminated rags are rampant. Menstrual hygiene has been linked to high rates of cervical cancer in India.”
A friend sent me the link to the article containing that quote, and asks, “Does the Bible like women?” Good question. Unquestionably, menstruating women have been labeled “unclean” from the earliest times, and many highly religious women today are still kept in deep ignorance about how their bodies work. A quote from this article about a therapist who works with Orthodox Jewish women reads:
Marcus, who is 53, is stringently observant. At her synagogue, at the northern tip of the Bronx, the men sit separate from the women, partitioned by a wooden screen. She keeps her legs concealed past the knees, her arms past the elbows. Until menopause, she obeyed the laws that surround menstruation. During the time of her period and for seven days thereafter — for 12 or more days each month, until she was permitted to visit a mikvah and purge herself in the special waters there — she slept apart from her husband and didn’t touch him in any way at any hour. In her tainted state, she didn’t so much as pass a dish of food directly to him, no matter if she took care that their hands made no contact. To touch the same platter at the same moment was forbidden.
Leviticus 15:19-24 reads:
When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. Everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. Whoever touches anything upon which she sits shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening; whether it is the bed or anything upon which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening. If any man lies with her, and her impurity falls on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.
Seems pretty prejudicial for a normal, human process that also indicates that a woman is fertile and able to participate in the reproduction of the human race.
But it’s in the Bible .It’s part of the problematic world of biblical interpretation for today. I admit it just makes me want to scream when I hear or read something like, “If you’d only just believe what the Bible says, you would . . . [pick one: have slaves, put women in subjection, deny any man with a physical impairment from being a religious leader, or whatever your particular hobbyhorse happens to be].”
It is clear that Jesus did not honor the Levitical restrictions against touching women. Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 8:43-48 all relate the story of Jesus healing an unclean woman who touched him–and who thereby made him ritually unclean. Instead of condemning her, he welcomes her and calls her “daughter,” bringing her into his household.
Yeah, God likes women. God chose a woman to be the life-giver to the Son, and gave women the privilege of being the last ones to see Jesus at his death and the first to witness the resurrection. It is through the body and blood of women that the world goes on. Our value is beyond worth.
So, in honor of that body–and that blood, I want to hold a Tampon Drive. Our Daily Bread, a ministry out of Denton that provides a hot meal for the homeless Monday-Friday each week, will happily distribute feminine hygiene products to any who need them. I’m sure there are places all over the US that will do the same.
Find one in your local community and shower them with these needed products. Anyone in the Denton area, where I live, is welcome to drop them off at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, which houses the Our Daily Bread ministry, M-F from 9 am to 1 pm, or you may drop them off at my place and I will deliver them personally (email me for address and directions, please).
I personally have decided that from now on, every time I go to a big box store, I will purchase one large box of either tampons or menstrual pads and donate them. This is my way of honoring the reproductive capacities of women. Without such capacities, the world would disappear in a generation.
Nonetheless, female biology does cause significant inconvenience particularly for the poor and the outcast. This one little thing can make their lives so much easier.
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