UN-DESIRED
A supportive community for women to share and express their lived experiences, musings, memories, triumphs, unfulfilled desires, and silently raging battles. An initiative addressing a need to hold/create a space for women of south-east asian origins to share their stories related to menstruation. A safe space to understand the notion/nature of desire – within the body, of the body, by the body.
You are invited to share a dream with a community of women. A dream to hold a space for our stories and support one another. A growing community connecting and reaching women across different communities, backgrounds, class, cultures, geographical locations, and age.
What are menstrual taboos?
In India, some communities perceive menstruating women as being unclean and impure. This perception is deeply rooted in religion and traditional beliefs. Menstrual Taboo, as the name indicates, is a set of social or religious practices prohibiting or restricting a woman from associating with a particular person, place, or thing during her period.
The taboos take all shapes and forms and vary in their degree of severity in each community/ household in India. It breaks all barriers of caste, socio- economic status and education background and permeates deep within the fabric of the individual and the community.
All women who have grown up in India (or have South East Asian roots), have personally experienced, witnessed or practiced menstrual taboo at some point of time in their lives.
These taboos, and others like them, unleash a plethora of oppressive practices on women/ adolescent girls. Considering that periods are a regular occurrence, in the repetition of these practices, each woman/girl forms habits and rituals.
The rituals, combined with the taboos over time, reinforce concepts of guilt, shame and unworthiness in women’s bodies and within the collective psyche.
In communities that observe menstrual taboos, the women have the practice boiled down to a set of “rules”. You might identify with some of these as your own experiences. (TO BE READ OUT LOUDLY).
I am not allowed to touch anything of religious significance. I am not allowed to enter the prayer room in my house.
I am not allowed to participate in any godly rituals or practices of religious significance.
I am not allowed in the kitchen, or allowed to prepare any food.
I am dislocated and confined to specific areas of their home (or in some cases kept outside of it) and isolated from other family members.
I am expected to sleep on a separate bed on the floor, away from other family members.
I am supposed to keep the linen and bed clothes used during the night away from other family members. No one is supposed to touch these as they are considered to be unclean. This is the case irrespective of whether the clothes are clean or stained by menstrual blood.
I am expected to shower as soon as I wake up in the morning and am not allowed to touch any family member or furniture in the house, or be touched by them. Only after I have cleansed myself, I am allowed to touch or touched by other family members.
I am expected to wash the clothes I had on during the night after bathing/showering in the morning.
I am not allowed to sleep during the day. If I sleep during the day, I have to bathe to cleanse myself.
I am supposed to wash the linen and bed clothes at the end of the 3 days, to clean it for the impurity.
How do I become a part of Un- Desired?
There are two different ways in which you can be a part of this community:
THE PERIOD PROJECT
By participating in the movement research project, you’ll investigate your own journey with menstruation and the stories carried within your body. In different sessions, you’ll be guided to engage in many modes of enquiry - somatic movement, improvisation exercises, journaling, song and sketches.
In the process, you will connect with your body as a place of awareness and healing and share your stories in more ways than one.
ARTIST INITIATIVE
You’re invited to share your artworks inspired by your own story or stories of menstruation of the other women. Your artwork and creative expressions can be in any media or form - visual art, music, dance, literature and poetry. You’re requested to write to me with the details.
With stories being transformed into art, it can live beyond you and touch the lives of other women. With your permission, your artwork will be shared on the blog for other women to experience and witness it. You’ll hold the copyrights to the work, Un-Desired is simply a platform to showcase it.
The intention is to build a community that supports women's voices and to disseminate the stories collected in various forms.
The purpose is to spread awareness and de-mystify concepts surrounding menstruation and women's bodies.
Together as a community we’ll be building a rich repository knowledge of our bodies through everything explored, created and shared in THE PERIOD PROJECT and ARTIST INITIATIVE.
More about The Period Project
This is your opportunity to break the silence around your body and voice out your needs, desires and choices.
The silence perpetuates the practice of menstrual taboos because of gaps in key knowledge of biology and physiology.
The Period Project will help you examine how shame, guilt and self-worth are embedded into our bodies through the practice of menstrual taboos.
It has three modes of engagement:
Interview
Movement Ritual
Sharing
Photo credit: The photographs are from a movement theater piece called Ravel, directed by Sunitha MR, and devised and performed by Anjali Nair and Harshika Amin. Photography by Harshika Amin.