Renaissance writers insisted it destroyed grass, tarnished mirrors and dissolved asphalt. The sight of it, Australian aborigines believe, can turn a man's hair gray. Until 1967, campers at Glacier National Park were warned that its odor can incite bears to attack.
It is menstrual blood, and it is the source and symbol of a universal taboo. In most cultures, menstruating women are shunned as dangerous or vaguely contaminated. Throughout history, they have been isolated in menstrual huts, forced through purification rituals and sometimes beaten if they ventured into male company during their periods. Exactly why is a mystery. Some think the taboo arose from a general repugnance of having sex with a bloodily discharging woman. Others see it as caused by primitive man's sense of awe—and fear—at the sight of blood that does not clot and signifies neither illness nor death. Freud thought man made the taboo because bleeding women awakened his dread of castration. Karl Menninger saw the taboo as male anxiety over heightened female emotionality and sexuality during periods.
Psychic Slap. In her new book Menstruation and Menopause (Knopf; $10), Feminist Paula Weideger goes a step beyond Menninger. To her the taboo represents man's historic fear and envy of woman and a desire to keep her from gaining equal status. Argues Weideger, an M.A. in psychology and a staff associate of New York City's Women's Health Forum: "The taboo fills certain psychic and economic needs of men. It is alive, it is flourishing."
Weideger's book is the latest sign that menstruation is a fast-rising issue among feminists, who contend that the taboo teaches women self-hatred and worthlessness. Today, some Jewish women pass on the taboo with a hard slap to the face of a daughter at her first menstruation. Most other mothers, says Weideger, deliver the slap in psychic form, teaching daughters to feel shame about a natural process (the periodic shedding, brought on by a drop in hormonal production, of the lining of the womb when the ovum has not been fertilized).
What of the depression, cramps and pains accompanying menstruation? The traditional explanation is that they are caused by hormonal changes. In 1970 Senator Hubert H. Humphrey's personal physician, Dr. Edgar Herman, created a flap by announcing that "raging hormonal influences" made women unfit for high-pressure jobs. The most impressive work on the effects of menstruation—by Endocrinologist Dr. Katharina Dalton of London's University College Hospital—seems to lend plausibility to the Herman thesis. In studies over a 20-year period, Dr. Dalton found that the grades of female pupils showed a 15% drop when exams fell during days of "premenstrual tension." She also reported that about half of female job absenteeism, suicides, police arrests, traffic accidents and admissions to mental hospitals occurred in the four days before and four days after the onset of menstruation. Her conclusion: the physical changes of menstruation can affect judgment and slow reaction time.