Women’s Body

A Theological Reflection on Menstruation

Women worldwide continue to be stigmatized, excluded, and discriminated against simply because of the lack of understanding of women’s natural body cycle. Unfortunately, menstruation is still considered unspeakable in polite conversation or society in general. This has been made even more prescient in light of the recent shortages and price hikes for tampons and sanitary napkins here in the United States. Even though, as a society is still great hesitancy and silence with the idea of the monthly regulatory cycle of women because the idea of seeing blood is considered dirty, impure, and painful. Why keep a stigma on a natural women bodily function?

Let’s talk about bleeding as sacred, not stigmatization

Our grandmothers, mothers, and daughters share ancestral wisdom on caring for our bodies during a menstrual cycle. Still, we often only talk about it when girls start menstruating. We share recipes for healing infusions in case of pain, how nourishment and food can heal, and preparing infusions to have balance, rest, and massage the lower area in distress. However, in patriarchal societies, the stigma closes the doors to sharing with our fathers, brothers, and later partners and husbands out of this feeling of shame. Instead of being treated positively in educating men about the menstrual cycle, women and this biological process are relegated to see how they solve their menstruation cycle alone.

Women’s body has a natural women’s cycle that allows women to be co-creators of life to the new generations. Women start their menstruation cycle around age 12, some earlier, some later in life, and menstruate for around 37 to 43 years.

The cycle is interrupted for diverse motives; a big one is considered a miracle to conceive the beginning of a new life. Pregnancy is the conception of a new life in development. It means new life for the next generation. The embryo, around week 12, is defined with chromosomes. A baby with XY chromosomes will be considered a male with no ability to reproduce or have a menstrual cycle. A baby with chromosomes XX will complete the developed reproductive system, with the uterus and ovaries with six to seven million eggs that develop around week 20 in the womb. At this moment, the life of a baby girl and the mother relate to the miracle of continued humanity.

Women are more than long hair, breasts, hips, and vagina. Focusing on only the external appearance of women’s bodies reduces the understanding of who women are and our decisive role in society as a co-creator of life. Women face possible bleeding risks due to their physical well-being, depending on the different stages of their lives. We should not be embarrassed about what happens to us each menstrual cycle. Abnormal vaginal bleeding has several causes, including endometrial polyps, fibroids, uterus infection, abortion, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and cervical cancer, among other complications. All these ills are specific to women, and we are often unaware of all possible medical conditions.

Millennials of the ancestral menstrual cycle are reduced to using pills and tampons without considering that the blood cycle carries harmony and balance in a woman’s life. In the middle of this natural process of life, women struggle to be behind and punished. Many women do not have the economy to buy monthly pads or pay medical attention if needed.In silence, many women die because of complications and a lack of understanding about our uterus, ovaries, and women’s functionality reproductive system.

From a theological perspective, as a church, we have also been silent on the bodily function of women. The complications each woman has and how to assume them have been limited primarily to punitive text. We read in Genesis 3: 16, “To the woman he said: —I will increase your pains when you have children, and with pain, you will give birth to them. But your desire will take you to your husband, and he will have authority over you.” The curse states that the pain experienced by the woman is due to original sin. However, Jesus and his healing found in Luke 8:43-48 helps to bring menstruation and bleeding out of the shadows.  We read: “There was a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years; and although she had spent all she had on doctors, no one could cure her. She came up behind Jesus and touched the edge of his clothes, and immediately the bleeding stopped.”

We focus on menstruation pain, pregnancy, and childbirth as a punishment women experience when both can also be read as a lack of social understanding and medical care. The pain of a woman suffering from bleeding for 12 years shows a difficult situation in her uterus and ovaries; her reproductive system needs attention and health and should never be seen as a punishment. It is also a social context of discrimination against women’s bodies.

In this story of Luke, we do not know the woman’s name, age, or other physical conditions of this woman who bled for so many years. Confined to anonymity, we can assume that her blood loss was due to a disease in her uterus or her ovaries, which caused low levels of iron, leading to a lack of iron, anemia, and profound fatigue. Jesus’ miracle removes the social vilification the woman had endured because of her persistent bleeding. This woman shows us the courage to reach out and touch Jesus’ dress to be healed. In this act, Jesus returned her to society with health and courage. The woman comes out of the cover-up and the shame for her physical condition stigmas of complications to a menstruation cycle that needs attention.

Still today, women face various situations due to their condition of being a woman. However, we do not fully understand or embrace our body’s biological function, which is essential to assume a positive and healthy relationship with our body. It is necessary to create a process of support and teach the next generations about what are women’s bodies and women’s cycle are very important to care.

I believe if all women unite and speak openly about our menstruation cycle, we will start channeling a more empowering view of women’s bodies. It is time to speak up and provide resources, education, and accessible medical attention to all women to ensure that menstruation can be a healthy and safe part of our life.

Here are some steps to move forward on reaffirming positivity in women’s cycle:

– Embrace your menstrual cycle with love and pride.
– Reaffirm women’s natural cycle as a women’s power of life.
– Talk about menstruation in your cycles of friends to promote ending the stigma and discrimination.
– Share your healthy practices with other women and girls.
– Donate and support initiatives to provide education about menstruation and care practices.

Police Brutality and the Murder of Adam Toledo

The United States has been traumatized by a long history of police violence and brutality against non-European descendants for decades. We need to remember that the country’s creation is linked to Slave Patrols that exerted control over enslaved Africans and Native Americans for centuries. In the colonial period, a poor white man often did not have the wealth to enslave others but joined into a white supremacist through service on Slave Patrols.  Despite abolishing slavery over 160 years ago, the legacy and impacts are still with us today and have only evolved into other forms of terror against non-white people. 

On March 29, Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old seventh-grader at Gary Elementary School who lived in Chicago’s Little Village, became one of the youngest people killed on the city’s West Side.  A Chicago Police officer killed Adam while he was running away. Adam was not only Latino; but he was a native American descendant who once again is a victim of police brutality. 

The officer repeatedly shouts at Toledo on the video from the body camera, “Police! Stop! Stop right now! Hands! Hands! Show me your hands!”. Adam Toledo – turns around and raises his hands. The white police officer fires his weapon and murders Adam – 20 seconds after exiting his squad car.

Officer Eric Stillman, 34 years old, fired the fatal shot officer, heard on the body camera asking for an ambulance. The video also shows the officer straightening Toledo’s legs, raising his shirt to start searching for a gun. But why looking for a gun, he claims later was in Adam’s hands?

Adam’s killing reflects Native American’s reality and visibilize the truth that in the “Latin community,” the browner skin and native descendants are excluded and are more likely than Euro-Americans to experience police-related shootings and violence. Just last year, Andres Guardado, 18, died after being shot five times in the back by law enforcement in California; Carlos Ingram Lopez, 27, died in police custody in Tucson.

Demonstrations across the US denounce police brutality and demand that the police budgets are diverted to community programs that aid the community. “We don’t need angry officers. We need social workers,” is the request from communities tired of state-sanctioned violence.  Police officers receive military training and equipment to respond to a war situation and not secure and protect the communities in which we live.

The United States has a problem of racism and white superiority complex. Many white church leaders and politicians claim, “This is not who we are;” whenever there is a police shooting or an act of white supremacy. Unfortunately, police brutality is an accurate reflection of who we are as a country.

These heinous murders are the outcome of a long history of policing, controlling, and destroying the bodies and lives of African and Native American descendants. Until we hold all individuals who murder others accountable, we will never be able to change the culture of hate in the country.