How Shaan Taseer's reaction to period-shaming exposes male privilege in Pakistan
When it comes to talking about menstruation, women get creative — code names are de rigueur.
The period is a “friend visiting”, “Aunt Flo”, “my time of the month” and any other mixture of bizarre titles. Yet, beneath all these code names is the underlying language of shame and disgust; of attempts to disguise a natural bodily function most women experience every month.
Shame is fundamental to the 'family-friendly' terms for menstruation.
It is the admission that you are impure and your body cannot be permitted into certain spaces. It is a silent suffering; an acceptance that this is one experience we are expected to keep locked inside the harem, lest we offend the other half of the population.
Also read: On paper bags, purity and periods
So when a group of students in Lahore decided to tackle this shame head on, they were accused of elitism, of manufacturing oppression by — you guessed it — concerned, liberal-leaning men.
A group of women (and men) installed menstrual pads on the Beaconhouse National University campus with labels like “This blood is not dirty”, “It’s something so natural” and “Why should I be embarrassed?”
The idea behind the protest was to make people aware of how women are often shamed for going through a natural, biological process.
They were roundly berated for the public display, accused of spreading dirty images and told "it really was not a big deal".
Also read: Dear Pakistani men, here's how you talk about periods
Most recently, the students' protest served as the unlikely catalyst for a war of words between Shaan Taseer and journalist Madiha Tahir. The same Taseer who has recently been in the public eye for speaking out against Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz.