Challenging Stigma, Shame and the Social Control of the Menstruating Body: Women’s Resistance in Contemporary India

The year 2015 saw a series of mobilisations, primarily by young students in India, which sought to destigmatise and visibilise the menstruating body through online activism and university-based campaigns in Delhi, Kolkata and Kochi. These campaigns foregrounded sexual violence and harassment through the lens of menstruation, pointing towards the institutional apathy towards sexual violence, yet disgust towards menstrual blood. By defying menstrual taboos and the prescribed menstrual etiquettes in home, community and institutional spaces and dispelling the shame, silence and stigma that define the menstrual experience, the campaigns disrupted the notion of the ‘normal’ body as ‘one that does not bleed from the vagina’. The article situates the destigmatising menstruation campaigns vis-à-vis other gender justice campaigns and protests that have taken place over the last decade in India, highlighting the cross-cutting similarities of themes as well as the distinctive dimensions of the campaigns that are the subject of this article.