Are you one of those people who swoons at the sight of blood? Or, do you totally dig the gore and blood that we see on TV? I’m sure all the beheadings and the stabbings on Game of Thrones leave you scarred on some level, but my guess is, it isn’t the sight of the blood that puts you off.

We see blood all the time. It’s a regular occurrence, and it is a sight that is not out of the ordinary. It is socially acceptable to show blood shooting out of the human body in every form of media we consume.

But, what we don’t tolerate is the sight of blood when it is associated with the vagina.

Source: instagram.com

Women in India are raised to live a life laced with shame. We’re constantly told to be ashamed of our desires, our bodies, our sexuality. And when it comes to the monthly menstrual cycle, everybody loses their shit.

We inhabit a society where a woman’s period is a taboo. The stigma and stereotypes surrounding menstruation are so deeply ingrained that coming out into the open and talking about it means bringing upon yourself the wrath of misogyny.

Bringing to light this very contradiction around the connotation of blood, Louelle Denor uploaded a picture of herself holding a menstrual cup in her blood stained hands.

Source: medium.com

In her post on Medium , Denor wrote ” Hypothetically, it could be stage blood and you wouldn’t know the difference. So here we have the following case: there is a picture of bloody fingers and a weird disk. Is this in and of itself offensive? I’m sure you’d agree that it’s not. However, when coupled with the suggestion that it came from my vagina, it transforms the essence of the image into something obscene.”

Her post on Instagram triggered a lot of hate, some of the comments going to the extremes of threatening her life, and suggesting that she be showered with semen. (WTF?)

Source: medium.com

This isn’t the first instance of period shaming that we’ve witnessed on social media.

Source: diyphotography.net

Despite there being no signs of nudity, Instagram previously removed a picture of fully clothed Rupi Kaur , on the grounds that it breached community guidelines solely because the image showed some stained pjs and sheets.

“I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be okay with a small leak,” Kaur wrote on Tumblr in response to this ban.

There is however a brighter side to all this censorship and rampant period shaming. With college campus campaigns trying to get rid of period taboos, and the likes of Kiran Gandhi throwing period stigma to the winds, what needs to be acknowledged is the fact that dialogue surrounding menstruation has gotten rolling.

Source: pinterest

At the risk of being hailed as ‘Feminazis’, what we girls need to do is stop ‘Whisper’-ing and come out into the open with our experiences and ensure that the stigma surrounding the menses are done away with.

Because “I bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. My womb is home to the divine. A source of life for our species.”