A Hindu girl experiencing her first period will spend the first four nights of bleeding in a stable away form the rest of the family. This is because Hindu’s do not look favourably on the menstrual cycle and believe that a woman who is on her period is ‘polluted and potentially polluting.’ During the menstrual cycle Hindu females must not enter the house, fetch water or cook any food. These rules also apply to even the young adolescent female who has just started puberty.
On the final day of bleeding the adolescent must go into a stream, wash her body, hair, clothes, rug and the bowl she kept separate for eating with during her period. The floor of the house is then plastered with a mixture of mud and cow dung. The adolescent drinks a few drops of cow urine and the room she stayed in during her period is also sprinkled with a few drops of cow urine. The ‘pollution’ is then ended-until next month.
These are very drastic changes that the young female has to adjust to and some Hindu girls find it hard to ever get used to this new way of life.
To Westerners this seems a very strong and even harsh attitude to adopt towards menstruation. This is a completely alien way of life for us as most women try their hardest to continue their day-to-day life during their periods and would be appalled to be so singled out just because of one of the body’s most natural processes.
However, for a male Hindu experiencing puberty, it is a much easier ride. For a male the appearance of puberty is seen as a natural progression from a boy into a young man of caste society. This is marked and publicly acknowledged by and initiation rite called ‘Bartaman.’
The only difference a male Hindu would experience after hitting puberty in terms of his responsibilities and the way he is looked upon in the eyes of his society is that he now takes full responsibility for his actions, i.e. not eating pork, not touching a woman when she is on her period etc. For the male Hindu reaching puberty enhances his ritual purity as well as his personal and social worth, whereas the recognition of the female Hindu reaching puberty degrades her completely, possibly making reaching puberty and starting her period something she dreads.
The attitude to periods in the Western world is completely different and they are seen as a natural progression into womanhood, and are something to not worry about and embrace openly. Again, the Hindu attitude is vastly different form our own as puberty is not seen as a bad thing at all, only the expected development from childhood to adulthood.
For Jews, puberty is seen as a cause for great celebration and is something to welcome and be publicly recognised by all in society.
When a Jewish boy reaches the age of thirteen (which, in the eyes of all Jews, is the age at which puberty commences) he is given a ‘Bar Mitzvah’ which is a Jewish rite of passage to mark the fact that the boy has entered the adult Jewish community. From then on the boy has become a man and must then abide by the commandments taken from the ‘Talmud,’ which is the ancient Jewish rule book.
For girls, a parallel ceremony also takes place to mark the transfer to adulthood. This is called ‘Bat Mitzvah’ (‘Bat’ meaning daughter). However this has not always been the case as girls never used to get the same public recognition of the merge into womanhood until a few decades ago.
Once again this is vastly different from a ‘non-religious’ Western background attitude to puberty, as most folk feel embarrassed about the puberty issue and certainly wouldn’t have a special celebration to publicly acknowledge it.
Muslims have a lot of rules regarding puberty; for both the processes in which puberty entails and also regarding what the appearance of puberty signifies.
For and foremost, as with many religions when an adolescent reaches puberty he/she then becomes fully responsible for his/her won actions, and with Muslims, this is no exception.
The parents of the adolescent male youth must make certain that their child know, recognises and fully understands that the first time he ejaculates he becomes responsible for his own actions. He must then perform the acts of worship in the same way adult Muslims do.
The same applies to females reaching puberty, apart from it is the first time they experience the menstrual cycle that they become a fully fledged woman in the eyes of Allah.
For both males and females experiencing puberty, the act of ‘Ghusl’ must take place. Ghusl means to wash.
With puberty, along come several new rules for the adolescents. One is, that when a male or female have a dream of sexual nature, he/she does not have to perform Ghusl unless he/she sees or feels wetness in his/her clothes and sheets due to semen ejaculation in the case of a boy or vaginal discharge in the case of a girl.
Even if the adolescent did not remember having a dream of this nature if he or she feels or sees wetness Ghusl must take place.
Ghusl must also take place if the male ejaculates at any one time, be it voluntarily or involuntarily. The same applies for the female, if she had an orgasm or when any vaginal discharge occurs.
During sexual intercourse as soon as penetration occurs the male and female must both perform Ghusl whether there was any form of semen, or discharge, or not.
Muslims believe that when a female has finished her period or when the after-birth bleeding (after having a child) has finished Ghusl should take place immediately.
During menstruation or during the after-birth bleeding a Muslim female is not allowed to pray, fast, enter a mosque or have sexual intercourse.
These are all very strict rules which must not be broken and again, to Westerners, seem very alien as words such as ‘ejaculation,’ ‘vaginal discharge’ and ‘orgasm’ are not words you hear being thrown around much in our society and seem to be very much behind closed doors.
As a conclusion most religions seem to be very open and favourable of the progression from childhood to adulthood and see it as a cause for celebration, but also the time for a lot of changes. They see it as a recognition of the change from boy to man and girl to woman. Topics seem to be discussed openly within families and communities with no stiffness or embarrassment as it is a natural part of their society and culture.
Here, it just seems to be a silent process not talked about much and avoided if possible. Perhaps that is how we have come to have the label ‘stiff upper lip.’ I think we could learn a lot from these religions and things such as growing up, adolescence and the menstrual cycle should be things that everyone are capable of talking about, not something to be pussy-footed around as it seems to be so much these days.
