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I can't even believe this EXISTS

"The women shrug. It is our tradition, they say. It's what our parents and grandparents did, so it's what we do. But away from the group, as she has her picture taken in her miserable chhaupadi shed, Nandakala is more frank. 'Of course I hate it,' she tells the photographer. In the winter it's cold. In the summer it's hot. The restrictions are stifling and unfair. 'Why should the gods punish us? Why should women be punished? But what the hell can we do?'"

~~~

"Rishi Panchami enrages many educated Nepali women. It's not so much the superstition but the legitimacy that the government gives it by providing a holiday that declares women to be dirty and polluting."

~~~

"The problem isn't men like him, or traditional healers. 'We can change them,; says Madan Kumar Majhi, Kabi's cousin and a member of the Chhaupadi Minimization Committee. 'But it's the women who are the barrier.' The mothers and mothers-in-law are the worst. A female community health volunteer tells the room how she pretends to be menstruating just so her mother-in-law starts shaking and trembling and pretending to be sickened by chhaupadi. 'But when I am actually menstruating, I touch her and nothing happens.' She laughs, but still she has to observe the taboos."

~~~

"It is an irony of chhaupadi that talking about periods is easier in Nepal than in many other countries."

~~~

"Sarita came to Dhaka four years ago, and as soon as she started work, she managed her period as everyone else did, by using scraps of cloth from the factory floor."

http://jezebel.com/what-life-is-like-when-getting-your-period-means-you-ar-1542273510