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It's Only Blood: Shattering the Taboo of Menstruation
Across the world, 2 billion people experience menstruation, yet menstruation is seen as a mark of shame. We are told not to discuss it in public, that tampons and sanitary pads should be hidden away, the blood rendered invisible. In many parts of the world, poverty, culture and religion collide causing the taboo around menstruation to have grave consequences. Younger people who menstruate are deterred from going to school, adults from work, infections are left untreated. The shame is universal and the silence a global rule.
In It's Only Blood Anna Dahlqvist tells the shocking but always moving stories of why and how people from Sweden to Bangladesh, from the United States to Uganda, are fighting back against the shame.
In It's Only Blood Anna Dahlqvist tells the shocking but always moving stories of why and how people from Sweden to Bangladesh, from the United States to Uganda, are fighting back against the shame.
258 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2018
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1096 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
September 18, 2018
I started bleeding when I was 12 years old. When it happened, I thought I was dying and ran to my dad, who quietly called my mother to handle it. My mum proceeded to tell me some cock and bull story about lack of purity of periods and told me to start observing ritual untouchability during periods. Everything was to be washed and cleaned three days later. Hair, bedsheets, dishes you were served in, even the curtains if you happened to touch them.
As if girls have nothing better to do! You can imagine there were a lot of lies and soon enough I began having periods just once in three months or so. I'd have one when mum began questioning "hasn't it been a while since ..." and that week, I would have it at a convenient time when I did want to be left alone. I still remember my first thoughts while cleaning myself up for the first time - "I will find the scientific explanation for this and stop this nonsense." Turns out people are not bothered with science so much as with upholding religion and sexism. Twenty five years later, nothing has really changed, except that I moved out.
I remember the school education programmes which distributed free pads, BEFORE I started to menstruate. So how is it that I didn't realise this was coming? I wasn't especially dumb, so could it be that it wasn't explicitly stated and described without an emotional connect? I remember sex education too and if I hadn't by then known all about it, I wouldn't have understood a single thing there either. Those programmes need a more emotional connect and need to be conducted in small gatherings.
Anyway, that's my story, but I always had plenty of money - enough to ensure a steady supply of sanitary aids anyway. I've also used toilet paper as a university student in a bid to save money, though. In It's Only Blood Dahlqvist explores the consequences of menstruation for girls who are too poor. The study is conducted in a few countries around the world - Sweden, India, Uganda, Bangladesh, the US, and a few others.
The subjects revolve around poverty, shame, inability to have a life while menstruating, taboos, and pain. The crux of this book is how poor young girls deal with menstruating when they have no access to sanitary napkins or even clean running water and toilets. There is a section that deals with how menstrual pain is dismissed by almost everyone, including doctors. I too have suffered from pain for years until I started taking pills, and it's ridiculous why so many women are subject to something so preventable.
I think the book became repetitive at some point, and I felt it didn't do enough to explore the taboos around menstruation in different cultures, despite its subtext. At some point, we were reading and re-reading the same things again and again. Despite these few problems, more such books are required, if only to bring this oft-forgotten and much-taboo topic out into the open.
The strength of the book, however, was its focus on poverty and lack of access to basic amenities for those who mensturate. In India, the tax on menstruation was scrapped this year after a series of protests. But it remains an unaffordable product for many around the world even today. In many countries, menstrual hygiene products are classified as 'luxury', depicting just how much the world is seen and run through an intense male gaze.
As if girls have nothing better to do! You can imagine there were a lot of lies and soon enough I began having periods just once in three months or so. I'd have one when mum began questioning "hasn't it been a while since ..." and that week, I would have it at a convenient time when I did want to be left alone. I still remember my first thoughts while cleaning myself up for the first time - "I will find the scientific explanation for this and stop this nonsense." Turns out people are not bothered with science so much as with upholding religion and sexism. Twenty five years later, nothing has really changed, except that I moved out.
I remember the school education programmes which distributed free pads, BEFORE I started to menstruate. So how is it that I didn't realise this was coming? I wasn't especially dumb, so could it be that it wasn't explicitly stated and described without an emotional connect? I remember sex education too and if I hadn't by then known all about it, I wouldn't have understood a single thing there either. Those programmes need a more emotional connect and need to be conducted in small gatherings.
Anyway, that's my story, but I always had plenty of money - enough to ensure a steady supply of sanitary aids anyway. I've also used toilet paper as a university student in a bid to save money, though. In It's Only Blood Dahlqvist explores the consequences of menstruation for girls who are too poor. The study is conducted in a few countries around the world - Sweden, India, Uganda, Bangladesh, the US, and a few others.
The subjects revolve around poverty, shame, inability to have a life while menstruating, taboos, and pain. The crux of this book is how poor young girls deal with menstruating when they have no access to sanitary napkins or even clean running water and toilets. There is a section that deals with how menstrual pain is dismissed by almost everyone, including doctors. I too have suffered from pain for years until I started taking pills, and it's ridiculous why so many women are subject to something so preventable.
I think the book became repetitive at some point, and I felt it didn't do enough to explore the taboos around menstruation in different cultures, despite its subtext. At some point, we were reading and re-reading the same things again and again. Despite these few problems, more such books are required, if only to bring this oft-forgotten and much-taboo topic out into the open.
The strength of the book, however, was its focus on poverty and lack of access to basic amenities for those who mensturate. In India, the tax on menstruation was scrapped this year after a series of protests. But it remains an unaffordable product for many around the world even today. In many countries, menstrual hygiene products are classified as 'luxury', depicting just how much the world is seen and run through an intense male gaze.
September 7, 2018
Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.
It’s Only Blood by Anna Dahlqvist is a book that tackles the taboo veil around menstruation. When nearly half the human population of this world has experienced or is experiencing menstruation, it’s a shock that there still remains so much stigma around this topic. While not a comprehensive study of the shame by any means, It’s Only Blood offers a very thorough list of reasons of why we must readjust our priorities to fully understand the repercussions of menstrual shame.
Dahlqvist focuses largely on countries such as Uganda, India, Nepal, etc. for the correlations that exist between poverty and menstruation. Whilst Western regions are lacking in their own regards with issues of recycling, affordable alternatives, pain management, etc., nations with limited access to wealth suffer worse fates when it comes to period cycles. She converses directly with menstruators as well as local NGOs to gather a full picture as to why there is little attention and care given to menstruators in poor countries. The conclusions made are fairly predictable with the reasons ranging from corrupt governments to a basic lack of forethought, all of which results in menstruators being left uneducated, underdeveloped, and poorer because they cannot engage on the same level of participation as non-menstruators.
In an successful experiment brought to reality, Dahlqvist examines a factory in Nepal that invested in their largely-female workers by offering period pads on a lowered price in-house. Unsurprisingly, the number of absences reduced greatly, with more women at work producing more goods that allowed the company to operate more efficiently than before. The company had been forced to acknowledge that many women took days off because they couldn’t always afford enough pads to work throughout the day and those experienced workers could not be easily replaced when business contracts had to be fulfilled on time. Clearly lacking in this experiment is a basic understanding and care for humanity. It’s still a start but we need to do more.
The menstrual stigma is not caused merely by lack of access or affordability either. A lot of the book focuses on the cultural shame in numerous countries around the world, especially in the Global South. Fallouts from traditional shame have led to unwanted pregnancies, lack of hygiene, poor health, and more. Dahlqvist states that “ideas about infertility linked to visible menstrual protection exist in many places” and “invisible mensuration protection is [seen as] a virtue” that must be preserved above individual health (83-84). A particularly disturbing example of such ideals in practice is the existence of ‘menstrual huts’ shared in villages across India and Nepal. The huts are placed for women to be isolated in each time they begin their period cycle and “are often small, lack windows, and can be freezing cold in the winter and too hot in the summer” (87). The use of such huts has resulted in “multiple testimonies about people who have died from snakebites after being forced to sleep outside where there was not enough space in the menstrual hut” and it has also led them to be “subjected to sexual abuse when they slept alone in menstrual huts” (89). This is merely one consequence of menstrual shame.
Shifting gears to the West, Dahlqvist also briefly lays out the failures of UN in recognizing access to menstrual products as a human right and the consequences of such inaction. “Good menstrual health education in schools, adequate care in case of menstrual problems, and the demand for secret are universal challenges,” argues Dahlqvist (182). Human rights researchers and activists have been consistently pushing for the UN and first-world nations to acknowledge and consider the value of human dignity when accounting for the sufferings of menstruators. She points out, “the word menstruation occurs very rarely in UN contexts, like in the world in which the UN operates…In the UN’s lowest standard of the treatment of inmates in prisons, the opportunity to manage facial hair is explicitly mentioned, but not menstrual management. The silence at the highest human rights level is deafening” (176).
It’s Only Blood is an important read for the preservation of human rights. Menstruators deserve to be treated with basic decency and the right to live with a naturally occurring bodily process without shame or fear of humiliation. Reading this book will not teach its reader everything about menstruation, but it’s a start.
The silence is a disaster for those of us who menstruate. It makes us powerless. As long as we do not talk about menstruation, the problems and failings are not seen and we cannot demand change. Mute, we continue to wonder if it has to be like this. Should it bleed this much? Should it hurt this much? Should we tolerate being ridiculed and harassed because we bleed? That menstrual blood which is the precondition for the celebrated pregnancies and babies.
The revolution has to happen everywhere (202).
It’s Only Blood by Anna Dahlqvist is a book that tackles the taboo veil around menstruation. When nearly half the human population of this world has experienced or is experiencing menstruation, it’s a shock that there still remains so much stigma around this topic. While not a comprehensive study of the shame by any means, It’s Only Blood offers a very thorough list of reasons of why we must readjust our priorities to fully understand the repercussions of menstrual shame.
Dahlqvist focuses largely on countries such as Uganda, India, Nepal, etc. for the correlations that exist between poverty and menstruation. Whilst Western regions are lacking in their own regards with issues of recycling, affordable alternatives, pain management, etc., nations with limited access to wealth suffer worse fates when it comes to period cycles. She converses directly with menstruators as well as local NGOs to gather a full picture as to why there is little attention and care given to menstruators in poor countries. The conclusions made are fairly predictable with the reasons ranging from corrupt governments to a basic lack of forethought, all of which results in menstruators being left uneducated, underdeveloped, and poorer because they cannot engage on the same level of participation as non-menstruators.
In an successful experiment brought to reality, Dahlqvist examines a factory in Nepal that invested in their largely-female workers by offering period pads on a lowered price in-house. Unsurprisingly, the number of absences reduced greatly, with more women at work producing more goods that allowed the company to operate more efficiently than before. The company had been forced to acknowledge that many women took days off because they couldn’t always afford enough pads to work throughout the day and those experienced workers could not be easily replaced when business contracts had to be fulfilled on time. Clearly lacking in this experiment is a basic understanding and care for humanity. It’s still a start but we need to do more.
The menstrual stigma is not caused merely by lack of access or affordability either. A lot of the book focuses on the cultural shame in numerous countries around the world, especially in the Global South. Fallouts from traditional shame have led to unwanted pregnancies, lack of hygiene, poor health, and more. Dahlqvist states that “ideas about infertility linked to visible menstrual protection exist in many places” and “invisible mensuration protection is [seen as] a virtue” that must be preserved above individual health (83-84). A particularly disturbing example of such ideals in practice is the existence of ‘menstrual huts’ shared in villages across India and Nepal. The huts are placed for women to be isolated in each time they begin their period cycle and “are often small, lack windows, and can be freezing cold in the winter and too hot in the summer” (87). The use of such huts has resulted in “multiple testimonies about people who have died from snakebites after being forced to sleep outside where there was not enough space in the menstrual hut” and it has also led them to be “subjected to sexual abuse when they slept alone in menstrual huts” (89). This is merely one consequence of menstrual shame.
Shifting gears to the West, Dahlqvist also briefly lays out the failures of UN in recognizing access to menstrual products as a human right and the consequences of such inaction. “Good menstrual health education in schools, adequate care in case of menstrual problems, and the demand for secret are universal challenges,” argues Dahlqvist (182). Human rights researchers and activists have been consistently pushing for the UN and first-world nations to acknowledge and consider the value of human dignity when accounting for the sufferings of menstruators. She points out, “the word menstruation occurs very rarely in UN contexts, like in the world in which the UN operates…In the UN’s lowest standard of the treatment of inmates in prisons, the opportunity to manage facial hair is explicitly mentioned, but not menstrual management. The silence at the highest human rights level is deafening” (176).
It’s Only Blood is an important read for the preservation of human rights. Menstruators deserve to be treated with basic decency and the right to live with a naturally occurring bodily process without shame or fear of humiliation. Reading this book will not teach its reader everything about menstruation, but it’s a start.
September 24, 2022
good introduction to the topic but nothing special / new presented. i would have liked clearer citation of sources as the sources were a wee bit muddled. an index would have been a nice touch too
December 27, 2018
Not a bunch of new information if you’re someone who is already relatively well read on this topic but presented in a poignant way with some really important points about the discourse surrounding menstruation. A high quality read.
September 25, 2018
A treasure of valuable information and sources that show that the movement towards equality has to include open discussions about menstruation.
August 18, 2019
3.5/5
The book is a great gateway for whomever want to start questioning the taboo of menstruation. At times it was a bit repetitive as a lot of the woman had similar stories, which is important to understand the struggles, the shame and the lack of education and information linked to the menstrual cycle, as it show you a pattern. The book was really instructive and offer a lot of reference to look into.
The book is a great gateway for whomever want to start questioning the taboo of menstruation. At times it was a bit repetitive as a lot of the woman had similar stories, which is important to understand the struggles, the shame and the lack of education and information linked to the menstrual cycle, as it show you a pattern. The book was really instructive and offer a lot of reference to look into.
February 28, 2019
This is a really great book about period poverty in different parts of the world. It read more like a thesis at times, and was a bit scattered but still had many great points, stories and eye opening information.
August 27, 2019
It's Only Blood was a letdown. I have been looking for books about menstruation that tout the things that Anna Dahlqvist's title does exactly: shattering the taboo of talking about menstruation at all. So I was hoping that this book would explain those taboos and where they come from, through tradition, society or culture. Dahlqvist barely scratched the surface of those things and isntead spend most of the time reporting on cursory period management and policy in underdeveloped countries like Uganda and India. Those sorts of topics—stigma, hygiene, government aid—are all hugely important to women's rights and women's oppression, especially when it's rooted around menstruation, an unavoidable and natural biological process. It's very important that we talk about these things. But somehow I felt like Dahlqvist's commentary was very basic and not interesting at all, like it didn't provide any real suggestions or solutions or even insight to the problems that women all around the world face. It just wasn't interesting or compelling.
November 28, 2018
A fascinating and informative look at global menstrual taboos which also discusses how poverty intersects with menstrual health - and it’s trans-inclusive.
April 16, 2019
I'm grateful for menstrual activists like Anna Dahlqvist who highlight how apparent "women's issues" like menstruation actually affect all of society. This book focuses mainly on the injustice of societies, globally, treating menstruation (and, therefore, menstruators) with contempt and menstruation as a dirty, almost unnatural or dark thing (even though, as Dahlqvist points out, we hypocritically celebrate fertility and pregnancy). I love that she emphasises how huge poverty and shame are in preventing adequate menstrual management (and so overall health) as well as talking about different types of menstrual products (including much positive talk of renewable menstrual products). However I feel she could have gone more into how disability can affect menstruators as well. (I recently read on WUKA reusable menstrual panties' website a review from a mum saying how much easier the menstrual panties make her autistic daughter's cycle now.) I also understand why she focuses so much on less developed countries' activities (and perhaps those countries are simply the most active and engaged on the issue because, no matter your situation, poverty will make it worse), but I would have liked to see even more information on marginalised menstruators in more developed countries too as I think this could help people in those nations to realise this is not just an issue that happens far away from them (though problems shouldn't have to happen close to home for people to empathise...).
Her many conversations with menstrual activists introduced me to some inspiring women I'd never heard about and their various perspectives. I was also glad that she touched on how the menstrual movement needs to resist capitalist opportunists who would essentially continue the atmosphere of shame through their focus on keeping periods discreet and artificially "fresh", etc. rather than focusing on the menstruator's comfort and dignity by being realistic and open about menstruation.
A minor grievance: I understand that Dahlqvist wanted to really drive her main points home, but it did feel a little monotonous at some points – like I could probably skip some passages and miss nothing of import because it was just a different way to say what she'd said previously.. Still, all in all, I am glad I picked this one up and I have a renewed sense of duty and pride in talking about menstruation and in thinking about what are the best, most responsible forms of menstrual management for me.
Her many conversations with menstrual activists introduced me to some inspiring women I'd never heard about and their various perspectives. I was also glad that she touched on how the menstrual movement needs to resist capitalist opportunists who would essentially continue the atmosphere of shame through their focus on keeping periods discreet and artificially "fresh", etc. rather than focusing on the menstruator's comfort and dignity by being realistic and open about menstruation.
A minor grievance: I understand that Dahlqvist wanted to really drive her main points home, but it did feel a little monotonous at some points – like I could probably skip some passages and miss nothing of import because it was just a different way to say what she'd said previously.. Still, all in all, I am glad I picked this one up and I have a renewed sense of duty and pride in talking about menstruation and in thinking about what are the best, most responsible forms of menstrual management for me.
February 17, 2019
A well-researched book on an important topic. Dahlqvist has conducted extensive interviews all over the world about the effect of menstruation on people's lives, and how they manage it. She also focuses on the groups that are campaigning for and providing increased education about menstruation and access to menstrual products.
This book was at its most powerful, for me, when pointing out the gaping holes in the approaches of governments and the UN to addressing this fundamental aspect of everyday life, and the incredible barriers poverty can cause for those who menstruate, which is so many flipping people! It is a blind spot in provision and research and policy. "Our bodies collide with a society that does not acknowledge the way they function and therefore also that they exist."
And yet, in spite of my interest in the topic, I found this a strangely boring read. It must be something about the writing (as translated from Swedish). Nevertheless, worth the time.
This book was at its most powerful, for me, when pointing out the gaping holes in the approaches of governments and the UN to addressing this fundamental aspect of everyday life, and the incredible barriers poverty can cause for those who menstruate, which is so many flipping people! It is a blind spot in provision and research and policy. "Our bodies collide with a society that does not acknowledge the way they function and therefore also that they exist."
And yet, in spite of my interest in the topic, I found this a strangely boring read. It must be something about the writing (as translated from Swedish). Nevertheless, worth the time.
May 10, 2019
En fantastisk (!) reportagebok om hur skam och okunskap kring mens hänger ihop med och möjliggör förtryck, särskilt när det kombineras med fattigdom. Det gör ont i kroppen av att läsa hur dålig tillgång till mensskydd leder till ökad risk för en rad olika allvarliga gynekologiska besvär såsom smärta, infektioner, bakteriell vaginos, livmoderhalscancer. Och samtidigt riskerar aktioner som fokuserar på just gratis mensskydd att bli temporära punktinsatser som inte gör upp med den skam och smutskänsla som, på ett kanske ännu djupare plan än bristen på mensskydd, påverkar kvinnors liv världen över.
May 17, 2019
Extremely informative book. It was broken up into easy to read chapters that concentrated around one area of menstruation and the struggles faced by those with menstrual cycles. I found it to be challenging to read the first couple of chapters because it seemed a bit dry, but really got into the book after that and didn't want to put it down. Beware: this book may leave you feeling like there is no good solution to tackling the taboos surrounding menstruation; however, I do not believe that to be the sole purpose of the book. The book invokes compassion and the desire to shatter the menstrual stigma. I found it inspiring and I feel so much more informed after finishing this book.
June 13, 2019
"By ignoring biology, we are discriminating against half the world's population. (...) The message is simply: "handle it on your own, as best you can. It's nothing the world wants to hear about." If we don't provide the inormation and support needed, we're preventing the person who mensturates from being herself. From there, the other rights grow, like the right to education, work, and health. How are we supposed to access those rights if we ignore the daily and monthly needs of the human body?" (194)
February 17, 2019
An interesting, really accessible read that highlights the difficulties of people all over the world who menstruate. From schoolchildren in Africa, to homeless women in Sweden - 800 million people a day menstruate, and yet the education and understanding surrounding such a normal function is largely shadowed in mystery and shame, or not given at all. Dahlqvist looks at those across the world that have the most difficult experiences - I found it to be heartbreaking and eye opening at once.
September 5, 2019
Who are the “communists in the lust house”? Where is Blood Mountain? What prompted the accusation that “women only draw comics about menstruation”? Find out in Swedish author Anna Dahlqvist’s It’s Only Blood, and take your part in shattering the taboos around this sensitive topic, which affects about 800 million people daily worldwide.
January 27, 2024
"La revolución ha de producirse en todas partes. El silencio y la vergüenza están dotados de una dimensión añadida cuando se combinan con la pobreza. Pero para todas nosotras el silencio significa que se nos negarán nuestros derechos. Nuestros cuerpos colisionan con una sociedad que no reconoce cómo funcionan y tampoco, por lo tanto, que existen".
April 13, 2024
I'm not sure if something was lost in the translation into English, but this book straddles the line between storytelling and relaying information and, in my opinion, does neither exceptionally well. Great as an introduction to menstrual justice but doesn't bring much new to the table if it's something you're already familiar with
December 28, 2018
Rating: 2.5-3 ish
It was interesting and very important but I found myself zoning out a lot and just reading the words without taking them in. I also found it to be quite repetetive sometimes. But still, a very important read!
It was interesting and very important but I found myself zoning out a lot and just reading the words without taking them in. I also found it to be quite repetetive sometimes. But still, a very important read!
January 29, 2020
Visgi kokia palaima prekybos centruose matyti daugelį higieninių priemonių, reikalingų menesinėms, kai tuo tarpu perskaičius šią knygą supranti, kad netgi paprasti higieniniai paketai kai kuriose šalyse yra tabu, o kalbos apie pirmąsias menesines ir tai, kas vyksta su mergaičių kūnais, - neįmanomas dalykas.
July 26, 2020
Otroligt bra och informerande bok som ger en djupgående granskning av menstabu och andra mensrelaterade besvär. Dessutom en översikt av problematiken världen över. Inspirerar och ger medvetenhet. Kunde inte ha bett om mer.
October 9, 2022
Ett otroligt viktigt och intressant reportage om den hemska tabun kring mens runt om i hela världen och hur katastrofala konsekvenserna blir när tabun kombinerad med fattigdom. En riktig ögonöppnare! Läs den!!
July 6, 2023
This book is more like a science article in science magazine or on science database. I believe it is very important research on menstruation and availability of hygiene products for menstruation, but it's not very interesting to read, unless you want to study or better understand this topic.
January 2, 2018
En väldigt viktig bok men tyvärr tyckte jag den var rätt tråkig och repetitiv. Jättebra för de som inte har funderat så mycket på det här med mens förut tror jag.
February 20, 2019
Such an eye opening read, many people should read this! Changed my view on menstruation, I definitely want to be much more open about it going forward.
February 28, 2019
It's an amazing book which made me start questioning norms that this society lives in. Sometimes shocking, sometimes eye opening, sometimes tear evoking. Recommend.
January 12, 2020
Tremendous amount of in information on a subject that is so undermined in our society, globally. Power to the woman!
May 5, 2020
Very informative about how things are handled or not handled in very poor countries. Very eye opening.
August 21, 2022
Read as part of research; no formal review
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