A few months ago, Kenyan Senator Gloria Orwoba was asked to leave a parliament meeting because of her period stain on her white pantsuit. The senator had actually noticed it before she went inside the meeting and thought about going back to change but decided she would use this incident to make a statement. “Since I am always advocating against period shame, I thought I should go ahead and walk the talk.”
A lot of her colleagues became uncomfortable asking her to leave and change her clothes. One colleague even accused her of faking her accident.
I had heard about this incident on BBC when it first happened a few months ago, but I wanted to take the time here to write my own opinions about it. In my opinion, regardless of whether she was faking her period or not, the fact that people reacted with such disdain and fear to seeing a period stain shows the stigma that surrounds this topic in Kenya.
This is extremely heartbreaking. It’s really sad how much period shaming is done in some countries by both male and females alike. For a process that about 50% of the world goes through at some point in their life, to be taught that she should be ashamed for it is wrong. It shows a lot about the way that society has portrayed this natural process of menstruation. So many girls in these developing countries have to miss school because of their periods and eventually drop out because of it. Additionally, in a lot of these countries, girls will use up sanitary pads that they obtain with difficulty, because of the anxiety they have from accidentally bleeding through.
These are the kinds of incidents that Orwoba is trying to prevent, going forward, by doing her stunt. If I were her, I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had the courage to pull that big of a stunt in front of my coworkers, but perhaps that is because I live in a country where period shaming doesn’t really exist. However, for her she’s trying to break the stigma around this topic and teach people that period shaming should not be acceptable, which I think was very brave.
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