Keeping secrets - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 22: MoneySexPower
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by David Linton
BUT CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED over the millennia from Rachel's menstrual defiance of Laban to the days of Doreen Kartinyeri's claims on behalf of secret women's business on Hindmarsh Island. While details about one's period are still not considered appropriate for polite dinner conversation and some men are squeamish about the subject, preferring to maintain their ignorance and even avoid sexual relations during ‘that time of the month', the period has become an ‘open secret' - or perhaps it has simply moved from the category of ‘secret' to that of ‘private'.
An example of a modern-day Rachel whose behaviour is in sharp contrast to the sense of menstrual privacy that prevailed in traditional societies is found in a story told by Georgia Blain about Germaine Greer. In 1972, Greer was touring Australia to promote one of her books and during an interview noticed a menstrual stain on her skirt, which she proudly pointed out to everyone present. In fact, she repeated the act later in the day during another interview, this time with a male she wished to discomfort.
All of this brings us back to Hindmarsh, but with a modern, mediated turn that is full of irony. Here we find two sets of women laying claim to the Biblical Rachel's heritage: one, known as the protesters, claiming that the secret (menstrual?) business must be respected and developers kept at bay; the other group, the dissidents, claiming that there is no secret (menstrual?) business to protect. Though one group, the protesters, lost their cause (the bridge has been built), both managed to draw considerable attention to the issue, inadvertently inviting the larger public to find the whole matter of ‘women's secrets' risible.
Remarkably, the exact contents of the two notorious envelopes labelled ‘Secret Women's Business' have been kept secret. Even Margaret Simons, the author of what is likely the definitive book on the subject, The Meeting of the Waters (Hachette Livre, 2003), says she has not read the documents herself. But it seems clear from the anthropological literature and the description of the tribal customs Simons reports that the claims had to do with reproductive ritual and surely menstruation. Simons retells a story from the anthropological records about mythic characters named Waiyungari and Nepeli that is steeped in menstrual symbolism and the taboos surrounding the period. The story is set in the lower Murray River basin and is the kind of traditional tale that the Heritage Act might have been expected to protect from divulgence.
Although men are the probable originators of the menstrual taboos due to the frightening incomprehensibility of the phenomenon - how could a human bleed for days and not die? - they have traditionally tended to mock the period, and the women experiencing it, by claiming that it causes emotional instability or irrationality, thereby diminishing women: ‘She must be on the rag!' Marketing a biscuit labelled ‘Secret Women's Business', naming a recreational boat ‘Secret Men's Business' or otherwise trivialising the period are ways of ventilating anxiety while making light of the whole mystery.
ANOTHER MANIFESTATION OF MALE REACTION to secret women's business came in the form of a clever, award-winning TV ad for tampons that appeared on Australian television in 2001, the same year that the Hindmarsh Island Bridge finally opened. It seems like yet another sideways dig at women's (secret) menstrual business as it emerged in the context of Hindmarsh.
The thirty-second ad was developed by the Young & Rubicam Agency in Melbourne and is called ‘Sympathy Pains'. The opening shot is a wide view of a city construction site on what looks like a traffic island. The sounds of traffic and a pneumatic drill are heard. The second shot closes in on a young, stringy-haired man operating the drill who stops and mutters, ‘I don't think I can do this much longer.' The foreman, a big-bellied older fellow with a walrus moustache, growls, ‘What the hell is it now!?'
The young worker sheepishly says, ‘I've got cramps. I've got my period.'
Suddenly concerned, the foreman replies, ‘Oh, OK. Alright, better relax then. Sit down for a moment. Big breaths ... You know, I always use a hot water bottle.'
A workmate calls from the side, ‘Want a herbal tea, Pat?'
‘No, no, no, I'm alright.'
The boss continues, ‘Put it across the tummy. Just relaxes, takes the pain out. It's brilliant. It's really good.'
Another worker chimes in, ‘My Dad did the same thing.'
‘It's great ...' continues the boss.
The young man then mutters that's he's OK and resumes his work with the drill but the boss assures him, ‘If it gets too much again, we'll put someone else on it.'
The scene fades to a black screen with the title, ‘IF ONLY', followed by a brief shot of the product, a box of Cottons tampons.
This entertaining ad efficiently captures details associated with women's tribal lore: conversations and practices known to and shared orally by women across ages and classes but about which men are commonly kept in the dark - that is, ‘secret women's business'. The bonding the men express, the sharing of lore (hot water bottles, ‘My Dad did the same thing', herbal tea), the caring for one another, are all common expressions of women's experience that are usually kept within the ‘tribe'. The fact that the director of the piece and the two producers were women (Vikki Blanche, Helene Nicole and Leanne Tonkes) subverts potential charges that the ad is hostile to women.
Coincidental or not, the airing of this ad and the opening of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge represented two turning points. One had to do with nearly a decade's struggle over how to better define Aboriginal rights within a European-based notion of government as well as different views of secrecy within a modern media ecology. The second turning point is the gradual shift in the menstrual ecology, the ways men and women - both individually and collectively - conduct their menstrual encounters. Here too, notions of secrecy - whether to expose or withhold information thought to belong exclusively to one tribe or a subset of a tribe - are evolving as the media we create and employ have their way with us.' ♦