Young Woman Shamed for Having a Period at Catholic High School
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09
Friendly Atheist spoke on a young woman who was shamed. She is 22-years-old now. Ashlie Juarbe is the young woman. When she attended a Catholic high school, one male teacher publicly shamed her for having a period.
This guilt-trip was reported in New School Free Press, as follows:
“Ashlie, I said you’re up.” He was at the foot of my desk, the overhead light glinted off his bald head. I feared my jeans were stained.
“I’m not feeling well, Mr. Cooper. I’d like to sit this one out,” I said. I started to sweat again. There was no way Mr. Cooper would let me go up there if he understood. I hoped God would give him a sign.
“Ashlie…”
“But Mr. Cooper, I have…” I began, but his eyes were daring me to sit a second longer. I looked at my classmates, still the words “my period” wouldn’t tumble out. For a normal phenomenon that has over 5,000 slang terms, it was never talked about in public without hushed tones and uncomfortable faces. Going to an all-girls religious high school was worse. Talking about anything below your waist was blasphemy. If it wasn’t virtuous, it wasn’t taught.
Juarbe felt humiliated. Mr. Cooper did permit going to the bathroom. However, she only went after the guilt, shame, and public humiliation over the period.
Juarbe stated, “Mr. Cooper made me ashamed of menstruating. There was no easy way of becoming a woman, especially when the institution that promised to educate you failed to mention the word “vagina,” because it wasn’t respectable for the students. At an all-girls high school, it should have been easier to teach us about health, about our bodies. But it wasn’t.”
This began a journey for Juarbe into transitioning into an atheism. She began to realize the problems for women with menstruation are worldwide. Women are seen as objects of family honor, of shame, and in need of feeling dirty for natural bodily functions — a period.
Girls and women need sanitary pads. If not, and of course for other reasons as well, the girls and women around the world can lose access to education. They cannot stay in school.
There is, happily, a Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28th. Juarbe’s, and other girls’ and women’s, stories are important to bear in mind in order to raise awareness about the problems face by girls and women over regular bodily functions part and parcel of adolescent development and adult life.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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