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that held the girls’ secrets: it was a place where they declared their attraction and love for boys, their jealousy and hatred of rivals and where they declared their boyfriends off-limits to other girls. The toilets were thus also a dynamic space for the contestation of heterosexuality.
This may also have been a reason for some girls' reluctance to divulge to their teachers the harassment they endured–despite the great humiliation they suffered when the boys transgressed these gendered spaces.
The girls’ vulnerability and the emotional intensity they displayed recounting their experiences underscores how extremely damaging in nature these violations were. It
illustrates how incredibly complex it is for the girls to navigate and negotiate their sexuality in the political sphere of patriarchy, where hegemonic traits such as daring, risk taking and misogyny, are all upheld as legitimate markers of hegemonic masculinity. It shows the robustness and resilience of patriarchy; girls may be agents, but their agency is “lite”, as Bhana (2017) put it: thinned out, limited and without weight. Bhana argues that lite agency points to girls’ restrictions, their inability to comprehensively act, choose and contest within a broader environment. It does not infer an absence of power or ability to act, merely a
reduction of action (Bhana, 2017). Bhana’s thoughts on agency resonate with my own work. I found that the girls’ voices were stymied by their fear of further humiliation and violence.
In the next sections of this chapter, I turn the discussion to focus on menstrual narratives, and the confusion, distress and shame girls feel as they recount experiences in which the
repudiation of the feminine was key to male functioning and power within a problematic heterosexual masculinity.
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teach girls how to manage menstruation at home and at school (Sommer, 2009). In Tanzania, Sommer’s (2009) study which explored girls experiences of menstruation found girls lacked knowledge relating to the development of their bodies, menstrual and sexual health especially in relation to HIV and AIDS. She concluded that interventions should focus on appropriate education that supported knowledge relating to bodily changes, menstruation and
reproductive health, including HIV and AIDS. Mason et al.’s (2013) study conducted in Kenya with girls aged 14-16 years, found that girls were ashamed during menstruation and therefore sought to hide their bodies to such an extent that they do not go to school.
According to Mason et al, the shame that girls experience is related to cultural taboos which influence a largely negative dominant discourse regarding menstruation. Jewitt and Ryley (2014), in their study in Kenya concluded that harassment was key to girls fear and shame during their menstruation. These authors posit that both fear and shame contributed to the gendered inequalities in that pollution beliefs assigned to menstruation are steeped in power and power relations in society. In my study I too found that the girls experienced
marginalisation and discrimination at school through menstrual blood being treated as a pollutant.
Kuhle: When you come in the morning, you will be confused, everyone will say
“Hey you are on periods! You are on periods!” and then another one comes, “Hey you are on periods” and then another one and another one and then you get
confused how did they all get to know that I am on periods or something?
P.J.: So how do you think they all get to know?
Mandisa: It’s the boys, the boys, the ones that are in your class.
JJ: Some when you are walking they just put their hands in your bag and then they come out with your private stuff like pads, towels and everything that you need.
Lettie: They open your bags and take your pads.
P.J.: Your pads?
Lettie: Yes and stick it on the board and write your name on it. Maybe it’s
Amanda’s and they will write “Amanda’s pad!”
Paleesa: In the morning, mam, in the morning they take the pad and stick it on the walls. Because the class is not opened, they stick it in the walls and they tear it off
and they pass it to each other saying “it’s this ones pad, it’s this ones pad”.
P.J.: So when they stick the pad on the board, what does the rest of the class do?
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Kuhle: They start laughing at you.
JJ: And if they see a pad in your bag then they are going to mock you for the
whole week, that you got a pad, that you are in periods.
Lettie: Even for a month that you got periods. In Zulu they call it umenza.
Paleesa: They tell everyone. Even every day.
The girls’ disclosures regarding the mocking they endured when they had their periods suggest that the boys use menses as another way of consolidating dominant modes of masculinity where femininity is slandered and mocked, consequently entrenching the divide between the genders. The girls spoke eloquently about how the boys took much pleasure in embarrassing them when they had their periods, enjoying humiliating them. Confusion, distress and shame emerged as they recounted their experiences, describing a problematic heterosexual masculinity where misogyny is key to male functioning and power.
Loanda spoke about how boys would take their sanitary pads and wrap them around their wrists as a bandage, or even write their names on the pads so as to reveal which girls are menstruating:
“And some of them take it and put it over here [she indicates her wrist] and say
‘It’s a bandage, it’s a bandage!
The girls described how boys would stain pads with tomato sauce to mimic a soiled pad and even soil their dresses with tomato sauce. With stained dresses, they faced public ridicule and humiliation as menstrual blood is used to construct as them as ‘other’ and ‘polluted’. The girls’ narratives were emotionally intense, making it painfully clear that they were mortified and felt violated. Their accounts also drew attention to how other boys and girls colluded in their harassment and victimisation by laughing at their embarrassment:
Paleesa: They are laughing, even the girls themselves, mam [Paleesa sounds as if she cannot believe/understand other girls joining in the mockery].
Loanda: And, mam, some girls get their periods, mam, and then the boys come and touch them.
Lettie: And if one of them have tomato [tomato sauce] then they spread it on it and stick it on the board. If they have tomato [tomato sauce] they take the tomato
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and rub in on the pad and say that you are mensing and they say that it is better to be a boy than a girl and they will start telling everybody, everyone in class.
Paleesa: And sometimes they take [potato] fries [sold at the school tuck shop]. If it’s finished, and there’s tomato left, they will open it and the maybe just rub it on you and they will stand there and start laughing and say “Ohhhhhh! She is on periods!” while they put tomato sauce on you and you cannot do nothing, you cannot just go and wash it.
P.J.: Do they actually stick the pads on the board? [I am sure they can hear the disbelief and shock in my voice].
All: Yes!
Loanda: If the class is still locked, they put it in front of the door.
JJ: For everyone to see [JJ speaks softly, her embarrassment evident].
The girls’ disclosures provided a picture of how gender power inequalities manifested, as biological changes occurred, to reduce the girls’ agency and force them to manage menstruation, and the shaming it involved, with little support from teachers, for whom conversations about menses are often culturally taboo and off limits. It is important to remember, too, that the children at Westhills Primary came from environments where their parents had limited schooling and where notions of ukuhlonipha prevented teacher-parent discussion about sexual and reproductive health.
Casting menstruation as feminine and contaminating permits the exercise of male power and is thus masculinity confirming. Indeed, such misogynistic discourses, through their mockery and humiliation of the girls, is key to maintaining a dominant masculinity and subordinate femininity. The enactment of masculinity based on the invasion of girls’ privacy, the public announcements: “Hey, you on periods!”; “Amanda’s pad!” stuck on the walls in and out of the classroom, has consequences as the girls are publicly shamed and humiliated while the boys’ masculinity is simultaneously secured. Much of the research in sub-Saharan Africa points to structural, physical and financial constraints at the onset of menarche as girls lack access to water, soap, pads, sanitation and reproductive health information (Jewitt & Ryley, 2014; Sommer, 2009; Sommer & Sahin, 2013; Sommer, 2015). The experience of
menstruation at school was uncomfortable also because the girls were anxious about menstrual odour. According to Lettie, when it was discovered that a girl was menstruating, the teasing worsened, and the girl would be told that she was smelling:
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Lettie: And if something is smelling, they will blame the girls and say that you
are smelling.
JJ: They say fish!
Loanda: They will say that your vagina smells!
Several girls: They call our private part fish!
Lettie: They call our vagina, fish!
Thiele: They say, “You are smelling of fish today!”
In as far as possible, the girls tried to hide their menses and visible evidence of menstruation such as their pads. This infringement on their sexuality oppressed them and silenced them, as their narratives show. Menstruation became a significant stress in their schooling and,
echoing Nightingale's (2011: 153) finding, it became “important in the production of social inequalities”. Such negativity towards their menstruation impacted on their assessment of themselves. Their most intimate and private moments were used to humiliate and belittle them. Indeed, Lettie, Loanda and JJ’s’embarrassent was so great as they spoke of their
experiences that the humiliation was instantiated and internalised by all the girls in the group.
I also witnessed how the boys teased them on the day representatives from ‘Always’ [a sanitary pad manufacturing company] came to address the girls in the Intermediate and Senior Phase:
Field notes: Date: 23 May 2012 Time: 09h30 Place: Room 17 (Grade seven classroom)
I was serving relief in the grade sevens where only the boys were present. The girls were in the school hall, listening to a talk by two representatives from the Department of Health about menstruation management. The boys were curious and wanted to know what was happening in the hall and why they were left out. I explained that it was a talk for girls only and that soon they too will be attending a boy’s only talk. Here I was referring to an initiative undertaken by the
Department of Health, known as Medical Male Circumcision [MMC], which offered safe circumcision to the boys [with parental consent]. I proceeded to talk about healthy living, respect for one’s body, manners, respect and behaviour with the boys. At around10h30, the girls returned to their classrooms. They entered the class noisily but when they saw me there, they quietened and proceeded to their places. The boys began to ask them questions about what happened in the hall. I
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heard someone say ‘none of your business!’ A few more girls joined in, raising their voices, and I saw some of the boys laughing. The boys guessed that the talk was about ‘menstruation’ and I heard the word ‘periods’, accompanied by
laughter, uttered more than once. It was almost break time [10h45]. I decided then that I would spend my break on the ground today. I wanted to observe this lot of boys and girls.
Field notes: Date: 23 May 2012 Time: 10h45 Place: The school ground I observed the girls for a while, and I noticed that they had formed their groups and had wandered to the edge of the ground and buildings. I imagined that they were talking about the presentation. I approached one group [Mandisa, Thiele, Kuhle , Mpho and St’bile] and asked about the presentation. They were excited, saying that they were each given a small pack of Aways Ultra. Thiele showed me a pack that was in her pocket [I noticed then that all the girls in this group had the pads in their pockets]. The pads were their secret, just like the talk that they had attended. They did not dare leave it in their bags since, they explained, the boys will find it. I thought how secrets, silence and shame all intertwined.
Dunne (2007) found in their research with learners in grade 7-9 in Botswana and Ghana, that offensive personal comments and name-calling generated low self-esteem, and that the burden of responsibility was placed on girls to avoid being teased. The girls in my study were consumed by their physical appearance. They had boyfriends, they wanted to be seen as sexy and beautiful. However, they also had difficulty in asserting and maintaining their sexuality because their menstruation was seen as an imposition on their enjoyment of their sexuality.
They refrained from telling their teachers about the harassment they endured in order to avoid further embarrassment, and instead tried to manage their menstruation with as much dignity as they could muster. But to be told that one is smelling creates huge anxiety. This highlights the complicated relationship between body image, self-objectification and shame that Theresa Jackson (2018) writes about in her study conducted in New England with girls, 11-17 years old.
In my study, the girls’ experiences connected to reinforce the prevalence of gender and sexual violence within the school. The fear of the boys is ever-present as the girls’
testimonies show that the possibility of being harassed is constant: in the corridors, in the
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classroom, in the toilets and even outside the school. These findings resonate with HRW (2001) findings that documented and highlighted how the predatory behaviour of boys undermined girls’ sense of safety, causing them to experience immense psychological stress within South African schools.