Friday, December 8th 2017
Season 2 Episode 17: Where the tampon goes
Excerpt: Join me in a conversation with Maysa Haque, masters student at the University of Regina, as she shares her research into the wide variability of experience Canadian Muslim women have about their periods.
Summary: Last week, Dr. Lara Freidenfelds shared her extensive research on modern American experiences of the period. One of the major conclusions of her work was that the American experience of menstruation is strongly shaped by historical context and a move towards scientific explanations of the body. This meant there was, in some ways, a lot less variation than you might expect between women of the same age in terms of their lived experiences.
Interestingly enough, I was recently contacted by Maysa Haque, a Canadian graduate student at the University of Regina’s Department of Religious Studies. She recently completed a Bachelors of Arts & Science at McMaster University, where she studied young Canadian Muslim women’s perceptions and experiences of menstruation. Haque’s dataset was smaller, but also narrower in focus, than Dr. Freidenfelds, and her focus on Muslim women ended up revealing a great deal of variation in their experiences of their periods.
I thought this would be a nice follow up to help us think about variation within and between populations, and the ways in which religion, acculturation, and country of origin might also play a role in how we learn about and live with our periods. Many thanks to Maysa Haque for her engaging interview!
Thanks to Ellebox for sponsoring season 2 of PERIOD. Use coupon code “periodpodcast” or this link to get 50% off your order.
Do you want to be a patron, or is there someone on your shopping list who would want to be? Check out my Patreon page for ways to support this podcast. Help me make beautiful things!
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I can’t wait to hear what you think! Thanks for listening!
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