Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

MENSTRUATION: AN ETHNOPHYSIOLOGICAL DEFENSE AGAINST PATHOGENS E. J. SOBO* Dr. Margie Profet's bold claim that menstruation defends the female body from sperm-borne pathogens [1] may be extraordinary in the context of modern evolutionary biology, but it is not unique. Assertions like Profet's are made every day by traditional ruralJamaicans, whose model of menstruation I describe below. Profet acknowledges that various traditional peoples view menstruation as the body's way of ridding itself of pollution [2-4]; however, Profet errs when she asserts that "Such explanations are rooted, of course, primarily in superstition rather than science and fail to specify the source and the form of the pollution" [1, p. 371]. Profet's misconception about traditional ethnophysiological notions is understandable: much of the ethnographic literature on menstruation focuses on menstrual taboos rather than on menstrual processes; moreover, most ethnographic studies have failed to move beyond an unquestioning acceptance of the supposedly inherent pollution of women [5]. As I show elsewhere [6], menstrual taboos and traditional beliefs about the power of menstrual blood are grounded in the culturally constructed role that fluxing menstrual fluids play in kinship and in health. Many aspects of Profet's model are anticipated in Jamaican understandings of the blood's health-related roles. These understandings are quite specific, and Jamaicans support them with empirical observations as well as through experimentation, as when a person uses the noxious content of menstrual blood for poison or to effect sorcery and then observes the results [6, 7]. The author is grateful to F. G. Bailey for his guidance in the research for this paper. William Wedenoja, Mark Nichter, and Yossela Moyle also deserve thanks. Research was funded by grants from the University of California at San Diego and from Friends of the International Center, UCSD. *Sociology and Anthropology, Box 30001, Department 3BV, New Mexico State University , Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003.© The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1-5982/94/3801-0892$0 1 .00 36 E. J- Sobo ¦ Menstruation Human Biology, famaican Style Traditionally, Jamaicans see the body as a permeable system that must stay equalized; i.e., thermally regulated and clean [6]. All that gets taken into the body (e.g., food, drink, semen) must be used or expelled as waste because unincorporated excess begins to swell and decay, turning toxic. Extra liquids become urine, and solid food turns to feces. Some toxins enter the blood, which washes through the body. People drink purgative bush or herb teas to clean toxins from their blood, organs, and flesh. Many teas are referred to generically as washout, for they wash toxins out of the body, mechanically (as Profet suggests menstruation does). Washout should be taken frequently: once a month, just like menstruation. The model for health is gynocentric: periodic cleansing is recommended for all. In addition to red blood, bodies have blood that is white. Semen and female sexual fluids, often called discharge, are both white blood, and as blood these fluids carry toxins out of the body when they flow. In taking in semen, women take in men's waste along with what Jamaicans call their germs or sperm (note the double meaning of "germs" in this context ). Like the waste that is carried in seminal fluid, sperm or germs constitute a significant health risk. Rather than acting as "vehicles of transport" [1, p. 341] for bacteria and viruses, as sperm do in Profet's model, in theJamaican model sperm are themselves potential pathogens that women must guard against. Once ejaculated, if not quicklyjoined with female eggs, sperm quickly decomposes. Like decaying matter of any sort lodged in the body, rotting sperm can cause sickness. Women dirtied by the non-reproductive presence of semen or discharge must expel it (a man's own semen causes problems only when stored in his body for too long; men use this knowledge to justify frequent sexual behavior). Discharged semen defiles the receptor. The waste it contains is toxic, fouling, and all the more noxious because it was already rejected by another body. But Jamaicans assume that sex itself necessitates the deposit of one's substance into another. (Tradition has it that even lesbians couple as "man" and...