By Pratyusha V V
Trigger warning: Please note that this article has descriptions of shame and discriminatory practices surrounding menstruation. Please exercise discretion in engaging with the content, if triggering.
Did you wake up this morning with push notifications from your news app? ‘Newspaper and coffee’ kind of person? Or are twitter trends your thing? Evening news on the TV? Or does the radio ramble on with news while you drive to work?
The news is everywhere. But not everything is in the news. Somewhere amid the updates on Shah Rukh Khan’s house and Virat Kohli’s tweets, a lot is lost in the clutter.
So many questions, such few answers.
Menstruation is an issue that sits at the confluence of sanitation, gender, health and human rights, and the importance of these themes cannot be overstated. Now that we see, the media needs to report on menstruation much more and much better, it begs the question: How?
This campaign #PeriodsAndPatrakaars is an attempt to enable media persons with a toolkit of reporting guidelines to report on menstruation responsibly, holistically and inclusively.
If you read or write about menstruation in the news, here’s a handy checklist for what a ‘good report’ looks like:
1. Keep Menstruators At The Centre Of The Story
Several articles/videos hypothesize (cis)men getting periods or wearing period products and make it a source of humour. This perpetuates the discourse that men’s needs are more valid and it is only through the juxtaposition of menstruators’ needs over men will the latter get attention. Give the menstruator the platform.
2. Use Inclusive, Positive Language
For example,
- Using phrases like ‘lives with/have’ rather than ‘suffer from’ when talking about disorders;
- Using menstruators/persons who menstruate rather than ‘women’ to include trans men, non-binary and gender non-conforming menstruators. The example below demonstrates what not to do:
- Include lived experiences of marginalised communities like trans persons, Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi persons, persons with disability, persons in refugee/disaster situations etc. Menstruation is not a cis, able-bodied, urban phenomenon.
3. Avoid Sensational Headlines
Here, the headline doesn’t serve the purpose of summarizing the piece and its contents, rather only acts as clickbait adding no contextual value to clarify that the piece is about menstruation or that it is the ‘karma’ of cooking on the period that’s being talked about.
4. Cite Accurate Data With Source
Although statistics from this supposed Nielsen report are widely used across publications, the strange truth is that the report itself is nowhere to be found, neither on their own website nor on any other public domain. Backtrack the data being cited and hyperlink it in the article.
5. Have Conversations About Policy, Sustainable Products And Disorders
When it comes to menstruation, most coverage is limited to disposable sanitary pads and cultural practices, without adding layering to the goings-on in policy surrounding menstrual rights, and building knowledge about disorders, medicine and sustainable product options. We need to change that!
6. Make The Piece Analytical
The BBC article, on women being asked to strip at an educational institute in India, is a loud call alerting systemic faults. Unfortunately, the focus is always on such singular incidences, rather than questioning the larger structural negligence. There are very few stories that use a trend to point out the larger problem.
This was only a glimpse! The points in this checklist go way beyond this article! We’re putting out the final toolkit of reporting guidelines out soon! Share your thoughts on how the media can do better through the surveys here: https://linktr.ee/boondhcups
Pledge your support to the campaign for media houses to adopt the toolkit by taking the poll!
The goal of the media citations here is only to drive a point home, problematize the content and not defame the publisher.