“In human-guided society, a rule of death has been established with shame, which prevents half of the population from living normally what lives in their daily lives.” In August 2015 Kiran Gandhi M.I.A. They're words written by the battery in the group. In the London Marathon, Gandhi had appeared running the body in his pants. She denounced that in a society dominated by male visions, women should act as if it were not the menstrual cycle, without being able to manifest what it means to be a cyclic body.

A similar act was carried out by the Pakistani poet Rupi Kaur. With blobs of blood he put the photos on the net and the social network Instagram censored them, indicating that the rule remains a taboo. “I’m not going to apologize to feed the pride of a misogynist society that wants to see me in underwear but feels uncomfortable with a small spot,” the poet said.

Erika Irusta is one of the few pedagogues of the month in the world, creator of the projects El Camino Rubi and Soy 1Soy 4. He knew the blood-free stroke thanks to friends of the environmental movement, but he says that the issue has many hooks; more than a claim like Gandhi and Kaurren, especially the knowledge of the body. It is a little-known option for the days of menstruation: to cultivate body consciousness and pelvic floor and have the ability to control the blood spill of the month.

But how?

“It’s the feeling of contractions, you feel you’re going to put weight on your bladder and urinate, but you know it’s not urine,” Irusta says. If we weren't even the cervix are controllable sphincters, but through pelvic floor cultivation exercises it is possible to feel the need to shed blood. In his opinion, “not as much as urine, but in a few minutes it is possible to contain the blood”.

The question comes in itself: How does most women don't feel it? Because his pelvis is pure and unknown and everything that has to do with genitals and flows has been taboo in our culture. Although many gynecologists look at the issue with mistrust, Irusta said he has heard more and more experts say that neuromuscular connections with the pelvis can be controlled.

The menstrual cycle is not limited to four or five days of expulsion. Irusta stresses in his work that it is a permanent issue, even if the cycle is totally unknown to most people. He says that we do not know the physical, mental and spiritual changes that occur in the body in its four phases – the menstrual phase, pre-ovulation, ovulation and menstrual premura – because they have been culturally read “with hysteria and other similar patriarchal readings”. He argues that hormonal changes cannot be understood as problems, but must be made aware of one's own language from the body experience.

“In a nutshell, we have no idea what it is to be monthly and, in particular, what it is to be monthly in this society,” says Irusta. In this sense, if the body that has menstruation is of one gender or another, there are differences: “For example, in the pre-menstruation phase, when you can be enraged or sensitive to the environment, the woman squeezes even more because the anger does not come into her role, while many transsexual men with menstruation do not get narrowed equally, because the desire to send everything to the fret is more bearable in the male gender.”

Mystifications and privileges

In different cultures of the world, women who for the first time have a period are taught to identify the need to bleed to seek a suitable place to spill them. Also in the West, Irusta has investigated that the free discharge of blood to industrialization was a common practice in the country. The higher classes had the means to absorb blood, but most said they shed it in the bathroom or where they could.

However, the pedagogue warns of the lack of documentation and the mytification made of other cultures: “What for us can be a modern or liberating issue in other countries, such as India or many African countries, is amazing, because they don’t have any ‘protection method’ and because menstruation tobacco weighs a thousand kilos more than in our society.”

Irusta believes that blood-free effusion needs the practicality and possibility of “getting dirty” not to worry too much in our current society. In a given environment and class, it is considered that the practice can be possible, although it can become a privileged account: “I am autonomous and I work at home, I have a bathroom next to me and I have the opportunity to be more attentive to my body during the menstrual phase, but I can understand that it can be crazy for someone who works in an office full of men.”

Therefore, it gives importance to the knowledge that provide “alternative” methods such as the glass and fabric pads, that rather than blood: “The pearl is in the process of knowledge, then you’re able to control your pelvic floor or you want to wear the pants full of blood, it’s a personal decision.”

Opportunities that extend (auto)auto knowledge

Irusta has recalled that the blood of menstruation has an endless potential for lovers of experimentation; there are those who use it for art, fertilizers or cosmetics for plants. “Many may be disgusted, but it’s also good for that, for example, the cup, because it faces the prejudices and myths that have put us in our heads.”

The market for compresses and tampons today shows a trend towards remoteness rather than connection with the body. The design of the well-known tampax brand has evolved from simple finger penetration to sophisticated and without personal contact with an applicator. You can also place in the same line the absorbent bragos that have already begun to be marketed and that consider menstruation uncomfortable and that you have to hide.

Irusta was asked in another interview: Is it not now a blood-free stroke a question of hypocrisy? He says that someone can think of taking a picture of it in the blood and publishing it on the web under the name “look, I’m making free blood or freebleeding.” He says that puts us in a position, because if you don't do it now it seems you're not free. Not applicable: “The important thing is not to press, that everyone is curious about their body and that it is being tested. In the end, you are no longer free to hit two glasses of blood, each can deal with this from different fronts.”

Gemma Tomàs, Manresa Cup Councillor

“If I have a daughter, I’d like to work her pelvic floor”

Last spring the CUP in Manresa (Catalonia) presented a motion saying that "young women have a better life in sexual health". Many media outlets had rushed to propose alternative institutes to collect menstruation, including the idea of training young people with a blood-free spill.

How did you experience the media scandal?

The motion was not adopted. Only one initiative was approved asking the Catalan Parliament to do something, like nothing. We are glad to have raised the debate on menstruation education, but it was sad to see how many taboos there are still.

How did the proposal come about?

We say that in the institutes the situation has not changed, that we only talk about the possibilities marketed by companies, that instructions for use are given almost more than sexual workshops. So she was born. She contacted the educator Diana Pinzón and explained other ways we did not know: marine sponges, cloth pads and free spillage. We were stunned.

How have you worked on the subject?

For me, free discharge was a discovery. Many associate it with the freedom not to use anything and quietly dirty it, but it's more than that. Pinzón explained to us that he works with 9-year-old or first-time children, who do pelvic muscle exercises, who are then able to better feel and control when they have a period.

Are there places to raise awareness and work on the pelvic floor?

I guess so. When we introduce the motion, we participate with Pinzón in the circles of women who are called the Red Shop, to talk about our lives taking menstruation as its axis. It does not mean that everything is like that, but it must be opened. There are also Lilas Stores, to work with younger girls, which are made in summer for 3-4 days. The truth is that all of this has a mystical point, which personally distances me.

Although this mysticism regresses, can it also draw attention to the need to know our body?

Yes, absolutely, as a feminist, it pulls me away and brings me closer together. From the Red Shop I really liked to talk about our relationship with our body; how we feel the body, take the temperature or look at the flow to know when we are ovulating, etc. I've known my cycle and I've placed some of the feelings I had ahead of me. When this happens to a more mystical level, I'm not comfortable. But they probably need each other.

You have denounced that capitalism takes place in the ovaries.

We didn't put it in the motion, because we cared for the words, but we did. A cup can last up to ten years and you must consume compresses and tampons continuously. It is evident the economic interest, the business planning that is made around our body.

In the motion, they stressed that the boys also received workshops on the monthly rate.

It was clear to us that the workshops had to be separated by sex so that the girls had a comfortable space to share their feelings and talk to a professional about the impact of the cycle. At the same time, we thought it important that boys also receive training to know our body and cycle and create bonds of understanding and respect. Also as a preventive measure against male violence.

Beatriz Gimeno said in the middle Pikara Magazine that, knowing the proposal, he realized that the future of women had to go down the road of the blood-free discharge, which is the flag of feminists. What do you say?

We already have other chains ahead, this is no longer domestic work for all women. But if I ever have a daughter, I'd like to grow her pelvic floor. When my rule came down, my mother said to me: “You have to put this and it’s already.” Things start on the wrong path.